“[p. 217] four letters only, so that the meaning was shown without writing the whole word, but yet the doubt as to the form of the word was concealed.” But that of which Varro and Tiro spoke is not now written in that way on this same theatre. For when, many years later, the back wall of the stage had fallen and was restored, the number of the third consulship was indicated, not as before, by the first four letters, but merely by three incised lines. 1 However, in the fourth book of Marcus Cato's Origines we find: 2 “The Carthaginians broke the treaty for the sixth time (sextum).” This word indicates that they had violated the treaty five times before, and that this was the sixth time. The Greeks too in distinguishing numbers of this kind use τρίτον καὶ τέταρτον, which corresponds to the Latin words tertium quartumque.
II
[2arg] What Aristotle has recorded about the number of children born at one time.THE philosopher Aristotle has recorded 3 that a woman in Egypt bore five children at one birth; this, he said, was the limit of human multiple parturition; more children than that had never been known to be born at one time, and even that number was very rare. But in the reign of the deified Augustus the historians of the time say that a maid servant of Caesar Augustus in the region of Laurentum brought forth five children, and that they lived for a few days; that their mother died not long after she had been delivered, whereupon a monument was erected to her by order of Augustus
