Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she abandon to cries and lamentations.1
ATTRIBUTION:
Natural History. Book vii. Sect. 2.
Note 1. He is born naked, and falls a whining at the first.—Robert Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy, part i. sect. 2, mem. 3, subsect. 10.
And when I was born I drew in the common air, and fell upon the earth, which is of like nature; and the first voice which I uttered was crying, as all others do.—The Wisdom of Solomon, vii. 3.
It was the custom among the ancients to place the new-born child upon the ground immediately after its birth. [back]
