Book 3

With a man of Mauretania the lion shares the road and drinks the water of the same spring. And I hear that the lions even visit the houses of the Mauretanians, when they meet with no game and a strong hunger seizes them. And if the man is present, he wards the lion off and drives it back, chasing it with all his might; but if he is away and only the woman is left, she holds it from advancing with reproachful words and brings it to order, admonishing it to master itself and not to flame up with hunger. And the lion understands the Mauretanian speech, and the sense of the woman's rebuke to the beast is, as they say, of this kind: "Are you not ashamed, being a lion, the king of the animals, to come to my hut and to need a woman to be fed, and, like a man maimed in body, to look to a woman's hands, that by her pity and mercy you may obtain what you need? You, who ought to hasten to the mountain haunts after deer and antelopes and all the rest that is the lion's glorious dinner. Yet you are content to be fed on scraps like a wretched little dog." And while she chants such things, the lion, as though stricken in soul and filled with shame, quietly and with downcast eyes departs, overcome by what is just. And if horses and dogs, through being reared with us, understand and cower when men threaten, I should not wonder that the Mauretanians, being reared and brought up together with lions, are understood by the very lions. For they testify of their own infants that they think the lions' cubs worthy of the same and like fare, of one bed and one roof; and that from this the beasts understand the aforesaid speech is neither incredible nor strange.

About the Libyan mare I hear the Libyans say such things. They are the swiftest of horses, and either feel weariness little or not at all. They are lean and not well-fleshed, yet fit also to endure their master's neglect. For their masters give them no tending — neither stroking them, nor making a rolling-place, nor cleaning out their hooves, nor combing their coats, nor plaiting their manes, nor washing them when weary — but as soon as they have finished the appointed course, they dismount and turn them loose to graze. And the Libyans are lean and squalid, and on such horses they ride. But the Medes are stately and luxurious, and so too are their horses. You would say that they live softly along with their masters, both in the size of their body and in their beauty, and now too in their finery and the tending from without. These same things come to my mind too about dogs. The Cretan hound is light and good at leaping and bred to mountain-ranging; and indeed the Cretans show themselves to be such men, as the report sings. The most spirited of dogs is the Molossian, since the men too are most spirited. And the Carmanian man and his dog are both most savage and unbendingly fierce, they say.

These too, it seems, were peculiarities of the nature of animals. Ctesias says that neither a wild nor a tame pig is found among the Indians, and he says somewhere that their sheep have tails a cubit broad.

The Indian ants that guard the gold

would not cross the river called Campylinus. And the Issedones who dwell with these ants are so called, and are so. A tortoise that has eaten a serpent and then bitten off some marjoram is freed from the harm which would otherwise have destroyed it utterly. And the dove I hear men say is the most chaste of birds and most restrained in love; for they are never torn from one another, neither the female, unless by some chance she is bereft of her mate, nor the male, unless he is widowed. But partridges are without self-control in love; and so they destroy the eggs that are laid, that the females may not, by rearing their young, bring a distraction from intercourse with them.

Wolves swimming a river, that they may not be violently overturned by the rush of the stream, nature, devising a peculiar ballast for them, has taught a salvation easy out of difficult straits. Biting one another's tails, they then resist the current, and so swim across painlessly and safely.

To she-asses nature did not assign braying, they say. But the same nature granted that dogs are made voiceless by hyenas. Sweet scent and perfume are causes of death to vultures. To swans hemlock is destruction. And how the horse fears the camel both Cyrus and Croesus learned, as they say.

When horses' foals are left by their mothers before their rearing, like orphans, the other mares rear them together with their own young, taking pity on them.

Crows are most faithful to one another, and when they come together into partnership they are exceedingly fond of each other, and one would not see these creatures mating loosely and at random. And those who are exact about these matters say that if one of them dies, the other remains widowed. And I hear that the ancients in their marriages, after

the wedding-song, used to sing the crow, giving this as a token of concord to those who come together for the begetting of children. But those who watch the seats and flights of birds say it is an ill omen for a single crow to answer. And since the owl is its enemy, and by night plots against the crow's eggs, the crow by day does this same thing to the owl, knowing that the owl's sight is then weak. The land-hedgehog nature has made not unwise nor unlearned in storing up for use. For since it needs food for the whole year, but not every season gives the fruits in season, it rolls itself, they say, in the drying-floors, and the dried figs that get stuck on it — many fix themselves on its spines — it quietly carries off, and having laid them up in store keeps them, and can take from its den, at a time when it is not possible to procure them from outside.

Indeed even the fiercest of animals are at peace and at truce with those that can help them, their inborn malice being loosed for the sake of need. The crocodile, for instance, swims and at the same time gapes. So the leeches fall upon it and trouble it. Knowing this, it needs a physician, the plover; for when it has become full of them, it comes forth to the bank and gapes toward the sunbeam. Then the plover, inserting its beak, draws out the said leeches, and the crocodile, being helped, endures and keeps still. And the one has the leeches for its dinner, the other is benefited, and reckons it the plover's wage that it does it no harm.

The Thessalians and the Illyrians and the Lemnians count jackdaws benefactors, and have voted them public maintenance, since the jackdaws destroy and ruin the eggs and the offspring of the locusts, which damage the crops of the aforesaid peoples. So the clouds of locusts are greatly diminished, and the fruits in season remain unharmed for the aforesaid peoples.

Cranes are born in Thrace, which is the most wintry of regions and the most frosty of those I hear of. So they love the land in which they were born, but they love themselves too, and assign part to their ancestral haunts and part to their own safety. For in the summer they stay in their place, but when autumn is already half over they depart to Egypt and Libya and Ethiopia, as though they knew the circuit of the earth and the natures of climates and the differences of seasons. And having passed a spring-like winter, again, when the air begins to be calm and peaceful, they turn back. They make as leaders of the flight those already experienced in the journey; and these would naturally be the elder ones. And to bring up the rear they appoint birds of like age; and the young are stationed in the middle of them. Having watched for a wind favourable and friendly to them and flowing behind, using it as an escort and one that thrusts them forward, they then form the figure of their flight into an acute-angled triangle, so that, striking the air, they may cleave it most easily, and they hold to their course. So do cranes summer and winter. But men have thought the wisdom of the king of the Persians wonderful in his knowledge of the mixture of climates, singing of Susa and Ecbatana and the much-talked-of removals of the Persian to this place and that. And when the cranes see an eagle coming on, forming a circle and gathering into a hollow mass they threaten as though to set themselves against it; and it is beaten back, wing and all. And resting their beaks on one another's rumps, they then in a way bind their flight together, and make their toil easy toil for themselves, the same birds sparingly resting upon one another. And when, in a long stretch of land, they chance upon a spring, they rest by night and sleep; but three or four keep guard over the rest, and, that they may not let their watch fall asleep, they stand on one leg, while with the lifted foot they hold a stone in their claws very firmly and carefully, so that if ever they should without knowing it slip into sleep, the stone, falling and striking, may force them to throw off slumber. And the stone which a crane swallows to have ballast is a touchstone of gold, when, having as it were come to anchor and put in, it then brings it up again.

A helmsman, seeing in the midst of the open sea cranes turning back and flying the other way, understood that they had given up going forward at the assault of a contrary wind; and becoming, as one might say, a pupil of the birds, he sailed back and saved his ship. And this, having happened first, was handed down to men by these birds as at once a lesson and a teaching.

Doves in the cities herd together with men, and are most gentle, and crowd about their feet; but in desolate places they run away, and do not endure men. For they take courage in their numbers, and know very well that they will suffer nothing harsh. But where there are fowlers and nets and plots against them, they no longer dwell fearlessly, to use what was said of those very birds by Euripides.

When partridges are about to lay, they prepare for themselves out of certain twigs what is called the threshing-floor. It is a hollow plaited thing, very suitable to sit in. And pouring in dust, and making, as it were, a soft bed, and creeping in, then covering themselves above with twigs so as to escape the notice both of the rapacious birds and of the hunters among men, in great peace they lay; then they do not entrust the eggs to the same place, but to another, as though removing house; for they fear lest they be detected. And in their nesting they warm the tender young and keep them warm with their own feathers, wrapping them as in swaddling-clothes with their plumage; they do not wash them, but make them brighter by dusting. And if a partridge sees someone approaching and plotting against both itself and its young, then it rolls itself before the feet of the hunter, and gives him hope of being able to catch it as it tumbles. And he stoops to the prey, while the partridge unrolls itself; and it escapes, and the young get on their way. And when the partridge perceives this, taking courage now it relieves the fowler of his vain occupation by flying up, and leaves the man gaping. Then the mother, being in safety and standing in a good place, calls her young. And they fly to her, recognizing the cry. The partridge, when about to be delivered of her eggs, tries to escape her mate's notice, lest he break the eggs; for being lustful, he does not let the mother have leisure for rearing the young. So unbridled is the race of partridges. When the females have left them and are brooding, the males deliberately kindle one another to anger, and strike and are struck most bitterly; and the one defeated is mounted like a hen, and the victor does this without restraint, until he too, defeated by another, then falls into the same holds.

Euripides says that envy bears an ill name; and this, it seems, dwells also in some of the animals. The gecko, for instance, as Theophrastus says, when it has cast off its old age, turning round then swallows it and makes it disappear; for it seems that the old skin of this creature is a remedy against epilepsy. And the deer too knows that its right horn is good for many things, and indeed buries it and hides it out of grudging that anyone should enjoy so great a benefit. And the mare knows the love-charms she brings forth with her foal; and so, as soon as the young is born, she bites off the bit of flesh on its forehead. Men call it the horse-frenzy. And the sorcerers say that such things provide and kindle certain impulses that draw toward uncontrollable union and an amorous frenzy. So the mare is not willing that men should share in this charm, grudging it as a very great good. Is it not so?

In the Red Sea Leonides of Byzantium says there is a fish, no smaller at all than a full-grown goby; but it has neither eyes nor a mouth in the manner of fish. There are attached to it gills and the shape of a head, as one might guess, yet it is not formed into a clear shape; and below, under its belly, there is impressed a gently hollowed mark, and it sends out the colour of an emerald. This, he says, is its eye and its mouth too. And whoever tastes it has hunted it to his own hurt. And the manner of the destruction: the one who has tasted it swells, then his belly bursts, and the man perishes. And the fish too, when caught, pays its penalty. First, on being out of the wave, it swells; and if anyone touches it, it is inflamed still more. And if one continues handling it, it becomes, by putrefaction, wholly transparent, like a man with dropsy; then at last it bursts. And if one should wish to let it back into the sea while still alive, it floats like a bladder lifted by air. And he says that from this affliction they called it the puffer.

The seal, as I hear, vomits out its own rennet,

that it may not be a cure for those subject to epilepsy. A spiteful creature, then, the seal, indeed by Heaven. The pelicans in the rivers gape round the mussels and then swallow them, and warming them within in the recess of the belly, vomit them up; and the shells have parted by the heat, like those of boiled things, and the birds dig out the flesh and have their dinner. And indeed the gulls too, as Eudemus says, raising the snails on high and lifting them up, dash them most violently against the rocks.

Eudemus says that on Thracian Pangaeum a bear, finding a lion's lair empty of its guard, destroyed the lion's cubs, because they were still small and unable to defend themselves. And when the father and the mother came back from some hunt, and saw their young amid the slaughter, they grieved, as was likely, and rushed at the bear; but it, in fear, ran up into a tree as fast as its feet could carry it, and sat there trying to avoid the plot from them. And when they seemed to come there to avenge themselves on the ravager, then the lioness did not leave the watch, but sat under the trunk lying in wait and looking up with bloodshot eyes, while the lion, distressed and wandering in his grief, roamed in the mountains and met a woodcutter. The man was afraid and dropped his axe, but the lion fawned on the beast and, raising himself, embraced him, as best he could, and brightened the man's face with his tongue. And the man took courage, and the lion, throwing his tail about him, led him on, and would not let him leave the axe behind, but signalled with his foot to take it up. And as the man did not understand, the lion took it with his mouth and held it out to him, and the man followed, and the lion led him to the lair. And the lioness, when she saw him, herself coming up fawned too, and looked piteous, and gazed up at the bear. So the man, perceiving and inferring that these had been wronged in some way by the bear, with all his strength and the work of his hands cut down the tree. And it was overturned, and the bear was brought down; and the beasts tore it to pieces. But the man the lion led back unharmed and unhurt to the place where he had first met him, and restored him to his original woodcutting.

The battle of the Egyptian beasts, the asp and the ichneumon. And the ichneumon comes to the contest against its adversary not without plan nor in panic, but as a man arms himself with full armour, so that creature, rolling itself in the mud and filling itself with what has caked on, seems to have a sufficient and water-tight defence. And if there is a lack of mud, washing itself in water and throwing itself, still wet, into deep sand, from this device drawing a means of defence out of difficult straits, it goes to the battle. And it will keep guard over the tip of its nose, somewhat exposed to the asp's bite, by bending back its tail and stopping the nose up with it. And if the asp succeeds in striking this, it has brought down its antagonist; but if not, it wears out its teeth in vain on the mud, and again the ichneumon, creeping up unexpectedly and seizing it by the neck, throttles

the asp. And the one that strikes first wins. To feed their fathers grown old storks both wish and have made their practice; and no human law bids them do this, but the cause of it is nature. And these same birds love their own offspring too; and the proof: when the full-grown bird is in want of food to set before its still unfledged and tender nestlings in the nest, a scarcity having come upon it by chance, it vomits up its own food of the day before and feeds them. And I hear that herons do the same, and pelicans too. I learn besides that the storks themselves flee together with the cranes and run away from the winter; and when the frosty season is over, when both these and those return to their own homes, each recognizes its own nest, as men recognize their house. And Alexander of Myndus says that when they come to old age, passing to the islands of the Ocean they change their shapes into a human form, and have this as a prize of their piety toward their parents — and besides, if I understand anything, the gods wishing thereby to suggest that at least the race of men there is pious and holy, since it was not possible for such a one to live out his life in the rest of the world under the sun. And it does not seem to me a fable. For with what end in view would Alexander have invented this marvel, gaining nothing at all? And besides, it would not befit a sensible man to set falsehood before truth, not even for the greatest gain, much less when about to fall into holds most profitless concerning such matters.

The swallow, when it has plenty of mud, carries it with its claws and builds up the nest; but if there is a lack, as Aristotle says, it wets itself, and falling into dust mingles it with its feathers, and when the mud has caked on, then scraping it off with its beak it works the building it has in hand. And knowing well that, the nestlings being tender and bare of plumage, they will be hurt and pained if they rest on bare twigs, it perches on the backs of sheep, and tears off some of the wool, and from this strews a soft bed for its young.

The swallow as a mother makes her nestlings just, keeping equality among them through equal feeding; she does not bring one thing for all, since indeed she cannot; but the things she brings are small and few, and she feeds the first hatched first, the second the one after it, and feeds third the one of the third birth, and so proceeds up to the fifth in this manner; for the swallow neither conceives nor bears more. And she herself takes down only so much of the food as she can gain in the nest from what slips by her. And her young see late, as do the pups of dogs; she brings and applies a certain herb, and they look up, and then, having kept still a little, being now able to fly, they leave the nest for pasture. To get possession of this herb men thirst, and have not yet attained their desire.

Hoopoes are the most harsh of birds, and they seem to me, in memory and also in hatred of the former wrongs of mankind toward the race of women, to weave their nests in deserts and on the high crags; and so that men may not come near their young, they smear their nests instead of with mud, casting around human dung, warding off and checking by the stench and foul smell the creature hostile to them. And once this bird, having raised young in a more deserted part of a wall, in a cleft of stone parted by time — so the keeper of the wall, seeing the young within, smeared over the hole with mud. And the hoopoe, returning, when it saw itself shut out, brought a herb and applied it to the mud; and the mud flowed off, and it came to its own young, then went to pasture. So again the same man smeared it over, and the bird with the same herb opened the hole; and a third time the same things were done. Then the guardian of the wall, seeing what was being done, took up the herb and used it, not for the same purpose, but to open up treasures that in no way belonged to him.

The Peloponnese is barren of lions; and Homer, as was likely, perceiving this with an instructed mind, said, when he sang of Artemis hunting there, that she ranges over Taygetus and Erymanthus delighting in boars and swift deer. And since these mountains are empty of lions, very reasonably he did not mention them.

There is a fish born in the Red Sea, and, as far as I know, the natives gave it the name Perseus. And the Greeks call it so, and the Arabs likewise with the Greeks; for they too sing of Perseus as the son of Zeus, and they celebrate the fish as named after him. In size it is like the largest anthias, and to look at it is like a sea-bass; it is slightly hook-nosed, and is variegated with bands likened to gold; the bands begin from the head, slanting, and end at the belly. It is fenced with large and close-set teeth. And it is said to surpass fishes in strength of body and force; nor does it lack daring. Its hunting and catching I have told elsewhere.

The pinna is a sea-creature, and is of the shellfish. It gapes by the parting of the shells that lie about it, and holds out a bit of flesh from itself like a bait to the fish swimming by. And a crab stays with it, reared together and feeding together. So when one of the fish swims up, the crab gently pricks it; and the pinna opens itself wider, and receives within the head of the approaching fish — for it lets it down as if for food — and eats it.

These things too, it seems, were proper for the educated man to know. The cuckoo is most wise and most clever at weaving easy contrivances out of difficult straits. For it is conscious of itself that it cannot brood and hatch, on account of the coldness of the constitution in its body, as they say. So when it lays, it neither weaves a nest itself nor tends the young, but watches for the owners of the nests being away and wandering, and slipping into a stranger's lodging lays its eggs there. And it does not pounce on the nests of all birds, but of the lark, the wood-pigeon, the greenfinch, and the pappus; for it knows these lay eggs like its own. And when the nests are empty, it would not enter; but when there are eggs within, then it mingles in its own. And if those are many, it rolls some out and makes them disappear, and leaves its own, which cannot be discerned and detected because of the likeness. And the aforesaid birds hatch what in no way belongs to them, but those young, as they set firm, being conscious to themselves of their spurious birth, fly off and go to the parent that bore them; for when the feathers have grown about them they are recognized as alien, and are most bitterly maltreated. The cuckoo is seen one season of the year, the best; for at the beginning of spring it appears, until the rising of Sirius, and then withdraws from the sight of the many.

A lion fears a cock. And the basilisk too dreads the same bird, as they say, and trembles on seeing it, and hearing it crow is convulsed and dies. For this reason those who travel through Libya, the nurse of such creatures, in fear of the aforesaid basilisk take with them as a fellow-traveller and companion of the road a cock, which will rid them of so great an evil.

Crete is most hostile both to wolves and to creeping beasts. And I hear Theophrastus saying that on Macedonian Olympus too there are places impassable to wolves. The Cephallenian goats, it seems, do not drink for six months. And the sheep of Budinum you will not see white, as they say, but all black. A difference too and peculiarity of animals would lie in this: some of them are biters and inject poison from their tooth, while those are strikers which, having struck, then likewise inject such an evil.

The Libyan asp, I hear, blinds the sight of one who looks back against its breath; but the other kind does not blind, but kills most easily.

Epirote cows are said to be milked in very great abundance, and Scyrian goats to give the most plentiful milk, as much as no other goats. And some Egyptian goats bear five at a birth, and most bear twins. And the Nile is said to be the cause, providing water most productive of offspring. Whence indeed the herdsmen who are very fond of fine beasts and careful of their own flock bring water from the Nile to their own herds by every possible device, and to the barren ones still more. To Ptolemy the Second, they say, a horn was brought from the Indians, and it held three amphorae. What sort of ox, then, that one was, to have grown so great a horn!

You would never hear one single cry from all partridges, but they are different. And at Athens those beyond the deme of the Corydallians sound one note, and those on this side another. And what the names of these cries are, Theophrastus will tell. But in Boeotia and the Euboea opposite they are of like voice and, as one might say, of like tongue. Wholly voiceless are the frogs in Cyrene, and the swine in Macedonia. And there is a kind of cicada, these too voiceless.

There is, they say, a kind of venomous spider, and they call the spider rhax, either because it is black and truly resembles a grape-berry and somehow looks round too, or for another reason. It is found in Libya, and has small feet; and it has been allotted a mouth in the middle of its belly, and it is very swift to kill.

In Seriphus there are frogs, of which you would not at all hear any utterance; but if you carry them elsewhere, they sound piercing and most harsh. And in Pierus of Thessaly there is a lake, not ever-flowing, but in winter it is formed from the waters that run together into it. So if one throws frogs into it, they keep silent, though they utter their voice elsewhere. And concerning the Seriphian frogs the Seriphians boast that Perseus, coming from his contest against the Gorgon, after going round much land, and being weary, as was likely, rested near the lake and lay down needing sleep. And the frogs cried out and mocked the hero and broke his sleep; and Perseus prayed to his father to silence the frogs. And he listened, and to please his son condemned the frogs of that place to everlasting silence. But Theophrastus, throwing out the fable and freeing the Seriphians from their boasting, says that the coldness of the water is the cause of the silence of the aforesaid frogs.

In moist places, and where the air is exceedingly damp, cocks do not crow, says Theophrastus. And the lake in Pheneus is barren of fish. And cicadas, being cold in their constitution, then, being heated by the sun, sing — so he says.

The boldest of creatures, it seems, was the goatsucker; for it despises the small birds, but attacks the goats by force, and indeed, flying onto their udders, sucks out the milk, and does not fear the punishment from the goatherd, though it pays them a most wicked wage for its fill; for it blinds the teat and quenches the flow from there.

Metrodidactus, the son of Arete, the sister of Aristippus, the many celebrate; but Aristotle says that he himself saw the nestlings of the nightingale being taught to sing by their mother. The nightingale was, it seems, of birds a strong lover of freedom; and for this reason the full-grown one, when caught and shut up in a little cage, refrains from song, and avenges itself on the fowler for its slavery by silence. Of this men, having experience, let the older ones go, but are eager to hunt the nestlings.

The land of India bears one-horned horses, they say, and the same land rears one-horned asses, and from these horns drinking-cups are made. And if one should put into them a deadly poison, the man who drinks will suffer no harm from the plot; for the horn, both of the horse and of the ass, seems to be a defence against the evil.

The purple coot is at once the most beautiful and the most aptly named of creatures, and it delights in dusting itself, and now too it takes the bath of doves; but it does not give itself to the dust-baths and the washings before it has walked a certain number of paces sufficient for it. And eating before witnesses it dislikes, and for this reason withdraws, and eats secretly. It is strongly jealous, and watches the married women, and if it judges the mistress of the house to be committing adultery, it strangles itself. It does not fly high. Men delight in it, and rear it sparingly and carefully. And it seems either to be a plaything of a stately and very rich house, or a temple receives it, and it wanders free within the enclosure. The peacock, being beautiful, the prodigal both slaughter and eat; for of that bird the feathers are an adornment, but the body is little or nothing. But I do not know of anyone who has slaughtered a purple coot for dinner — not Callias nor Ctesippus the Athenians, not Lucullus nor Hortensius the Romans; and I have named a few out of many prodigal and most intemperate men, both otherwise and indeed about the belly.

The raven, when now grown old and unable to feed its young, offers itself to them as food; and they eat their father. And from this, they say, the proverb took its origin which says, "Of a bad raven a bad egg."

The wood-pigeons are sung as the most chaste of birds. For the male and the female, having paired and, as it were, breathed together into marriage, cling to one another and are chaste, and neither of these birds would touch a stranger's bed. And if they cast amorous eyes on others, the rest go round upon them, and the male the males of its kind tear to pieces, the females the female. This law of chastity reaches also to the turtle-doves and remains unchanging, except that each bird is not put to death; for the male they kill, but the female they pity and leave unharmed, and it goes about widowed.

Aristotle says that of doves the males share the labour of the females in giving birth, and when these wander outside the nest thrust and drive them back, and when they have laid force them to brood. And the same author says that the males too warm the young and rear them together with the females, and that, so the young may not be ill-fed, the parents give the infants as their first food salty earth, which when they have tasted, then they readily feed on the rest. And doves seem somehow to be at truce with the other rapacious birds, but to dread, they say, the sea-eagles and the hawks. And what they contrive against the falcons is worth hearing. When the one that is high up and made to fly aloft pursues them, they slip down and draw themselves lower and try to press in their wing; but when the one that has by nature its flight lower pursues, they rise and travel aloft, and flying above it take courage, since it cannot lead higher.

An Indian horse-trainer met with a white elephant-foal, and taking it reared it while still young, and little by little made it tame, and rode upon it, and loved the possession and was loved in return, receiving from it the recompense for having reared it. So the king of the Indians, learning of it, asked to take the elephant. But the man, as a lover jealous, and indeed greatly grieved if another were to be master of it, said he would not give it, and went off into the desert, mounting the elephant. The king was angered, and sent men against him to take it away and at the same time to bring the Indian to justice. And when they came, they tried to use force. So the man too pelted them from above, and the beast, as though wronged, joined in defending him. And at first it was so; but when the Indian, being struck, slipped down, the elephant bestrode his foster-father, like a man shielding him in arms, and killed many of the assailants, and put the rest to flight; then, throwing its trunk about its foster-father, it lifted him up and carried him to the lair, and stayed by him as a faithful friend by a friend, and showed its goodwill. O wicked men, ever about the table and the clatter of the frying-pan, and dancing toward your dinner, but in dangers traitors, and to no purpose and to no end gaping with the name of friendship!