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Conceptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

M. D. Reeve
M. D. Reeve
Affiliation:
Pembroke College, Cambridge
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Extract

As the sun rises over the heights, a band of pirates cross a ridge near the mouth of the Nile and look out to sea. No prospect of booty meets their gaze, which travels to the shore. A merchantman is moored there, laden but unattended. The shore itself is strewn with bodies, some dead, others still writhing, in the aftermath of a feast that turned into a pitched battle. The pirates approach but are struck by a sight yet stranger. A girl sits on a rock, a girl whose beauty suggests a goddess. On her head is a wreath, over her shoulder a quiver; a bow supports her left arm; her right elbow rests on her thigh, and her chin on her right hand, as she stares at a youth who lies wounded and gasping at her feet. Only because he still draws breath, she tells him, has she not used on herself the sword that lies across her knee. So saying, up she springs, and the pirates take cover from her tall figure, made more awesome by the rattle of her quiver and the sunlight reflected from her golden raiment. Who can she be? Perhaps Artemis, Isis, or a mad priestess on a murderous rampage.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 35 , 1989 , pp. 81 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

NOTES

1. White she traditionally was; see Schauenburg, K. in Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae I.1 (1981) 788Google Scholar. Ted Kenney draws my attention to a seventeenth-century painting of the episode, reproduced by Hägg, T. in The novel in Antiquity (1983) 207Google Scholar.

2. Der griechische Roman ed. 3 (1914) 476Google Scholar n.4. J. R. Morgan adds further references in his unpublished commentary on Books 9–10 of Heliodorus (D. Phil. Oxford 1978). There is general agreement that the work was written in the third or fourth century, but the narrower date remains controversial; resemblances between the siege in Book 9 and the third siege of NIsibis, which took place in 350, would provide a terminus post quem if Heliodorus borrowed from an account like the emperor Julian's, but the majority of recent discussions, for instance Lightfoot, C. S.'s in Historia 37 (1988) 105–25Google Scholar, either regard Julian as the borrower or question the closeness of the resemblances. Christopher Jones tells me that he favours the third century.

3. Cf. Merkelbach, R. in Studien zur Textgeschichte und Textkritik (1959) 183Google Scholar.

4. Epístolas latinos, ed. Tate, R. B. and Ferrer, R. Alemany (1982) 60Google Scholar.

5. Hewson, M. A., Giles of Rome and the medieval theory of conception (1975) 192–3Google Scholar. I have consulted the treatise in what may be the only printed edition (Paris 1515).

6. 5.12, ed. Diels, H., Doxographi Graeci (1879) 423Google Scholar.

7. I warmly thank David Sedley for exploring three avenues among the fragments of Empedocles and the testimonia: his doctrine of perception and thought, according to which what we see is to some extent physically reproduced as a thought in the blood round the heart (B 105–9); his doctrine of transmigration, which might allow the incarnation of a particular δαίμων in the foetus to be determined by the mother's thoughts at conception; and his Καθαρμοί, in which the notion ‘could have had a religious, ritual, or therapeutic background quite unrelated to his theories’. The third of these avenues leads away from Empedocles, and bridges are missing on the other two.

8. Unlike τέρας, monstrum is almost invariably pejorative, and even more so its descendants ‘monster’ and ‘monstrosity’; but ‘prodigy’ has the opposite drawback, and no other rendering occurs to me.

9. On the interpretation of Aristotle's theory see Cooper, J. M., ‘Metaphysics in Aristotle's embryology’, PCPS 214 (1988) 14–41Google Scholar, and Furth, M., Substance, form and psyche: an Aristotelean metaphysics (1988) 110–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Pliny NH 7.51 tells a story of this kind. See also the medieval poem discussed by Walter, H., Rhein. Mus. 111 (1968) 64–8Google Scholar, and Diggle, J., Rhein. Mus. 112 (1969) 69–72Google Scholar.

11. Winterbottom, M., The minor declamations ascribed to Quintilian (1984) 290Google Scholar, supposes that it was a lost major declamation. Calpurnius Flaccus, Declam. 2, Natus Aethiops, includes nothing pertinent.

12. Dion. Hal. De imit. 6.1, in Opusc. ed. Usener-Radermacher II (1904–29) 202.23–203.6; Galen, , De theriaca 11Google Scholar (14.253–4 Kühn); Soranus Gyn. 1.39, ed. Ilberg, J., Corp. Med. Graec. 4 (1927) 27.28–28.5Google Scholar, and from there Caelius Aurelianus Gyn. 1.50, ed. Drabkin, M. F. and Drabkin, I. E., Supplements to the Bulletin of the History of Medicine 13 (1951) 15–16Google Scholar lines 383–95, and Augustine, Contra Iulianum 5.14.51 = PL 44 (1845) 813Google Scholar, together with Retract. 2.62 = CCSL 57 (1984) 139Google Scholarnomen hominis qui hoc facere solebat quasi certum posui [namely the tyrant Dionysius], cum sit incertum, quia memoria me fefellit; hoc autem Soranus auctor medicinae scripsit regem Cyprium facere solere, sed nomen eius proprium non expressit.

13. I owe such knowledge as I have of these matters to a paper given by John Mitchell in 1987.

14. Postgate, J. P., AJP 33 (1912) 455Google Scholar, alleged confusion between Horatius Flaccus and Hostius Quadra, whose use of mirrors Seneca denounces at NQ 1.16.

15. Prop. 2.15.1–24; Ovid, Am. 1.5.3–8, with J. C. McKeown's commentary on 3–6 and 7–8 (1989).

16. Ariès, P. and Duby, G. (eds.) A history of private life, I. From pagan Rome to Byzantium transl. Goldhammer, A. (1987) 203Google Scholar. Doubtless his moon comes from Propertius 1.3.31–3.

17. I have not seen Schmitt, W., Kommentar zum ersten Buch von Pseudo-Oppians Kynegetika (1969)Google Scholar.

18. 27.8, p. 17.23–7 in Haupt, 's edition, Hermes 3 (1869) 1–30Google Scholar, = Opusc. (1875–6) III 290.1–4; Bodenheimer, F. S. and Rabinowitz, A., Timotheus of Gaza on animals (1949) 34Google Scholar. Cf. Wellmann, M., ‘Timotheos von Gaza’, Hermes 62 (1927) 179–204Google Scholar, and Philologus Suppl. 22.1 (1930) 42–3Google Scholar. In the text published and discussed by Kalbfleisch, K., ‘Die neuplatonische, fälschlich dem Galen zugeschriebene Schrift ’, Abh. der Berliner Akad. (1895)Google Scholar, and translated by Festugiere (as Denis O'Brien kindly told me) in La révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste III (1953) 265–302Google Scholar, Porphyry, or whoever the author is, mentions paintings of dogs as well as of horses, doves, and women (Chapters 5–6 = pp. 41.5–43.11 Kalbfleisch).

19. K. Hoppe (ed.) II (1927) 177.7–16. Vieillefond, J.-R., Les “Cestes” de Julius Africanus (1970) 221Google Scholar, approves Hoppe's comment that color sermonis et res Africanum prodit, but he does not put the passage in his collection of fragments. See also Björck, G., Apsyrtus, Julius Africanus, et l'hippiatrique grecque (1944)Google Scholar.

20. The idea found at Ar. Hist. an. 3.12, Strabo 10.1.14, Plin. NH 31.13, Aelian, Hist. an. 8.21, that by drinking different water animals produce offspring of a different colour, does not seem relevant.

21. Neusner, J., Genesis Rabbah, the Judaic commentary to the book of Genesis: a new American translation (1985) 3.71Google Scholar. Ioannes Mercerus answered Rabbi Hoshaia as follows in his commentary (1598) 524: sat fuit miraculi quod uirgis admotis unicolores pepererint foetus uersicolores ubi initae essent.

22. CCSL 72 (1959) 37–9Google Scholar. The edition does not claim to be more than a reprint of de Lagarde, P., Hieronymi quaestiones Hebraicae in libro Geneseos (1868)Google Scholar.

23. De trin. 3.7; CCSL 50 (1968) 142–3Google Scholar.

24. Quaest. gen. 93; CCSL 33 (1958) 35Google Scholar. Professor B. Bruni Celli, who is collecting ancient and medieval references to Hippocrates, kindly tells me that he has not found the story in any earlier source. Behind Erasmus's interpolation lie ultimately Alcuin's Interrogationes et responsiones in librum Geneseos (1617 and PL 100), which run together Jerome and Augustine; two peculiarities of Erasmus's text go back to the commentary that Hrabanus Maurus compiled in much the same way (using Alcuin's?) between 825 and 842 (1626 and PL 107), on which see Hablitzel, J. B., Hrabanus Maurus: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Exegese (1906) 71–4Google Scholar (though he says nothing about Alcuin), and less remotely to the twelfth-century Glossa ordinaria (ed. princ. Strasbourg c. 1481 under the name of Walahfrid Strabo), on which see Smalley, B., The study of the Bible in the Middle Ages ed. 3 (1983) 46–66Google Scholar. Incidentally, the editions of Alcuin and Hrabanus read quo concipiunt for the phrase that I obelised above, which I had thought of removing.

25. Cf. n.12.

26. Cf. n.18.

27. See Hillgarth, J. N., Studi medievali 24.2 (1983) 883–93Google Scholar.

28. Tate and Ferrer (n.4) 78–100, a baroque fantasy in which Gymnasium and Acumen (orators from the University of Salamanca) unsuccessfully plead with Mors for a ten-year postponement and a gaggle of Virtues abandon Spain after each uttering a lament over the corpse. The autograph of the commentary on Genesis survives in Salamanca Univ. 2511 and an earlier and much briefer version in Salamanca Univ. 13; see Rodriguez, F. Marcos, Salmanticensis 4 (1957) 15, 17–21, 29–30, 48Google Scholar. According to the second edition (Venice 1596), he was writing the commentary in 1436; presumably he says so in the body of it somewhere.

29. Cornelius a Lapide in his commentary (1616).

30. When Augustine (n.24) argues that Jacob must have acted reuelatione spiritali, he is talking not about the whole ruse but about his taking twigs from three different kinds of tree, which has no natural explanation.

31. The Noua uulgata bibliorum sacrorum editio (1979) has removed the rams and does not venture beyond grex and pecora.

32. I have used a later edition (Lyon 1595), where what I summarise occurs on pp. 97–102.

33. I follow J. André's text (1986). It baffles me how Lindsay in the OCT (1911) could print animal and eorumque without the slightest hint of disquiet in the apparatus.

34. Cf. n.18.

35. Horowitz, M. Cline, ‘Aristotle and woman’, Journal of Biological History 9.2 (1976) 183–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. Furth (n.9) 132–3, 137–41, interestingly suggests that Aristotle made the female element passive in order not to split the form by having the parents impart it jointly to their offspring; but in that case it can be argued that the notion of imparting form is inherently sexist. Certainly Aristotle, like Plato, has frequent recourse to the analogy of the craftsman in talking about forms.

37. Lesky, E., Die Zeugungs- und Vererbungslehren der Antike und ihr Nachwirken (Abh. der Akad. Mainz (1950) 19) 150–3Google Scholar = 1374–7, places Aristotle's departure from his usual doctrine in his attribution of κινήσεις to the καταμήνια when he is explaining how female offspring can resemble their mother's mother and so on (768a18–21); cf. Furth (n.9) 130 n.21, 132 and n.22. In the context of pervasive notions about females, however, the departure can safely be placed at an earlier point.

38. Commentariorum et disputationum in Genesim tomi quattuor (1601; according to the colophon, the first edition appeared at Rome in 1598).

39. For Chrysostom, , Hom. in gen. 57Google Scholar and Theodoretus, , Quaest. in gen. 89Google Scholar see PG 54.496, 80.197; for More's epigram, The complete works of St Thomas More III.2 ed. Miller, C. H. et al. (1984)Google Scholar, Epigr. 205 pp. 234–7, with commentary on p. 395. Much of Pererius's material passed into the commentary of Cornelius a Lapide (1616) and from there into Bochart, S., Hierozoicon (1663) 2.49, I pp. 543–7Google Scholar.

40. Exotericarum exercitationum liber quintus decimus de subtilitate ad Hieronymum Cardanum (1557) 59.1 p.89Google Scholar.

41. The Blind Watchmaker (1986) Chapter 2, pp. 38–9Google Scholar in the paperback (1988).

42. Poulton, E. B., The colours of animals (1890) 72, 109Google Scholar; Cott, H. B., Adaptive coloration in animals ed. 1 (1940), ed. 2 (1957) 23, 140–46Google Scholar: ‘concealment in offence’.

43. The chapter occupies fos. 8r–14r. On Lemnius see Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek 8 (1930) 1028–31Google Scholar. His explanation of the Andromeda Effect (fo. 14r) is not Aristotelian: Quum enim omnes uires ac naturales facultates totae sint in formando fingendoque foetu, fit ut muliere aliquo malo perculsa omnes humores ac spiritus ad ima ferantur atque in uteri secessum confluant, quibus quum accedit inhaerens penitusque menti infixa conspectae rei imaginatio, uis ipsa quae formationi insistit eam formam ac speciem quam animo concipit effigiat ipsique foetuì inducit.

44. Céard, J. (ed.) Des monstres et prodiges (1971) 35–7Google Scholar ‘Exemple des monstres qui se font par imagination’; Pallister, J. L., Ambroise Paré: On monsters and marvels (1982)Google Scholar. See also Wittkower, R., ‘Marvels of the East: a study in the history of monsters’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942) 159–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Céard, , La nature et les prodiges (1977)Google Scholar; Park, K. and Daston, L. J., ‘Unnatural conceptions: the study of monsters in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France and England’, Past and Present 92 (1981) 20–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. I have used what calls itself the editio postrema (1635). On Fienus see the Belgian, Biographie Nationale 7 (1880–1883) 47–9Google Scholar; another of his medical works, published in 1620, is regarded as important by Ford, N. M., When did I begin? Conception of the human individual in history, philosophy and science (1988) 47–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. De superfetatione 18, ed. Lienau, C. (Corp. Med. Graec. I 2.2, 1973) 80.8–10Google Scholar; see 66–7 for the date.

47. I borrow the Greek phrase from Calvin's commentary (1554).

48. Wellhausen, J., Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments ed. 2 (1889) 39–42Google Scholar; Speiser, E. A., The Anchor Bible: Genesis (1964) 238Google Scholar.

49. I have quoted ‘in case of …’ from p. 25 of the first edition, but the copy in the British Library (1606.753) has none of the woodcuts announced in the table of contents. The edition of 1690 (British Library C110.bb.1) has ‘the effigies …’ on the back of the Advertisement, and the edition of 1704 (Cambridge UL Keynes A. 1.7) has it both as frontispiece and as endpiece.

50. On Turner see Hare, P. J., Our credulous countryman (1969)Google Scholar.

51. I have not succeeded in tracing this story back beyond Bergomensis, Iacobus Philippus, Supplementum chronicarum (1483)Google Scholar, who gives it under 1283 and calls the Pope Martin; the fifth edition (1503) changes the name to Nicholas. Another much repeated story, about a hairy child presented to the emperor Charles IV near Pisa in 1355, occurs in chronicles of the period, for instance Cronica di Matteo Villani (1846) 5.53 (I p.442) and Chronica Heinrici Surdi de Selback, ed. Bresslau, H. (1922) 108Google Scholar, but the detail that makes it relevant, namely that the mother had been looking at a painting of John the Baptist, first appears in Agrippa, Cornelius, De occulta philosophia libri tres (1533) I.58Google Scholar, where it is attributed to one Marcus Damascenus. Correspondence of Agrippa's shows that three books by this author De uariis admirandisque animae humanae naturis had been found by Rogier Brennon in a neglected manuscript at Metz, and A. Prost, who discussed the correspondence in Corneille Agrippa: sa vie et ses oeuvres (1881–1882) I.376Google Scholar, II.2–8, surmised that he was a heresiarch of some date between the second century and the tenth; Servier, J., Henri Corneille Agrippa, La magie naturelle (1982) 170Google Scholar n.4, 186, does no better despite having translated the evidence for a terminus post quem of 1355.

52. It would be perverse to doubt that he had witnessed such behaviour, but the words are not his own. Cf. Leuinus Lemnius (n.43) fol. 11r: Nihil mihi aeque improbari solet apud lasciuiores mulierculas quam quod catellis simiisque sese impensius oblectent, quodque illos sinu gestant, fouent, demulcent, basiant, blandeque contrectant. This in turn elaborates the warning quoted above from Isidore.

53. DNB 56 (1898) 435–6Google Scholar.

54. Spence, J., Anecdotes, observations, and characters, ed. Singer, S. W. (1820) 285Google Scholar.

55. Paulson, R., Hogarth's graphic works (1970) catal. 107, I.131–2Google Scholar and II pl.111.

56. The anatomist dissected (1727) 33Google Scholar. For a survey of contemporary material see Seligman, S. A., ‘Mary Toft – the rabbit breeder’, Medical History 5 (1961) 349–60CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. The summary in the DNB is not altogether accurate.

57. I owe the reference to Tostatus, who candidly admits that the passage creates a difficulty for the Andromeda Effect.

58. Turner, , The force of the mother's imagination upon her foetus in utero still farther considered, in the way of a reply to Dr Blondel's last book (1730) 31–2Google Scholar; Mauclerc 28–33.

59. He had in mind the Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg, which in 1756 awarded the prize to a believer, K. C. Krause of Leipzig, and published his essay together with one by an unbeliever, J. G. Roederer of Göttingen.

60. Blair, D. M., A doctor looks at the Bible (1936) 7–8Google Scholar.

61. See Weiss, R., ‘The ruins of Rome and the humanists’ in The Renaissance discovery of Classical Antiquity (1969) 59–72Google Scholar.

62. Elias, In Categ. 8Google Scholar (on 9a28), ed. Busse, A (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca 18.1, 1900) 231.11–19Google Scholar, puts the Andromeda Effect to an even remoter use: he attacks the distinction between παθητικαὶ ποιότητες and those present from birth by arguing that some ποιότητες present from birth, namely those due to the Andromeda Effect, παθητικαὶ.

63. See n. 12.

64. Bruni translated only Alcibiades's speech (215a–22b); cf. Baron, H., Leonardo Bruni Aretino: humanistisch-philosophische Schriften (1928) 175Google Scholar. According to Kristeller, P. O., Supplementum Ficinianum (1937) I.cxlvii–clviiGoogle Scholar, Ficino produced his translations between 1463 and 1468 and left till last the dialogues already translated by others. Myles Burnyeat kindly points out, however, that in Republic 401b1–d3, ‘the sole mention of architecture in the work’, the intellectual and moral influence of the environment is not confined to representational art. This passage Alfonso could have read, because the whole of the Republic had already been translated three times, by Uberto Decembrio, Pier Candido Decembrio, and Antonio Cassarino; see the articles by Zaccaria, V. and Resta, G. in IMU 2 (1959) 179–206, 207–83Google Scholar.

65. Philologus Suppl. 22.1 (1930) 42Google Scholar. I owe to John Morgan (cf. n.2) a reference to another passage of Jewish literature, Testament of Reuben 5.6–7 in The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, where women bear their husbands gigantic children because at conception the Watchers (fallen angels) appeared to them in the form of human giants. The work has recently been edited in Greek by M. de Jonge (1978) and in English with a commentary, inadequate on this passage, by H. W. Hollander and M. de Jonge (1985). Its date is controversial, as can be seen from Slingerland, H. Dixon's Critical history of research (1977)Google Scholar; those who consider the Christian elements integral put it as late as the third century.

66. von Rad, G., Das erste Buch Mose: Genesis Kapitel 25.19–50.26 (1953) 263Google Scholar; Speiser, E. A., The Anchor Bible: Genesis (1964) 238Google Scholar.

67. Cf. Lloyd, G. E. R., The revolutions of wisdom: studies in the claims and practice of ancient Greek science (1987) esp. 68, 98–100Google Scholar.

68. The sculpted word (1982) 122–7Google Scholar.

69. Needham, Joseph cites it in A history of embryology (1934) 193, 247Google Scholar, = ed. 2 (1959) 216, 274.

70. Brown, J., Maternal impressions (1887)Google Scholar, and Bell, A. L., Influence of a previous sire and its relation to ‘maternal impressions’ (1895)Google Scholar, both cited in Bilboul, R. B. and Kent, F. L., Retrospective index to theses of Great Britain and Ireland 1716–1950 III (1977) 56–7Google Scholar. The theory of ‘telegony’ indicated in Bell's title had aroused enough controversy in the nineteenth century for genetic experiments to be done on the quagga, a now extinct relative of the zebra; see Ewart, J. C., The Penycuik experiments (1899)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Telegony’ in the 11th edition of the Encycl. Brit., XXVI (1911) 509–10Google Scholar. David Sedley tells me that he has been informed by an Italian colleague of a belief commonly held in Italy (‘and it's true’ the colleague added) that if a woman before marrying has a lover her first child by her husband will look like the lover. The Andromeda Effect, however, need not be involved.

71. Howell, M. J. and Ford, P., The true history of the Elephant Man (1980) 19–20, 33, 43, 49, 51–2, 129–32, 168Google Scholar.

72. See Russell, H., J. W. Ballantyne, M. D., F.R.C.P. Edin., F.R.S.E., 1861–1923 (Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Publication 39, 1971)Google Scholar.

73. Sexual-Probleme 8 (1912) 300–28, 398–435Google Scholar; in what follows I summarise things that he says on pp. 323, 412–13, 424.

74. Fock, N., ‘South American birth customs in theory and practice’, in Ford, C. S. (ed.) Cross-cultural approaches: readings in comparative research (1967), 126–44Google Scholar. Ford himself in A comparative study of human reproduction (1945) 53–4Google Scholar cites reports of belief in the Andromeda Effect among the Ashanti and two tribes of North-American Indians. See also Kay, M. A. (ed.) Anthropology of human birth (1982) 183Google Scholar on the Onitsha Ibo of Nigeria and 274–5 on a community in western Ireland (I thank Henrietta Moore for referring me to the work). Anthropologists have even brought back evidence of the belief from Cambridgeshire; see Porter, E., Cambridgeshire customs and folklore (1969) 12–13Google Scholar.

75. The sexual life of savages (1929) 175Google Scholar.

76. Frazer, , The Golden Bough III (1911) 88–9Google Scholar, mentions another attitude to resemblances: ‘The Galelareese [of Halmahera, west of New Guinea] fancy that if a child resembles his father, they will not both live long; for the child has taken away his father's likeness or shadow, and consequently the father must soon die. Similarly among some tribes of the Lower Congo, “if the child is like its mother, father, or uncle, they think it has the spirit of the person it resembles, and that that person will soon die. Hence a parent will resent it if you say that the baby is like him or her” [quoted from a Dutch report]’. Cf. IV (1911) 287 (288 in the second impression).

77. Pross, H. H., Bartels, M., and Bartels, P., Woman: an historical gynaecological and anthropological compendium, transl. Dingwall, E. J. II (1935) 460–62Google Scholar, invoke a different advance in physiology: ‘what upset … the theory regarding these shocks in pregnancy was the circumstance that the mother's fright, which was supposed to have caused the malformation of the child, in most cases happened in the last months of pregnancy, whilst the deformations concerned, as the history of evolution incontestably proves, correspond to certain stages of our development in the womb which come in the very first weeks of embryonic existence’. Believers can meet this by watching their chronology. The authors' further point, that ‘the external form of the child is determined in the nuclei of the parental germ cells’, is false for the kind of reasons that they themselves have just been giving if by ‘determined’ they mean ‘exclusively determined’.