johnbyronkuhner.com

I’ve been reading Varro’s De Re Rustica in the midst of my daily labors (mostly cutting and carrying wood), and seeing new mother Beyonce looking rather fit at the Superbowl last night minded me of this passage:

“Ut te audii dicere,” inquit, “cum in Liburniam venisses, te vidisse matres familias eorum affere ligna et simul pueros, quos alerent, alias singulos, alias binos, quae ostenderunt fetas nostras, quae in canopiis iacent dies aliquot, esse eiuncidas ac contemnendas.”

Cui ego, “Certe,” inquam, “nam in Illyrico hoc amplius, praegnatem saepe, cum venit pariendi tempus, non longe ab opere discedere ibique enixam puerum referre, quem non peperisse, sed invenisse putes.”

“As I have heard you say,” Cossinius said, “when you were in Croatia, you saw their women carrying firewood, with children at the breast – sometimes two children at a time!  They show that our mothers, who lay around for days afterwards under mosquito-nets, are worthless Kate-Moss-types.”

I replied, “Absolutely.  And what’s even more, when I was in Albania, I more than once saw a pregnant woman, when she went into labor, move a short distance away from her work, give birth right there and come back with it so quickly you would have thought she had just found the child as opposed to having given birth to it!”  (Varro R.R.2.10.8)

So apparently the contemptuous Roman term for overly skinny chicks – translated somewhat freely above as “Kate-Moss-types” – is eiuncidae, “stretched out like rushes.”

My father used to tell stories like this about my mother all the time, that she would work until such-and-such a time, give birth, and then get back to the working.  But of course my father’s stories, like Varro’s I think, grew a bit in the telling.  But it’s worth noting when you hear people adamantly denying that Beyonce could have possibly given birth to a baby and then been in such fighting trim so soon after.  And of course there’s a whole website dedicated pretty much to the labors of pregnant woman around the world.