OK AGAIN,

Currently there is no reliable evidence that Roman dictator Julius Caesar was born by the method now known as C-section.  At the time of Julius’s birth, there was an prohibition to burring a dead pregnant woman with the fetus intact, this the c-section process was practiced, There is no classical source records a mother surviving such a delivery.  As late as the 12th century, scholar and physician Maimonides  questioned the possibility of a woman’s surviving this procedure and again becoming pregnant. ?The phrase could also be explained as an etyomological derivation of the verb caedere, “to cut”, Plinni in his Natural History  refers to a certain Julius Caesar (an ancestor of the famous Roman statesman) as ab utero caeso, “cut from the womb” giving this as an explanation for the cognomen “Caesar” which was then carried by his descendants. Despite the fact that these explanations for the history of the term have generally accepted as in the first (1888) and second (1989) editions of the Oxford English Dictionary Oxford English Dictionary say that caesarean birth “was done in the case of Julius Cæsar”.  The current OED (2021) mentions “the traditional belief that Julius Cæsar was delivered this way”

Unknown c. 1473-1476 – British Library, Royal MS 16 G VIII f.32r [1]
Medieval depiction of Caesarian birth

Of course the Ides of March in Shakespere’s play Julius Caesar when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to “beware the Ides of March” Suetonius dentifies the “seer” as a haruspex named Spurinna.

653J Tranquillus Suetonius approximately (69±- 122 AD) Commentary by Philippi Beroaldi and Marci Antonii Sabellici.

Suetonius Tranquillus VILLVS [de Vita Caesarum], cum Philippi Beroaldi et Marci Antonii Sabellici commentariis, cum figuris nuper additis.

Venice: Exacta per Ioa[n]nem Rubeum Vercelle[n]sem, 8. Jan. 1506 $7,500

Folio 33 x 15 cm. Signatures: aa⁴, a-z⁸, & ⁸, 9⁸,Rx ⁸, A-S⁸, T⁶ First edition illustrated with numerous woodcuts. This copy is bound in modern quarter vellum. Dampstain at upper right, and throughout light dampstain at headband. dampstaining in the headpiece towards the gutter, sporadically browned, in parts lightly (a few pp. more heavily) browned,{due to paper fault] at the beginning and at the end slightly worm-holed.

This is the first edition with woodcut title and 80 woodcuts in text and numerous initials. Particularly noteworthy is the depiction of the birth of Caesar (f. 1), la plus ancienne illustration de l’opération césarienne (Sander). The word formation sectio caesarea – caesarean section (actually from Latin caedere = to cut out) is related to this caesarean (section) birth of Caesar. De Vita Caesarum, a set of biographies of 12 successive Roman caesars, from Julius Caesar (of which the first few chapters are no longer extant) to Domitian. These biographies are written according to a fixed formula (appearance, family, quotes, history). Suetonius was a close friend of Pliny the Younger and became secretary to the Emperor Hadrian.

“The plan adopted by Suetonius in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, led him to be more diffuse on their personal conduct and habits than on public events. He writes Memoirs rather than History. He neither dwells on the civil wars which sealed the fall of the Republic, nor on the military expeditions which extended the frontiers of the empire; nor does he attempt to develop the causes of the great political changes which marked the period of which he treats.When we stop to gaze in a museum or gallery on the antique busts of the Caesars, we perhaps endeavour to trace in their sculptured physiognomy the characteristics of those princes, who, for good or evil, were in their times masters of the destinies of a large portion of the human race. The pages of Suetonius will amply gratify this natural curiosity. In them we find a series of individual portraits sketched to the life, with perfect truth and rigorous impartiality. La Harpe remarks of Suetonius, “He is scrupulously exact, and strictly methodical. He omits nothing which concerns the person whose life he is writing; he relates everything, but paints nothing. His work is, in some sense, a collection of anecdotes, but it is very curious to read and consult.” “Combining as it does amusement and information, Suetonius’s “Lives of the Caesars” was held in such estimation, that, so soon after the invention of printing as the year 1500, no fewer than eighteen editions had been published, and nearly one hundred have since been added to the number. Critics of the highest rank have devoted themselves to the task of correcting and commenting on the text, and the work has been translated into most European languages.”

THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS By C. Suetonius Tranquillus; Revised and corrected by T.Forester, Esq., A.M.

BM STC Ital. Books, 651. -  Proctor-Isaac 12403; EDIT 16 CNCE 29626; Essling 1, 208. - Sander III, 7143. - Ebert 21895. Wellcome 1, 6139. Not in Mortimer, Italian  Books.