Fortean Times

CLASSICAL CORNER

261: STOP KIDDING

“The helplessness of a human infant outlasts the suckling period of a wolf.” – Fort, Books, p689

Fort (himself childless) was here amassing cases of feral children lupinely suckled. Such tales, of course, go back to Romulus and Remus. If Fort had read Livy, he’d surely have chuckled over the rival version in which the maternal she-wolf was actually a local tart, lupa being a Roman slang term for prostitutes (cf. lupanar = brothel)

In an uncharacteristically tender moment, Juvenal ( 14, v47) urged , Englished without attribution by Samuel Johnson ( 4, 1750) as “the highest degree of reverence should be paid to youth,” a filching unnoticed by (e.g.) David Wormersley’s annotated Penguin.

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