Book 1
Imperial Claudius Aelianus Greekpreface. Preface
That a human being should be wise and just, most provident for his own children, take fitting care of those who gave him birth, seek out his own nourishment and guard against plots, and possess all the other gifts of nature that belong to him — this is perhaps nothing remarkable; for man has been given a share of reason, the most precious thing of all, and has been thought worthy of intelligence, which is most self-sufficient and most useful, and he knows how to revere and worship the gods. But that the irrational animals too should share, by their nature, in some excellence, and have allotted to them many of the advantages of mankind, and wonderful ones at that — this is already a great thing. And to know without negligence the properties that belong to each of them severally, and how the affairs of the other animals have been studied with no less care than those of men, would be the mark of an educated mind that has learned much. That others before me have taken pains over these matters, I well know; but having gathered together, as far as I could, all that I might, and clothed it in my usual style, I am confident that I have produced a treasure not unworthy of effort. And if this seems useful to anyone else, let him make use of it; but to whomever it does not, let him leave it to its father to cherish and tend. For not all things are fine to all men, nor do all things seem to all worth study. And if I have come after many of the first and wise men, let not the lateness of my date be reckoned a loss to my reputation, if I too offer some learning worthy of effort, both by the more uncommon discoveries and by the manner of expression.
There is a certain island called Diomedeia, and it holds many herons. These, they say, neither harm the barbarians nor approach them; but if a Greek puts in as a stranger, they come up to him by some divine gift, spreading their wings like hands held out in welcome and embrace. And when the Greeks touch them they do not shrink away, but keep still and endure it, and when the men sit down they fly into their laps, as though invited as guests to a feast. These birds are said to be the companions of Diomedes, who shared with him in the campaign against Ilium; and afterwards, when they changed their former nature into the form of birds, they still even now preserve their character as Greeks and lovers of Greece.
The parrot-wrasse feeds on sea-grasses and seaweed; but it is the most lustful of all fish, and its insatiable desire for the female is the cause of its capture. The clever fishermen, knowing this about it, attack it in the following way. When they have caught a female, they tie a fine cord of broom-fibre to the very tip of its mouth and drag the living fish through the sea; for they know the lairs of these fish, their haunts, and where they gather in shoals. They make for the purpose a lead weight, heavy and round in shape, three fingers long, fastened at each end with a rush-cord, and this drags the captured female along. And one of the men in the boat carries a basket-trap with a wide mouth, turned toward the captured wrasse, and the basket is weighted gently with a measured stone. So the males, like young men who have caught sight of a beautiful bride, are driven mad and rush after her, each striving to outstrip the others, to come close and to touch her, like men sick with love hunting after a kiss or a caress or some other amorous theft. The man who leads the female along quietly and sparingly, lying in wait and laying his ambush straight at the trap, leads, you might say, the lovers along with their beloved. And when they have come up to the trap, the fisherman lets the lead drop inside; and the female, falling in with the cord, drags the male down too. So they have swum together into capture, and the wrasses pay this penalty for the impulse of their desire.
The grey mullet is one of the fishes that live in the marshes, and it is believed to master its belly and to live very temperately. For it does not attack any living creature, but is by nature at peace with all the fishes; whatever it finds lying dead, that becomes its dinner. And it does not touch the thing before it has stirred it with its tail; if it stays still, the mullet takes it for food, but if it moves, the mullet retreats.
Fishes avenge one another like faithful men and just comrades in arms — the fish which the experts in sea-fishing like to call the anthias, creatures of the open sea by their character. Whenever any of these perceive that one of their fellows has been caught, they swim up most swiftly, then set their backs against him, and falling upon him and pushing with all their strength they prevent his being drawn up. The parrot-wrasses too are good defenders of their own shoal. They come up and
strive to bite through the line, so as to save the one that has been taken; and often, having cut it through, they have saved their fellow and set him free, asking no ransom for his life. But often they have failed, and missed their aim; yet they did their own part most readily and eagerly. They say that a wrasse has even fallen into a basket-trap and thrust out its tail, and those swimming free outside have bitten it and led their comrade out. And if the mouth of the trap was open, one of them held out its tail to him outside, and he, gaping wide, followed it. These creatures do such things, O men, not having learned to love, but being so by nature. The fish called the nibbler is accused by its nature, its name, and now also by its mouth: it has teeth set close together and many, and is very strong at cutting through whatever falls in its way. So, when caught by a hook, alone of all fish it does not draw itself backward, but presses forward in its eagerness to bite through the line. The fishermen counter this with a contrivance: they have the shanks of their hooks forged long. But the fish — for it is also good at leaping — has often leapt even above these and, cutting the line that holds it, has swum back to the haunts of the fishes. This fish, taking the shoal that feeds with it, goes together with them straight at the dolphins; and when one dolphin somehow becomes separated, they surround it and then set on the beast vigorously, for they know that it is not indifferent to their bites. They cling to it most firmly, and the dolphin leaps up and turns somersaults, and shows by its writhing that it is tormented with pain; for they fasten on with a tenacious grip and are lifted up as it leaps. And while it strives to shake them off and beat them away, they do not let go but eat it alive. Then, whatever part each one has bitten off, with that he makes off; and the dolphin gladly swims away, having feasted these uninvited guests, as one might say, with its own pain.
I hear that a dog fell in love with Glauce the lyre-player; others say it was not a dog but a ram, and others a goose. And in Soli in Cilicia a dog fell in love with a boy named Xenophon; and at Sparta a jackdaw sickened with love for the beauty of another handsome youth.
They say that the jackal is a most man-loving creature. When it meets a man anywhere, it turns aside out of his way, as though out of respect; but when it sees him being wronged by some other beast, then it comes to his defence.
A certain Nicias, one of a hunting party, was unexpectedly carried off course and fell into a charcoal-burners' kiln; and the dogs that were with him, seeing this, did not leave him, but at first whined and howled about the kiln; in the end they did all but lead the passers-by to the disaster, taking hold of their cloaks gently and sparingly with their teeth and dragging them, as though the dogs were calling the men to help their master. And so one man, seeing what they did, suspected what had happened, and followed and found Nicias burned to death in the kiln, inferring from the remains what had occurred.
The drone that is bred among the bees hides by day in the honeycombs, but by night, when it has watched for the bees to fall asleep, it visits their work and damages the hives. When the bees have observed this, most of them sleep, being worn out, but a few of them lie in wait. Then, when they have caught the thief, they strike him sparingly and thrust him out and cast him forth into exile. But even so he is not disciplined; for he is by nature both idle and greedy — two evils. So he hides himself outside the combs, and then, when the bees set out
to their pastures, he forces his way in and does his own work, gorging himself and ravaging the bees' sweet treasure. And they, returning from the pasture, when they come upon him, no longer strike him sparingly nor merely enough to put him to flight, but falling on him most violently they crush the robber; and undergoing no light penalty, he pays with his life for his gluttony and greed. The bee-keepers say this, and they convince me. There are also among the bees certain idle bees, yet not drone-like in their ways; for these do not damage the combs nor plot against the honey, but feed from the flowers, themselves flying about and grazing with the others. And even if they are unskilled in the work and the gathering of the honey, still they are not wholly idle. For some of them bring water to the king and to the elder bees, those that attend the king and have been set apart as his bodyguard; others have this task, to carry outside the bees that are dying — for their combs must be kept clean, and they do not tolerate a dead bee within; and others keep watch by night, like guards keeping a small city, the building of the combs.
The age of bees one might discern in the following way. Those a year old are smooth and resemble oil in colour; the older ones become rough both to see and to touch, and appear wrinkled with age; but these are more experienced and more skilful, for time has taught them the wisdom of honey-making. They also have something prophetic, so that they foreknow the coming of rains and frost; and when they reckon that one or both of these will happen, they do not extend their flight to a great distance, but flutter about their hives and, as it were, hover at the doorways. From this the bee-keepers, taking it as an omen, foretell to the farmers the coming onset of winter. Now the bees fear not so much the frost as heavy rain and snow. They often fly against the wind, carrying a small stone in their feet, just so large as is easy for them to carry as they fly; and in a way they devise this as ballast for themselves against the wind that strikes them, so that the breeze may not turn them aside from their course.
Many kinds of fish too have known the strength of love, the god so great that he has not overlooked or despised even those below in the depths of the sea. Among his servants is the grey mullet — not every kind, but the one which those who have studied the kinds and differences of fish call the sharp-snouted. Many of them, I hear, are caught about the Achaean gulf. There are different ways of catching them; but it is chiefly their frenzy for sex that this kind of hunting exposes. A fisherman, having caught a female and tied her to a long reed or a long cord of broom, walks quietly along the shore and drags the fish swimming and struggling beside him; and on his track follows another carrying a net, and this netsman watches carefully where and how the event will fall out. So the female is led along, and however many of the males catch sight of her, like unbridled youths who have ogled some lovely girl running past, they rush after her, maddened with desire for union. Then the man with the net casts it, and often, by the impulse of their lust, he meets with a fine catch of fishes coming on. But the female chosen by the first hunter must be in her prime and well-fleshed, so that more may rush upon her, taking the alluring bait of her beauty; for if she is thin, most of them despise her and go away. But whichever of them is sick with love does not depart, enslaved not, by Zeus, to her beauty, but to the longing for union.
There were also, it seems, fishes good at chastity. The one called the Aetnaean, when it has been paired with its mate, as with a lawful wife, and has obtained its marriage-bed, touches no other; and it needs no contracts to guarantee fidelity, no dowry, nor does the Aetnaean fear a suit for ill-treatment, nor stand in awe of Solon. O noble and venerable laws, which unbridled men are not ashamed to disobey!
The home and haunts of the sea-blackbird are the rocks and the cavernous recesses. Each of these takes many wives and lodges his brides apart, as it were, in chambers in the hollows. And this luxurious way of marriage, and the dividing of his impulse among many, you might call the manner of barbarians who are voluptuous in love, and — if one may jest while being in earnest — the Median and Persian life. It is the most jealous of fishes, both in general and not least when its brides are bearing young to it. And if this is told too wantonly, by a misuse of words, what is done by nature gives us licence for such language. For the females, when already in the throes of labour, keep quiet and remain within, while the male, like a husband, hovers about the doors and watches against plots from outside, fearing for his young. For he seems to love even the offspring not yet born, and with a father's fear,
once caught, he is now afraid, and spends the whole day on guard, tasting nothing, and his anxiety feeds him; but when late evening comes he is released from this constraint, and seeks his food, and does not fail to find it. And each of the females within, whether she is still in labour or already a mother, finds plenty of seaweed in the hollows and about the rocks, which is her dinner. A fisherman cunning at plotting against the sea-blackbird fits a heavy lead to a hook, strings a large prawn on the hook, and lets the bait down. He keeps moving the line, rousing and whetting his quarry toward the food, and the prawn, as it moves, gives some impression that it is about to enter the holes of the blackbird. To him this is most hateful; and so, perceiving it, in the fury of his anger he rushes to destroy his enemy — for he cares nothing then for his belly — and having crushed her, he goes off, judging it of higher worth and more important than food not to let his guard fall asleep. But of the other things that fall in his way, when he is about to eat one, he first crushes it and then leaves it lying; and when he sees it dead, he then feeds on it. The female blackbirds, so long as they see the male standing on guard, as one might say, remain within and keep the appearance of housekeeping; but when he has disappeared, they are at a loss, and despondency leads them out and brings them forth, and there they are caught. What do the poets say to this, who so famously sing to us of Evadne the daughter of Iphis and Alcestis the daughter of Pelias?
The hake is such a father among fishes. He guards strongly the young born from his mate, that they may be safe from plots and unharmed. And as long as they swim about cheerful and free from fear, he does not abandon his watch, but now follows behind, now does not, swimming now on this side, now on that; and if any of his little ones is afraid, he opens his mouth and takes the infant in; then, when the fear has passed, he spits out again the one that fled to him, just as he received it, and the little one swims off once more.
The dogfish, when she has given birth, has her pups swimming with her at once and without delay. And if any of them is afraid, it slips back into the mother through her opening; then, when the fear has passed, it comes forth, as though being born again.
Men marvel at women as exceedingly fond of their children; yet I observe that mothers have gone on living after the death of their sons or daughters, and in time have come to forget their suffering, their grief withering away. But the female dolphin is the fondest of her offspring of all creatures to the very last degree. She bears two; and when a fisherman either wounds her young with his trident or strikes it with a barb — the barb is pierced at its upper end, and a long cord is fastened to it, and the prongs, sinking in, hold fast to the beast — then, so long as the wounded dolphin still has its strength, the hunter slackens the cord, lest by its violence it should break it and he suffer two evils, the dolphin departing with the barb in it and he himself meeting with an empty catch; but when he perceives it grown weary and somewhat enfeebled by the wound, he gently brings his boat alongside and has his prey. The mother does not shrink from what is done, nor draw back in fear, but by an unspeakable instinct she follows in her longing for her child; and bring on as many terrors as you please, she is not dismayed, since she cannot bear to abandon her young while it is amid the slaughter, but one may strike her even from one's hand — so does she come to grips with those who strike, as though to defend it. And by this she is caught along with her young, when she might be saved and depart. But if both her offspring are with her, and she perceives that one has been wounded and is being led off, as I said before, she drives the unhurt one away, lashing it with her tail and biting it with her mouth, and blows a kind of inarticulate snort, as best she can, giving the signal of flight for its safety. And that one departs, but she herself remains until she is taken, and dies together with the one that was caught.
The sea-ox is born in the mud, and from birth it is very small, but from being very small it becomes very large. Its underbelly is white, but its back and face and sides are intensely black; its mouth is small, and you would not see its teeth when its mouth is closed; it is very long and very broad. It feeds on many of the fishes, but most of all it delights to eat human flesh. It is conscious that it has very little strength, and relies on its size alone. And for this reason, when it sees someone either swimming or labouring at his fishing, it raises and arches itself and swims over him, lying heavy above, pressing down and hanging over him as a thing of terror, spreading its whole body over the wretched man like a roof, and preventing him from coming up and breathing. So, when his breath has been cut off, the man, as is likely, dies, and the sea-ox, falling upon him, has for the reward of its patience the dinner it most craves.
Most other song-birds have a fine voice and sing with their tongue, like a man; but the cicadas are most talkative from the loins. They feed on dew, and from dawn until the market-place is full they are silent, but when the sun begins its full strength they let loose their din, industrious choristers, as one might say, singing over the heads of the shepherds and the travellers and the reapers. This love of music nature has given to the males; but the female cicada is voiceless, and seems to keep silent like a modest bride.
Men say that the goddess Ergane invented weaving and spinning; but the spider nature made wise in the art of the loom. And it works with skill, not by imitation, nor does it take its thread from outside, but drawing the threads from its own belly, it makes snares for the light birds, as though spreading out nets. And by the same threads with which it weaves, taken from its belly, it nourishes that same belly, working most industriously, so that not even those of women who are most deft of hand and clever at producing finished thread can be set against it; for it has surpassed even a hair in fineness.
Writers sing of the Babylonians and Chaldaeans as wise in the things of heaven; but the ants, though they neither look up to heaven nor can count the days of the month on their fingers, yet have received from nature a marvellous gift; for on the new day of the month they keep within their own house, not passing over the entrance but staying still.
The home of the sargue-fish is the rocks and caverns, having, however, small clefts, so that the sun's beam may come down and fill these spaces with light; for the sargues delight in light of every kind, and thirst still more for the sun's ray. Many of them dwell in the same place; their abodes and haunts are the shallows of the sea, and they are very glad to be near the land. And somehow they are strongly fond of goats. If, when goats are grazing near the shore, the shadow of one or two appears in the sea, the sargues gladly swim up and leap, as if delighting, and long to touch the goats, jumping out — though otherwise they are not at all good leapers; yet, swimming even beneath the waves, they have a perception of the goats' smell, and from pleasure they hasten to come forth to them. So, since they are sick with love, they are caught by the very things they desire. For a fisherman wraps himself in a goat's skin, flayed together with the very horns; and the hunter, plotting against his prey, takes the sun at his back, then scatters into the sea, beneath which the aforesaid fish dwell, barley-meal soaked in goat-broth. And the sargues, drawn as by some spell by the aforesaid smell, come up and feed on the barley-meal, and are bewitched by the skin. He takes many of them with a strong hook and a line of white flax; and it is fastened not to a reed but to a rod of cornel-wood, for the one that is caught must be pulled up most easily, lest it alarm the others. They are also caught by hand, if one gently draws down, from the head to the lower part, the spines which they raise to defend themselves, and then bends and presses them and pulls them out of the rocks into which they thrust themselves to hide.
The viper, twined about the female, mates with her; and she endures her bridegroom and grieves him not at all. But when they are near the end of their union, the bride pays a wicked return of affection to the bridegroom for their intercourse; for fastening on his neck, she bites him through, head and all. And he is dead, but she has a fruitful union and conceives. She bears not eggs but living young, and they are already active according to their own most evil nature. They eat through the maternal womb and come forth at once, avenging their father. What then have
the Orestes and the Alcmaeons to say to this, O my friends the tragedians? The hyena, if you should see it male this year, you will see the same one female next year; and if female now, afterwards male: they share in both kinds of love, and both wed and are wedded, changing their sex every year. So this creature has proved Caeneus and Tiresias to be old tales, not by boasting but by the deeds themselves.
He-goats fight he-goats over the females, as over lovely women, and bulls bulls, and rams fight their rivals over the ewes; and the sea-beetles too are roused over their females. They are found in the places called rough grounds, and they are jealous, and you may see a fierce battle over the females; and the contest is not over many, as with the sargues, but over each one's own mate, as Menelaus' was with Paris over his wife.
The octopus feasts on one food after another; for it is both a fearsome eater and very cunning at laying plots — the reason being that it is the most omnivorous of sea-creatures. And the proof: if ever it meets with no prey, it bites off some of its own tentacles, and having filled its belly, it remedies the scarcity of the catch; then it grows again what it lacks, as though nature prepared for it in its hunger a ready dinner.
A horse cast out becomes the breeding-place of wasps. For it rots, and from its marrow fly out these creatures, the winged offspring of the swiftest of animals — wasps from a horse.
The owl is a wily creature, like the witches. And first it captures the fowlers who have caught it. So they carry it about like a darling, or, by Zeus, like an amulet, on their shoulders. By night it keeps watch for them and with its voice, as though by some incantation
of wily and bewitching enchantment scattered abroad, it draws the birds and makes them settle near it; and even by day it offers other lures to the birds, mimicking and at one time and another twisting its face into a different shape, by which all the birds are charmed and stay rooted, held by a very strong fear at the grimaces it makes. The sea-bass is overcome by the prawn, and would be — to put it with a touch of jest — the most gluttonous gourmet of fishes. So, being marsh-dwellers themselves, the prawns ambush the marsh-bass. For there are three kinds of them: some are such as I said before, others come from seaweed, and the third are rock-prawns. Being unable to defend themselves against the bass, they choose to die along with him. And I will not hesitate to tell their stratagem. When they perceive that they are being seized, the projecting part of the head — it resembles the ram of a trireme and is very sharp, and besides has notches like a saw — this the noble creatures cleverly turn round, and they leap and spring up lightly and nimbly. The bass gapes wide, and the parts of its throat are soft. So while it thinks, having seized the prawn now worn out, that it will have a dinner, the prawn in the freedom and open space leaps about, dancing, as one might say, all over its throat; then it fixes its spines into the wretched hunter, ulcerates his inner parts, and they, swelling up, pour out much blood and choke him; and so, in the strangest of ways, having killed him, it is destroyed.
Bears and wolves and leopards and lions are confident in the sharpness of their claws and the cutting edge of their teeth; but the porcupine, I hear, has neither of these, yet is not left destitute of defensive weapons by nature. For against those who come to harm it, it shoots out the hairs on its back like arrows, and often hits the mark accurately, bristling its back; and those hairs leap forth as though shot from some bowstring.
A terrible evil and a savage disease is enmity and inborn hatred, if indeed it is fixed even in the irrational creatures and is hard for them too to wash out. The moray hates the octopus, the octopus is at war with the crayfish, and the crayfish is most hostile to the moray. For the moray cuts through the octopus's tentacles with the sharpness of its teeth, and then, slipping even into its belly, does the same things, and reasonably; for she is a swimmer, while the octopus is like a crawling thing; and even if it changes its colour to match the rocks, this stratagem seems to profit it not at all, for she is clever at seeing through the creature's trick. The crayfish, however — they seize and crush to death, and when they have made corpses of them, they suck out their flesh. But the crayfish, raising up its own horns and growing angry with them, challenges the moray. So she, not considering the spikes which the crayfish holds out as a defence, bites at them; but he, stretching out his claws like hands, holds her firmly on either side of the neck and does not let go. And she frets and coils herself and presses against the points of the shell, which, fixing into her, numb her and make her give up; and at last she lies slackened, and he makes the adversary his dinner.
The open sea feeds the moray-fish. When the net surrounds her, she swims about and seeks very cleverly either a wide mesh or a tear in the net; and finding one of these and slipping through, she swims free again. And if one of them chances on this good fortune, all the rest of the same kind that have been caught with her get out by her escape, as though they had taken a path from a guide.
When the good hunters of the cuttlefish are about to take her, she, perceiving it, releases her own dark juice and pours it over herself, and conceals and hides herself entirely, and steals away the fisherman's sight; and she is before his eyes, but he does not see her. Some such thing Poseidon did when, casting a cloud about Aeneas, he deceived Achilles, as Homer says.
Even the irrational animals guard against the eyes of the envious and of sorcerers, by some secret and wonderful instinct. I hear, at any rate, that as a defence against the evil eye the wood-pigeons bite off little sprigs of laurel and then put them in their nests for the protection of their nestlings; the kites use buckthorn, the hawks sow-thistle, the turtle-doves the fruit of the iris, the ravens chaste-tree, the hoopoes maidenhair — which some call beautiful-hair — the crow vervain, the hen-harrier ivy, the heron crab, the partridge a tuft of reed, and the thrushes a spray of myrtle. The lark too sets dog's-tooth grass before it, and the eagles the stone which from them is called eagle-stone. This stone is said to be good also for pregnant women, being an enemy to miscarriages.
The fish called the torpedo, whatever it touches, gives it its own name and makes it numb. The ship-holder holds back ships, and from what it does we call it so. When the halcyon is breeding the seas stand still, and the winds keep peace and friendship. It breeds in the middle of winter, and yet the calm of the air gives fine weather, and at that season we have what we call halcyon days. A horse by chance treads on a wolf's track, and a numbness seizes it. And if you throw a wolf's knuckle-bone under a four-horse team as it runs, it will stand as though fixed, the horses having trodden on the knuckle-bone. The lion sets the leaves of the holm-oak on his footprint, and goes numb; and the wolf too, if he only comes near the leaves of the squill. For this reason the foxes throw these into the lairs of wolves, and reasonably; for because of the wolves' plots against them they regard them as their bitterest enemies.
The storks defend themselves very cleverly against the bats that ruin their eggs; for the bats, by merely touching them, make them addled and barren. So the remedy against these is this: they bring plane-tree leaves to their nests; and when the bats come near them they grow numb and become unable to do harm. Nature gave the swallows too such a gift. The cockroaches damage their eggs as well. So the mothers set a sprig of celery before their young, and to the cockroaches from then on it is impassable. And if one casts rue upon octopuses, they remain motionless, as a certain account says. And if you strike a serpent with a reed, after the first blow it keeps still and, fettered by numbness, lies quiet; but if you give it a second or third blow, you have revived it. And the moray, struck once with a fennel-stalk, keeps still; but if more often, it is kindled to rage. The fishermen say that octopuses too come out onto the land when a spray of olive lies on the shore. And the fat of the elephant was, it seems, an antidote against all beasts: if one were to smear oneself with it and go to grips, even naked, with the fiercest creatures, he would come off unharmed.
The elephant dreads a horned ram and the squeal of a pig. So it was, they say, that the Romans routed the elephants that were with Pyrrhus the Epirote, and the victory fell brilliantly to the Romans. By a beautiful woman this creature is overcome and loses its rage, deafened by her beauty. And they say that in the Egyptian city of Alexandria an elephant was a rival in love, against Aristophanes of Byzantium, for a woman who plaited garlands. The same creature loves every sweet scent, being charmed by the smell of perfumes and flowers. Whoever, being a thief or a robber, wishes to silence very savage dogs and put them to flight, takes a brand from a man's funeral pyre and goes to grips with them, they say, and the dogs are afraid. I have also heard this account: if one shears a sheep that has been mauled by a wolf, works the wool, and makes a tunic of it, he troubles the wearer; for it produces itching, as the story goes. And if one wishes to make strife and quarrelling at a banquet, he casts into the wine a stone that has been bitten by a dog and so troubles the drinkers, driving them mad. And if one sprinkles perfume on beetles, those evil-smelling creatures, they cannot bear the fragrance but die. So they say that tanners too, reared in foul air, loathe perfume. The Egyptians say also that all serpents fear the feathers of ibises.
Those who are skilled in the snares for turtle-doves hunt them, and they very rarely fail in the attempt, in the following way. They stand dancing and singing most musically; and the doves, charmed by the sound and bewitched by the sight of the dancing, come nearer. And the men retire quietly and step by step to where the trap is set for the poor creatures, the spread nets; then they fall into them and are caught, taken first by dance and song.
The fish called the orcynus, a whale-like fish, is not without cunning for what is most to its own advantage, having received this as a gift by nature, not by art. So when it is pierced by the hook, it dives down into the deep and pushes and dashes itself against the bottom, and strikes its mouth, wishing to throw out the hook; and if this is impossible, it widens the wound and spits out what pains it and leaps free. But often it fails in the attempt, and the hunter, drawing it up against its will, has his catch.
The blacktail is the most cowardly of fishes, and has the fishermen as witnesses of its cowardice. They are not taken in basket-traps, nor do they go near them; but if a seine ever surrounds them, they are caught unawares. And when the sea is calm and smooth, they rest somewhere below by the rocks or the seaweed, and put up every defence they can, hiding their body. But when it is stormy, seeing the other fishes dive into the deep from the assault of the waves, they take courage, and draw near the land, and swim up to the rocks, and reckon the foam swimming over them to be sufficient cover, hiding and shading them. And they understand most secretly that in such weather, by day or by night, the sea is impassable for the fishermen, the sea being savage and the waves rising high and fearful. They have food too in the storm, the surge tearing some things from the rocks and dragging others from the land; and the blacktails feed on the dirtier things, such as no other fish would readily eat unless very hard pressed by hunger. In calm they hover over the bare sand alone, and feed from there. How they are caught, another shall tell.
The eagle is the keenest-sighted of birds. Homer too knows this of it and bears witness in the Patrocleia, likening Menelaus to the bird when he sought out Antilochus to send him as a messenger to Achilles — a bitter message, but a necessary one, concerning the fate of his comrade, whom he had sent out but had not received back, though that man longed for it. And the eagle is said to be useful not only to itself but also good for men's eyes. If anyone, dissolving its gall in Attic honey, anoints his dimming eyes, he will see, and will have very keen eyes for seeing.
The nightingale is the clearest-voiced and most musical of birds, and sings over the desolate places most sweetly and piercingly of all birds. They say that its flesh is good against sleeplessness. Wretched, then, and terribly ignorant are those who feast on such food; for wretched is the gift of that food — the flight of sleep, the king of both gods and men, as Homer says.
The cries of cranes summon rains, as they say; and the brain has for women some love-charms toward amorous favour, if those who first observed these things are sufficient to bear witness.
If one burns vultures' feathers, as I hear, he will most easily draw serpents out of their holes and dens. The bird the woodpecker is named from what it does. For it has a curved beak, and with this it pecks at the oaks, and there, as into a nest, it puts its young, needing no straws nor any weaving and building from them at all. So if one inserts a stone and blocks the entrance of the aforesaid bird, it, perceiving the plot, brings a herb hostile to the stone; and the stone, as though weighed down and unable to bear it, leaps out, and the dear retreat opens again for the aforesaid bird.
The dentex-fish are not solitary, nor do they endure separation and division from one another. They love to gather in shoals according to age. The younger swim in troops, the more mature again in common; and, as the saying goes, age delights age, the present delighting the present, as comrades and friends from the same pursuits and ways of life. And they contrive thus against the hunters. When a fisherman lets down the bait for them, they all go round and form a circle and look at one another, each giving, as it were, a signal to each, neither to approach nor to touch the bait let down. And those drawn up in this array keep still; but from another shoal a dentex comes and swallows the hook, taking capture as the reward of his solitude. And he is drawn up, and the others now take courage, thinking they will not be caught, and so, growing contemptuous, they are caught.
The raven is parched through the summer, punished by thirst, and cries out, calling its punishment to witness, as they say. And they give this reason. Apollo, whose servant it was, sent it to fetch water; but it came upon a deep field of corn, still green, and waited until the corn should grow dry, wishing to nibble at the grain, and so disregarded the command. And for this, in the driest season, it pays the penalty, thirsting. This seems a tale, but let it be told out of reverence for the god.
The raven they say is a sacred bird, and they say it is the attendant of Apollo. For this reason they agree that it is good for prophetic signs, and those who understand the seats and cries and flights of birds, whether on the left hand or the right, take omens from its call. I hear besides that ravens' eggs dye the hair black. And whoever would dye his own hair must keep oil in his mouth with his lips closed; otherwise his teeth too are blackened along with the hair, and hard to wash and hard to cleanse.
The bee-eater, they say, flies contrary to all other birds; for the rest dart forward and toward what is before their eyes, but it flies backward. And I am moved to marvel at the nature of this remarkable, strange, and unusual movement with which that creature darts.
The moray, when she is filled with amorous impulse, comes forth onto the land and longs for the company of a bridegroom, and a very wicked one; for she goes to the lair of a viper, and the two embrace. They say also that the viper, in its frenzy, comes likewise to the sea for union; and as a reveller knocks at the door with his pipe, so that one too, hissing, summons his beloved, and she comes forth — nature bringing together into a like desire and the same bed creatures whose dwellings are apart.
The marrow of a dead man's spine, they say, as it rots, turns into a serpent; and the beast comes forth, and the fiercest thing crawls out of the gentlest; and the remains of the good and noble are at rest, and have peace as their reward, just as the soul of such men has the things sung and hymned by the wise; but the spines of wicked men bring forth such creatures even after life. Either, then, the whole thing is a tale, or, if it is truly believed, the corpse of a wicked man, as I judge, has earned, as the reward of his character, to become the father of a serpent.
The swallow signals the coming of the best season. And it is fond of man, and rejoices to share a roof with this creature, and comes uninvited, and when it is its pleasure and all is well, it departs. And men receive it according to the law of Homeric hospitality, which bids us both cherish the one present and send off the one who wishes to go.
The goat has an advantage in the intake of breath, as the herdsmen's accounts say. For it breathes both through its ears and through its nostrils, and is the most perceptive of cloven-hoofed animals. The reason I do not know how to state; what I do know, I have stated. And if the goat too is a work of Prometheus, what he meant by making it so, I leave to him to know.
They say that against the bite of the viper and of the other serpent there are antidote-drugs that do not fail. Some of these, I hear, are draughts, others ointments; and incantations too have soothed the venom of one anointed. But the bite of the asp alone, I hear, is incurable and beyond help. And the creature deserves to be hated for its fortune in evil. Yet there is a beast more abominable and more unguarded against than even this — the sorceress woman, such as we hear Medea and Circe to have been; for the venoms of the asps are the work of a bite, but theirs kill even by mere touch, they say.
There are three kinds of sea-dogs. Some of them are very great in size, and would be reckoned among the strongest of the whales; the remaining two kinds are by nature mud-dwellers, and reach a cubit in size. Of these, the spotted ones would be called dogfish, and you would not be wrong to name the rest spurdogs. The mottled ones are softer in their skin and broader in the head; the others, hard in skin and with a head running to a point, have a colour inclining to white. They have spines growing on them, one on the ridge, as one might say, the other on the tail; and the spines are hard and unyielding, and carry a kind of venom. Each of these two tribes of small dogs is caught from the mud and slime, and it is not amiss to tell the manner of the catch. They let down as bait a white fish slit along the back. When one is caught and falls upon the hook, all the rest that see it leap upon it and follow it as it is drawn up from below, not held back even up to the ship, so that one might guess they do this out of jealousy, as though it had stolen from somewhere for itself alone some of the food; and several of them have often leapt into the ship itself, and been caught of their own will.
The sting of the sea-stingray is irresistible. For it has stung and killed on the instant, and even those of the fishermen who are clever at sea-matters shudder at this weapon of hers; for neither will another heal the wound nor will she who made it, since, as is likely, this was given to the Pelian ash alone.
The horned viper is a slender creature. It is a serpent, and has two horns above its forehead, and the horns resemble those of the snail, though they are not soft as those are. So to the rest of the Libyans they are hostile; but they have a treaty with the people called the Psylli, who neither feel it themselves when bitten, and most easily heal those who have met with such a misfortune. And the manner is this: if, before the whole body has swelled, one of the men from there comes, summoned or by chance, then rinses out his mouth with water and washes his hands with other water, and gives both to the bitten man to drink, that man is restored, and is thenceforth free of all harm. There runs about also a Libyan story which says that a Psyllus suspected and hated his own wife as an adulteress, and indeed suspected the infant born of her as a bastard and counterfeit to his own race. So he made, they say, a most decisive test. Filling a chest with horned vipers, he threw in the infant, as a craftsman tests gold by fire, exposing the child by this placing. And the vipers at once rose up and grew savage and threatened their inborn malice; but when the child touched them, they withered, and from this the Libyan knew that he was the father not of a bastard but of a true-born child. This race is said also to be a match for the other venomous creatures and for the venomous spiders. And if the Libyans tell marvels of these things, let them know that they deceive not me but themselves.
The plotters and enemies of bees would be these: the so-called titmice and their nestlings, the wasps, the swallows, the serpents, the venomous spiders, and the shrew-mice. The bees fear these; so the bee-keepers drive them off from them either by fumigating with fleabane or by setting up, or strewing, poppy still green before the hives. These are hostile to the others mentioned; but the capture of wasps would be this. One must hang a basket-trap before the wasps' nest and put in it a thin sprat or a little sprat-fish and with these an iops or a chalcis; and the wasps, drawn by their inborn gluttony, the bait summoning them, fall in in throngs, and when the trap has surrounded them they can no longer fly back out. The lizards too plot against the bees, and the land-crocodiles; and against these the following destruction has been contrived. Steeping barley-meal in hellebore, or pouring spurge-juice over it, or scattering it with mallow-juice, they spread the barley-meal before the hives; which brings destruction to the aforesaid creatures when they have tasted it. And by casting mullein-leaves or nuts into the pond, the master of the bees most easily destroys the tadpoles. The venomous spiders are destroyed by night, when a burning lamp is set before the hives and vessels filled with oil are placed beneath the lamp; and they, flying toward the light, fall into the oil and perish; otherwise they could not easily be caught. The titmice, having tasted barley-meal soaked in wine, grow heavy-headed, then fall, and lying there flutter, and are ridiculous to capture, eager to fly up but unable even to stand at all. But the swallow, out of reverence for its music, they do not kill, though they might easily do so; it is enough for them to prevent the swallow from building its nest near the hives. And the bees, it seems, loathe all foul smell and perfume alike, neither enduring the ill-smelling nor welcoming the affected sweetness of fragrance, like decent and modest girls, abhorring the one and despising the other.
Cyrus the elder, as they say, prided himself greatly on his palaces in Persepolis, which he himself built, and Darius on the construction of the buildings at Susa; for he too made those famous works at Susa. And Cyrus the second, in Lydia, planted a garden with his own royal hands, in those delicate tunics and amid those delightful and most precious stones, and prided himself on this both before others of the Greeks and especially before Lysander the Lacedaemonian, when Lysander came to Cyrus in Lydia. And of these things the writers sing; but the buildings of the bees, being far wiser and more skilful, of these they took no account at all. For those men did what they did to the hurt of many; but nothing was more gracious than the bees, since nothing was wiser. For first they make the chambers of the kings, and these have spaciousness and are higher; and they throw a fence about them, to be, as it were, a wall and enclosure, dignifying by this too the royal dwelling. They divide themselves into three, and so also their dwellings into as many. The oldest live next to the court of the kings, the youngest dwell after these, and those in the bloom and prime of youth outside these, so that the oldest are the guards of the kings, and the young ones a fence for the youngest.
One account says that the kings of these bees are without stings; but another says that very strong stings have grown on them, sharpened most valiantly, yet that they never use them either on a man or on the bees, but that the fear of them is merely feigned; for it is not lawful that the ruler and overseer of so many should do evil. And the experts in these matters agree that the other bees, in the sight of their own rulers, bend down their stings, as though withdrawing from their power and yielding it. And one might be astonished at either trait in those kings; for if they have nothing wherewith to do wrong, this is a great thing; but if, when they might do wrong, they do not, this is by far the better.