Pregnancy

[Jona Lendering]

When I made my edition of Synesius' treatise Dio, I was surprised to read that the good scholar from Cyrene knew that his pregnant wife would give birth to a son. As far as I know, you need to take X-ray photos or similar to establish the gender of an unborn baby.

However, I can not exclude the possibility that in Antiquity (just like today) there were pseudo-scientific theories. I consulted a modern obstetrician, who told me she believed that when ladies experience pregnancies that are different from earlier pregnancies, they may indeed make a reasonable guess that the next baby will have a different gender. She also says that boys are heavier than girls, and that pregnant women sometimes believe that they can feel this.

Leaving the accuracy of these theories aside: what beliefs did the ancients have? Has anyone of us RATs read Dioscorides?

[Materfamillias]

He had a 50% chance of being right without any fancy gadgets! I knew I was carrying boys both times, don't ask me how I knew but I felt it. My midwife did say the around 80% of her mums could guess the sex so there must be something inate.

kind thoughts
Materfamillias

PS at the scan of Son no 2 Son no 1 guessed that it was a shark-very disappointed 3 months later!

[Sean Manning]

I believe that the Ancient Egyptians had a method involving the pregnant woman urinating on a bag of mixed wheat and barley, and simply wetting another bag. They were right that if the woman was pregnant the urine-soaked grains would sprout first (a matter of hormones, I think), but wrong in believing that if it was a boy the wheat would sprout before the barley and vice versa for a girl. No idea if that was used in Roman times.

[SigniferOne]

Thanks for keeping up the good work, I love your site Jona and am happy to see more and more content on it.

Now speaking briefly about Synesius, I had just recently read Boethius, and boy what a tour-de-force that man's writing has been. By contrast Synesius and Late Greeks in general seem to be really.. nothing much to talk about. They started faltering in Second Sophistic but still had some great men during the period (Plutarch, Lucian); with time they just seem to have gotten less and less impressive. Boethius on the other hand is so powerful, even in translation, as to almost defy belief.

[Senovara]

PS at the scan of Son no 2 Son no 1 guessed that it was a shark-very disappointed 3 months later!

:lol: :lol: