Book 3
16
This very day I chanced to read these words in a satire of Marcus Varro's entitled The Will: Fr. 543, Bücheler3. If one or more sons shall be born to me in ten months, let them be disinherited, if they are asses in music; That is, stupid, half-witted. but if one be born to me in the eleventh month, according to Aristotle, i.e., as Aristotle says may happen; Hist. Anim. vii. 4. let Attius have the same rights under my will as Tettius. Just as it used commonly to be said of things that did not differ from each other, let Attius be as Tettius, so Varro means by this old proverb that children born in ten months and in eleven are to have the same and equal rights. Attius and Tettius stand for any names like Smith and Jones in English.
16
But if it is a fact that gestation cannot be prolonged beyond the tenth month, it is pertinent to ask why Homer wrote that Neptune said to a girl whom he had just violated: Odyss. xi. 248. Rejoice, O woman, in this act of love; A year gone by, fair offspring shall be thine, For not unfruitful is a god's embrace.
