In contemporary English, "hermaphrodite" is used in biology but has acquired pejorative connotations in referring to people born with physical characteristics of both sexes (see intersex); in antiquity, however, the figure of the so-called hermaphrodite was a primary focus of questions pertaining to gender identity. The hermaphrodite represented a "violation of social boundaries, especially those as fundamental to daily life as male and female". In traditional Roman religion, a hermaphroditic birth was a kind of "prodigium", an occurrence that signalled a disturbance of the "pax deorum", Rome's treaty with the gods, as Diodorus indicated. Livy records an incident during the Second Punic War when the discovery of a four-year-old hermaphrodite prompted an elaborate series of expiations: on the advice of the "haruspices", the child was enclosed in a chest, carried out to sea, and allowed to drown. Other rituals followed. A hermaphrodite found in 133 BC was drowned in the local river; committing the hermaphroditic person to the element of water seems to have been the prescribed way to repair the perceived violation of the natural order.