A glance at the Lion and Cardinal and then at the Catholic Encyclopaedia informed me of a tradition in connection with the Holy Innocents of which I had not been aware. Peter Abelard, logician, philosopher, and perhaps most famously one of those qui facti sunt ab hominibus (to use the words of Matthew 19:12), in a hymn in honor of the Innocents, wrote the following verses:

Ad mandatum regis datum generale
nec ipsius infans tutus est a caede.
Ad Augustum hoc delatum risum movit,
et rex mitis de immiti digne lusit:
malum, inquit, est Herodis esse natum.
prodest magis talis regis esse porcum.

The Catholic Encyclopaedia explains: “Macrobius (Saturn., IV, xiv, de Augusto et jocis ejus) relates that when Augustus heard that amongst the boys of two years and under Herod’s own son also had been massacred, he said: ‘It is better to be Herod’s hog [ous], than his son [houios],’ alluding to the Jewish law of not eating, and consequently not killing, swine. The Middle Ages gave faith to this story . . .” The last phrase indicates to me that the Catholic Encyclopaedia doesn’t give faith to this story, which lack of faith in them I would think impious, but I suppose I should let them off given what follows: “But this ‘infant’ mentioned by Macrobius, is Antipater, the adult son of Herod, who, by command of the dying king, was decapitated for having conspired against the life of his father.”

The verses mean something like this: “In regard to the general command of the king, not even the king’s own child is safe from the slaughter. This news moved Augustus to laughter and the gentle king worthily sported about the ungentle: Unhappy the son of Herod! Better to be the pig of such a king!”

Notice that the lines are in rhymed couplets, rhyme not having been used classically in Latin poetry, but increasingly in the medieval period.

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