11. As to the evil that may arise if some unsuitable nurse, and not the mother, suckle the infant, I will prove by example from three of the Roman emperors. 1. Titus, having had a diseased nurse, was throughout life subject to illness, as Lampridius avers. 2. Caligula was a ferocious beast in human form. The cause of this, however, was not attributable to his parents, but to the nurse whose breast he had sucked, who, besides being grossly immoral and impious, used to sprinkle her breasts with blood and then present them to him to suck. From this cause he became of a disposition so ferocious, that he not only delighted in shedding human blood, but also, without the least feeling of aversion, he licked it with his tongue when adhering to the sword. He even dared to wish that all mankind had but one neck, in order that they might be cut off with a stroke. 3. Tiberius was exceedingly fond of wine, for his nurse was not only herself a wine-bibbing and drunken woman, but also accustomed him from early life to the use of the juice of the grape.[1]
12. Hence it is evident that no little depends on what kind of a nurse[2] one has, not only with regard to the body, but also to the mind and morals; for if a nurse be affected with any manifest or secret disease, the infant will also be subject to it. “If she be unchaste, untruthful, a pilferer, or is drunken or passionate, you can expect no other morals from the infant, which, with the milk, imbibes the seeds of all these evils.”—Didacus Apolephtes.
13. Let the above suffice for the present. Pious and pru-
- ↑ Quintilian remarks in this connection: “New vases preserve the taste of the first liquor that is put into them, and wool, once colored, never regains its primitive whiteness.”
- ↑ Jean Paul Richter says: “If we regard all life as an educational institution, a circumnavigator of the world is less influenced by all the nations that he has seen than by his nurse.”
