In Forum Post 3444.1, Ling Ouyang calls attention to the false impression that the connection between Caesarean section and the name Caesar had anything to do with the birth of Julius Caesar.

Ling Ouyang writes:

Just thought this may be of interest. When Stefan Weinstock in his Divus Julius (Oxford: Oxford Univ Press, 1971) discusses the connection between the Julian clan and Apollo, said this:

The Iulii, it was said, worshipped Apollo because he, as the god of medicine, protected those who were born by the 'Caesarian' operation, like that member of their family who subsequently assumed the name Caesar.* The aetiology is irrelevant, but not its date: it cannot be earlier than the middle of the third century B.C., the probable date of the first Iulius who called himself Caesar, that is, Sex. Iulius Caesar (pr. 208).

Footnote: *[URL = <http://preview.tinyurl.com/2wmhdu>]Serv. Aen. 10.316: 'Caesarum etiam familia ideo sacra retinebat Apollinis, quia qui primus de eorum familia fuit, exsecto matris ventre natus est, unde etiam Caesar dictus est'; on other interpretations of the name see [etc.]

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