Complete Poems

A legitimate birth is defined as much by the rule of law as by that which Hippocrates, the Arabs, and the full authority of Galen teach: they establish the father. For the two-hundred-and-second day from these [the parents] has formed the fetus in the maternal womb. From which, without doubt, the seventh month is completed and issues forth. This is because, among the Greeks, thirty days suffice for a month; the last day of which is the same as the first in the count of the following month. For this reason, they mark a double with, as it were, a double name. Whereby it happens that this entire period is thus completed. Add that Hippocrates often calls those ten-month [infants] who are born in the tenth, though not yet a complete one. Thus, not being perfect, it is heard as a seventh. Add that within the whole space which turns between four and two hundred days, and that which is subtracted beyond one hundred and eighty, Galen often testifies that the fetuses are vital: but that beyond, or on this side, there are none.

Since these things have been expertly digested by me, I have heard, however, that there are some there—though I do not care—yapping puppies who dare to tear away with their snorts the crown that clings to my head with rare praise. Them I… but they are unworthy of Caesar’s anger. Turn yourselves into whatever evil shapes envy may bind you; whithersoever the sad Erinys carries you, I will be present, a light increased in all places, from which I might dry up your impudent eyes and the use of your squinting vision—if it is a light at all, and not a dark darkness—you horrid slaves of the lash and drudges of the schools.

These things I gave to you, Brassacus, secure and free from ambition, so that they might not think I am courting the physicians. So far from that, I would be the first to wish that I were not called one. For I judge that much of my good reputation would be worn away if posterity were one day to know that I had given my labor and my name among these physicians.