6. There is a difference between
a ‘portent’ (portentum) and ‘an unnatural being’ (portentuosus).
Portents are beings of transformed appearance,
as, for instance, is said to have happened when in
Umbria a woman gave birth to a serpent. Whence Lucan
says (Civil War 1.563):
And the child terrified its own mother.
But an unnatural being strictly speaking takes the form of
a slight mutation, as for instance in the case of someone
born with six fingers.
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