Aulus Gellius
Translated by the Rev. W. Beloe, 1795
Aulus Gellius (c. AD 125–c. 180), who was brought up in Rome but spent several years of his life in Greece, was sufficiently interested in the debate over breast milk to include it in his commonplace book, Attic Nights. Named for their compiler’s evenings of quiet study in a villa near Athens, the Attic Nights are a repository of the work of writers who would otherwise be forgotten, and a rich source of information about life in the second century AD. Women today, if not then, may well object to many of the views set out below.
Word was brought once to Favorinus the philosopher, when I was with him, that the wife of one of his disciples was brought to-bed, and a son added to the family of his pupil. “Let us go,” says he, “to see the woman, and congratulate the father.” He was a senator, and of a noble family. We, all who were present, followed him to the house, and entered with him. Then, at his first entrance, embracing and congratulating the father, he sat down, and enquired whether the labour had been long and painful. When he was informed that the young woman, overcome with fatigue, was gone to sleep, he began to converse more at large, “I have no doubt,” says he, “but she will suckle her son herself.” But when the mother of the lady said, that she must spare her daughter, and find nurses for the child that to the pains of child-birth might not be added the toilsome and difficult talk of suckling the child; “I entreat you, madam,” said he, “allow her to be the sole and entire mother of her own son. For how unnatural a thing is it, how imperfect and half-sort of motherly office, to bring forth a child, and instantly to send him from her; to nourish in her womb, with her own blood, something which she has never seen, and not with her own milk to support that offspring which she now sees endued with life and human faculties, and imploring the tender care of a mother. And do you suppose,” he continued, “that nature has given bosoms to women only to heighten their beauty, and more for the sake of ornament, than to nourish their children. For on this account (which be it far from you) many unnatural women endeavour to dry up and extinguish that sacred fountain of the body, and nourishment of man, with great hazard turning and corrupting the channel of their milk, lest it should render the distinctions of their beauty less attractive. They do this with the same insensibility as those who endeavour by the use of quack medicines to destroy their conceptions, lest they should injure their persons and their shapes. Since the destruction of a human being in its first formation, while he is in the act of receiving animation, and yet under the hands of his artificer, nature, is deserving of public detestation and abhorrence; how much more so must it be to deprive a child of its proper, its accustomed and congenial nutriment, when now perfect and produced to the world. But it is of no consequence, it is said, provided it be nourished and kept alive, by whose milk it is. Why does not he who affirms this, if he be so ignorant of the processes of nature, suppose like wife that it is of no consequence from what body or from what blood an human being is formed and put together? Is not that blood, which is now in the breasts, and has become white by much spirit and warmth, the same as that which was in the womb? But is not the wisdom of nature evident also in this instance, that as soon as the blood, which is the artificer, has formed the human body within its penetralia, it rises into the upper parts, and is ready to cherish the first particles of life and light, supplying known and familiar food to the new-born infants? Wherefore it is not without reason believed, that as the power and quality of the seed avail to form likenesses of the body and mind, in the same degree also the nature and properties of the milk avail toward effecting the same purpose. Nor is this confined to the human race, but is observed also in beasts. For if kids are brought up by the milk of sheep, or lambs with that of goats, it is plain, by experience, that in the former is produced a harsher sort of wool, in the latter a softer species of hair. So in trees, and in corn, their strength and vigour is great in proportion to the quality of the moisture and soil which nourish them, rather than of the feed which is put into the ground. Thus you often see a strong and flourishing tree, when transplanted, die away, from the inferior quality of the soil. What, I would ask, can be the reason then that you should corrupt the dignity of a new-born human being, formed in body and mind from principles of distinguished excellence, by the foreign and degenerate nourishment of another’s milk? particularly if she whom you hire for the purpose of supplying the milk be a slave, or of a servile condition, or, as it often happens, of a foreign and barbarous nation, or if she be dishonest, or ugly, or unchaste, or drunken; for often, without hesitation, any one is hired who happens to have milk when wanted. And shall we then suffer this our infant to be polluted with pernicious contagion, and to inhale into its body and mind a spirit drawn from a body and mind of the worst nature? This, no doubt, is the cause of what we so often wonder at, that the children of chaste women turn out neither in body or mind like their parents. Wisely and with skill has our poet Virgil spoken in imitation of these lines in Homer,—
Sure Peleus ne’er begat a son like thee,
Nor Thetis gave thee birth: the azure sea
Produc’d thee, or the flinty rocks alone
Were the fierce parents of so fierce a son.
He charges him not only upon the circumstance of his birth, but his subsequent education, which he has called fierce and savage. Virgil, to the Homeric description, has added these words:
And fierce Hyrcanian tygers gave thee suck.
Undoubtedly, in forming the manners, the nature of the milk takes, in a great measure, the disposition of the person who supplies it, and then forms from the seed of the father, and the person and spirit of the mother, its infant offspring. And besides all this, who can think it a matter to be treated with negligence and contempt, that while they desert their own offspring, driving it from themselves, and committing it for nourishment to the care of others, they cut off, or at least loosen and relax, that mental obligation, that tie of affection, by which nature binds parents to their children? For when a child is removed from its mother, and given to a stranger, the energy of maternal fondness by little and little is checked, and all the vehemence of impatient solicitude is put to silence. And it becomes much more easy to forget a child which is put out to nurse, than one of which death has deprived us. Moreover, the natural affection of a child, its fondness, its familiarity, is directed to that object only from which it receives its nourishment, and thence (as in infants exposed at their birth) the child has no knowledge of its mother, and no regret for the loss of her. Having thus destroyed the foundations of natural affection, however children thus brought up may seem to love their father or mother, that regard is in a great measure not natural, but the result of civil obligation and opinion.” These sentiments, which I heard Favorinus deliver in Greek, I have, as far as I could, related, for the sake of their common utility. But the elegancies, the copiousness, and the flow of his words, scarcely any power of Roman eloquence could arrive at, least of all any which I possess.