or HARPAGIUS, among the ancients, a person who died in the cradle, at least in early youth. The word is formed from the Greek ἀρπάγιον, I snatch.—The Romans made no funerals for their harpagi. They neither burnt their bodies, nor made tombs, monuments, or epitaphs for them; which occasioned Juvenal to say,

—Terra celerior infans Et minor igne regi.

In after times it became the custom to burn such as had lived to the age of 40 days, and had eat any teeth; and these they called ἀρπαγίται, or ἀρπαγίταις, q. d. rapiti, ravished. The usage seems to have been borrowed from the Greeks; among whom, Eustathius assures us, it was the custom never to bury their children either by night or full day, but at the first appearance of the morning; and that they did not call their departure by the name of death, but by a softer appellation, ἀρπαγή, ἀρπάγη, importing that they were ravished by Aurora, or taken away to her embraces.