A commonly touted notion is that Julius Caesar was born via what is now called a Caesarien
section after his notable birth.
But is this actually true?
To begin with, the first known instance of Caesar’s birth being noted to be in this
manner didn’t occur until the 10th century Byzantine-Greek historical encyclopedia The
Suda, where it reads, “The emperors of the Romans receive this name from Julius Caesar,
who was not born.
For when his mother died in the ninth month, they cut her open, took him out, and named
him thus; for in the Roman tongue dissection is called ‘Caesar.’”
It turns out though that Aurelia Cotta, Caesar’s mother, lived all the way up to around 54
BC, seemingly dying about 10 years before Julius Caesar was assassinated, though some
sources do claim she outlived him.
Either way, she definitely survived his birth.
This is significant because C-sections up until very modern times were a death sentence.
That’s not to say they didn’t happen, in fact in Roman law, called Lex Caesarea,
(Lex means The law and Caesarea “Imperial”, so literally Imperial Law) it stated if a
woman died, the baby had to be taken from the womb, even if it too was dead.
This was established in the time of Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome (715-673 BC, hundreds
of years before Caesar’s time).
This was seemingly mostly for religious reasons, but sometimes the baby could be saved in this
way, particularly when it was determined that the woman would probably die anyway, such
as if she was bleeding a lot or the like.
Thus they’d sometimes go ahead and perform the procedure while she was still barely clinging
to life to at least save the baby.
As Aurelia did not die in childbirth, and the only way they’d have performed the procedure
was if she was dead or near death, we can be reasonably certain Caesar was not born
this way as being near death and then being sliced open in a procedure that seemingly
universally killed the woman by itself is not a good combination for survivability.
Also, Aurelia was no plebeian.
She was the daughter of a Roman consul and also the granddaughter of another Roman Consul,
and a member of an extremely prominent family.
Had she miraculously survived a C-section, this would have likely been recorded somewhere,
and certainly contemporary historians documenting Julius Caesar’s life would have found this
extremely noteworthy.
In fact, it turns out the first known C-section where both the mother and child survived isn’t
thought to have been performed until the late 16th century, occurring in Switzerland.
Funny enough supposedly not performed by any sort of doctor, but by a pig gelder (castrater),
named Jakob Nufer, who operated on his own wife.
The story goes that after his wife labored unsuccessfully for a couple days, he made
a single cut in her stomach, took the baby out, and then sewed her up like the pigs he
regularly dealt with.
The woman supposedly then went on to have five more children, including a set of twins.
It should be noted though that as the hard documentation to back this story up is pretty
scant, some sources question the reliability of this as the first surviving documented
account of the story didn't occur until nearly a century after the fact.
Moving on to better documented instances, we have to jump across the pond to America
where the first known C-section where the woman survived here didn’t occur until 1794,
with Dr. Jesse Bennett performing the procedure on his wife Elizabeth Bennett, which must
have been quite a heart-wrenching thing to do given he would have assumed he was killing
his wife in the process to save their child.
Nevertheless, she and the child survived the procedure.
An even more interesting and well documented story though is that of the first British
surgeon to successfully perform the procedure.
This was a person who went by the name James Barry, but whose birth name was actually Margaret
Ann Bulkley.
We’ll have more on her in a bit in the Bonus Fact.
But getting back to Caesar and C-sections, it’s interesting to note that even the Oxford
English Dictionary seems to back up the claim that Caesar was born via Caesarean, defining
the word as: “the delivery of a child by cutting through the walls of the abdomen when
delivery cannot take place in the natural way, as was done in the case of Julius Caesar.”
However, giving them the benefit of the doubt here, they may not actually be meaning the
ruler of Rome Julius Caesar.
You see, Pliny the Elder noted, the name “Caesar” came from the Latin word “to cut” which
is “caedere.”
He further stated that one of Caesar’s ancestors was born via C-section and was named as such,
and that the name was passed down to the eventual ruler of Rome, writing “the first… of
the Cæsars was so named, from his having been removed by an incision in his mother's
womb.”
And, indeed if you look at his family tree, both “Julius” and “Caesar” were common
family names with the first to bear the Caesar name in the Roman ruler’s lineage was named
Numerius Julius Caesar.
So if we’re being very generous, it’s always possible the OED was referring to this
Julius Caesar.
Or they’re just wrong, which even the best of sources- and they are one- are sometimes.
Everybody gets stuff wrong, there are no exceptions to this, no matter how hard you try not to.
In any event, as to whether Caesarean section was named after the most famous Julius Caesar
thanks to the common misconception here that he was born this way, this isn’t clear,
but most etymologists do not think this was the original inspiration given how common
the term and similar ones were before the aforementioned 10th century mention, and given
how well known these Latin terms were to physicians throughout the centuries where the term appears
to have been established.
For example, before this one term for babies cut from the womb after the mother died was
caesones.
That said, many still claim it must have been named after Caesar, noting that many languages
that use some variant of this Caesarian term sometimes literally translating in those languages
as “emperor’s cut”.
However, again, it’s noteworthy that Caesarea in Latin actually means “Imperial” and
there is the connection with the procedure and the “Lex Caesarea”, among others,
so this doesn’t necessarily mean the etymology of these various other language’s terms
are connected to Julius Caesar himself.
So that’s the “Caesarean” part.
If you’re wondering about the “Section”- that is thanks to a physician named Jacques
Guillimeau.
In his 1598 book on midwifery, he chose to change the name from Cesarian Operation to
Caesarian Section, which later stuck.
This is in reference to the Latin “sectus” which is a past participle of secare meaning
“to cut”).
Bonus Facts:
Margaret Ann Bulkley was an Irish woman who thanks to connections via her then deceased
famed artist uncle James Barry became acquainted with a doctor by the name of Edward Fryer
(who would become her tutor and mentor), a Venezuelan General by the name of Francisco
de Miranda, and a man named William Godwin, who happened to be the widower of the author
of Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft.
At some point, possibly partially due to Margaret’s semi-impoverished situation and struggling
to get work as a tutor, or maybe just because she really wanted to be a doctor, the group
got the idea for Margaret to disguise herself as a man so she could attend medical school.
She then took the name of James Barry, in homage to her deceased famous uncle, and officially
entered school as his nephew.
It has been speculated that her original plan was to eventually resume her original identity
and travel with General Francisco de Miranda back to Venezuela where she would be allowed
to work as a doctor, despite being a woman thanks to the General, but this isn’t actually
clear.
Whether there is any merit to this or not, around the time she was graduating medical
school in the summer of 1812 (not without controversy as it was assumed because of her
slight build and high pitched voice, she must have been lying about her age, though her
connection to her famous deceased uncle helped smoothed things over) the General was arrested
and would later die in prison.
So had that actually been the plan, it didn’t work out.
Whatever the case, what she actually did was keep her assumed identity and join the British
army, though it’s unclear how she got past the physical.
But she did, and the military sent Barry around the world: Canada, Jamaica, India, and Malta,
among others.
One of her biggest accomplishments took place in South Africa in 1826.
While she was stationed there, she performed a Caesarean section on a woman and said woman
survived.
As mentioned, this was the first known instance of a British surgeon performing the surgery
with both mother and child surviving, with the boy child ultimately being named after
her, sort of…
Named Barry.
Bonus Fact 2:
Speaking of things often thought to be named after Caesar, but not really- Caesar Salad.
This was actually named after a guy named Caesar Cardini, who was an Italian born chef
who immigrated to the United States after World War I.
Despite having a home in San Diego, the Cardini family operated a restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico,
primarily because of prohibition resulting in many Americans going to Tijuana to drink-
so restaurant business was booming there.
There are various stories surrounding Cardini’s inspiration for inventing Caesar Salad.
According to Caesar's daughter, on July 4th, 1924, Caesar was running short on supplies
due to an unexpected rush of customers.
In order to not have to turn customers away, he concocted a salad and dressing out of some
of the remaining ingredients he had lying around.
Another story by a partner of Caesar, Paul Maggiora, said that the Caesar salad was actually
made for American airman from San Diego and was called "Aviator's Salad".
Caesar's brother Alex also claimed the original name was "Aviator's Salad" and that it was
he who invented it, not Caesar.
Yet another story from a retired airmen backs up the "Aviator's Salad" name, but not that
Alex Cardini invented it.
In his story, he claimed that, after a long night of drinking, several of the soldiers
missed curfew and had to stay at Caesar's restaurant for the night.
When they woke up in the morning, Caesar made them a salad which he called "Aviator's Salad"
and is now known as Caesar Salad.
Whatever the true origin, it is clear that this particular type of salad was made popular
at Caesar Cardini's restaurant.
As for it spreading, the salad also got a popularity boost when in 1937 Manny Wolfe,
a Hollywood screenwriter for Paramount, began distributing the recipe around to various
restaurants in the United States.
Caesar salad's spread to Europe is generally attributed to Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson,
who was a mistress and eventual wife of Prince Edward VIII of Wales.
Simpson often frequented Caesar's restaurant when she was in the area and during her travels
began instructing other chefs how to make it, though she couldn't ever get them to get
the dressing quite right, which was a problem in a lot of restaurants that had begun serving
the salad.
As a result of this, by 1948, demand for the dressing for Caesar salad became so great
that Caesar started Caesar Cardini Foods with his daughter Rosa.
With this company, they began selling bottled Caesar salad dressing.