Book 4

The partridge is the most lascivious of birds. They love the females fiercely, and being overcome by lust they couple most constantly. So when those who keep fighting partridges goad them on to battle against one another, they set beside each one its mate, having discovered this device against cowardice and weakness in the contest. For the partridge will not endure to appear beaten before either his beloved or his wife; he will rather die under blows than, when his adversary comes against him, turn away and shamefully let her see this, before whom he wishes to win esteem. This was just what the Cretans had in mind concerning their beloved boys. For I am told that a certain Cretan, a good lover and brave in war and in all else, had as his favourite a noble youth of outstanding beauty, manly in spirit and well and finely endowed by nature for the noblest studies, but on account of his age not yet called to arms (I have given elsewhere the name both of the lover and of the boy). The Cretans say that this young man displayed great deeds of valour in the battle, but that when the enemy's phalanx pressed upon him in a mass he stumbled over a corpse lying there, and they say he was overturned. One of the enemy, the nearest, raised his weapon and was about to strike the man across the back; but he turned and said, "Do not deal me a shameful and unmanly blow, but strike me full in the breast, so that my beloved may not convict me of cowardice and refuse to lay out my corpse, not daring to approach me when I lie disgraced." That a man should be ashamed to be seen a coward is no great wonder; but that a partridge should partake of shame—this is a most august gift of nature. Yet Aristodemus the trembler, and Cleonymus who threw away his shield, and Pisander the coward, felt no shame before their fatherlands, nor before their wives, nor before their children.

At Eryx in Sicily there is a festival which the people of Eryx themselves, and indeed all who dwell in Sicily, call the Anagogia, the Departure. The reason given is that on those days they say Aphrodite sets out from there to Libya. They infer this from the following evidence. There is a very great multitude of doves in that place. Now during those days they are not to be seen, and the people of Eryx say that the goddess has departed with them as her escort; for that doves are the playthings of Aphrodite both they sing and all men believe. After nine days have passed, one of surpassing beauty is seen flying in from the sea that brings her from Libya—not like the rest of the common pigeons, but purple, just as Anacreon of Teos sings of Aphrodite to us, calling her somewhere "the purple one." And she might be likened to gold as well, in keeping with Homer's goddess of the same name, whom he hymns as golden. The clouds of the remaining doves follow her, and again there is a festival and a great gathering for the people of Eryx, the Katagogia, the Homecoming—this name too taken from the event.

Wolves go in pairs, and so do horses; but lions no longer do so. For the lioness and the lion do not take the same path, whether they go to the hunt or to drink. The reason, as the older authorities say, is that each, trusting in its own bodily strength, has no need of the other.

Wolves do not loose themselves from the pangs of birth easily, but only in twelve days and as many nights, since the Delians say that it took Leto just so long to come from the Hyperboreans to Delos.

The tortoise and the partridge are creatures at war; so too the stork and the corncrake against the gull, and the falcon and the heron against the seagull; the lark regards the goldfinch as its enemy, and there is enmity between the turtledove and the redstart; the kite and the raven are foes; the siren against the hawk, and the hawk against the buzzard are found to differ not only in kind but also in nature. The channa is a most lustful fish. And white ants may be heard of at Pheneus in Laconia.

That horses delight more in marshes and meadows and windy places, men skilled in the rearing of horses and foals agree. Hence too Homer—being, as it seems to me, clever at observing such things—said somewhere that "three thousand mares pastured along the marsh." And horse-keepers testify that mares are often made pregnant by the wind and flee before the south wind or the north. So the same poet, knowing this, said, "Of these even Boreas grew enamoured as they grazed." And Aristotle too, as I understand it, taking his cue from this, said that they, stung by the aforementioned winds, run off.

I am told that the king of the Scythians (I know his name but pass it by; for what profit is it to me?) had a mare of high quality possessing every excellence that mares are required to have and to show, and that he had also a son of that very mare surpassing all the others in excellence. Now not finding any worthy mate to pair with her, nor any good mare to bring to the son so as to take seed from him, for these reasons he brought the two together to the act. They for their part welcomed and showed affection to each other in every other way, but would not come together. So since the animals were wiser than the Scythian's scheme, he covered both the male and the female with cloaks, and they performed that lawless and unjust act. But when both perceived what had been done, then indeed they atoned for the impiety by death, leaping over a cliff.

Eudemus relates that a groom fell in love with a young mare, the best of the herd, as one might with a beautiful girl, the loveliest in the whole estate; and that at first he held himself in check, but at last ventured upon the strange union and had intercourse with her. She had a foal, itself also beautiful, which, seeing what was being done, was grieved, as though its mother were being tyrannized by its master, and it leapt upon the man and killed him; and afterwards it watched where he was buried, and going there it dug him up and outraged the corpse and mangled it with all manner of mutilation.

Most fish during the spring are eager for love, and they betake themselves rather to the Black Sea; for it has, in a way, chambers and resting-places—these being nature's gifts to fishes—and moreover it is free of such beasts as the sea feeds. Dolphins alone roam there, slender and weak; and indeed it is barren of the octopus and produces no crab, and

it does not breed the lobster; but these are the destruction of small fish. I learn that when the new moon first appears, the elephants, by some natural and mysterious instinct, take freshly plucked branches from the wood in which they pasture and then raise them aloft, and look up toward the goddess, and gently wave the branches, as though holding out to the goddess this supplication on behalf of her being gracious and kindly to them.

I am told that of all animals only mares endure the union of the males even when pregnant; for they are the most lustful. For this reason the more dissolute among women are called "mares" by those who censure them in more dignified terms.

Partridges, while still dwelling within their eggs and confined by the shells that have grown about them, do not wait to be hatched out by their parents, but by their own efforts, as though knocking at a door, break out of the eggs, and peeping forth then push themselves up, and having shattered the shell of the egg they at once run, and if the half toward the tail clings to them they shake it off and cast it away, and they seek for food and leap most swiftly.

Among partridges, the clear-voiced and tuneful trust in their own fine singing; and the warlike and contentious ones likewise are confident that they are not fit to be wasted once caught; and for this reason, when taken, they struggle less against their captors in order not to be caught. But the others, and still more the Cirrhaean partridges, conscious of being good neither at fighting nor at singing, and knowing well that once caught they will become dinner for their captors, contrive by a certain natural cunning to render themselves uneatable; and they abstain from all other food that gratifies and fattens them, and eat garlic most eagerly. Now those who have learned this beforehand make a willing truce of non-pursuit with them; but whoever has not previously encountered the catch of these birds, having taken and boiled one, wastes both his time and his pains upon it, finding that he has got a wretched piece of meat.

The weasel is a wicked beast, and so is the snake. So when a weasel is about to fight a snake, it first chews rue and then comes to the fight as though fenced and armed. The reason is that rue is most hateful to the snake.

When the wolf has filled itself to satiety, it will not taste even the smallest morsel thereafter; for its belly is stretched, its tongue swells, and its mouth is blocked, and it is most gentle to meet, like a lamb, and it would not plot against either man or beast, not even if it walked through the middle of the flock. But its tongue diminishes quietly and little by little, then returns to its original shape, and it becomes a wolf again.

Cocks in a flock all mount the newcomer. And tame partridges do the same to the one that has just arrived and is not yet subdued. And in return for those who rear them, the partridges themselves lure the free and wild ones, doing this just as the pigeons do. Now the decoy partridge attracts and holds out its siren-song to draw the others on in this way. It stands singing, and its song is a challenge, goading the wild bird to battle; and it stands in ambush by the snare. The leader of the wild birds, answering the song, comes forward to fight in front of the flock. Then the tame one retreats step by step, pretending to be afraid; but the other advances proudly, as if already victorious, and is caught fast in the snare. Now if the one that has fallen into the trap is a male, his companions try to come to the rescue of the captive; but if it is a female, they strike at the one caught, one from one side and one from another, as having fallen into slavery through lust. And I shall not pass over this, since it too is worth hearing. If the decoy is female, then, so that the male may not fall in, the females outside sound an answering song and rescue the one who would have fallen into the snare, since he gladly stays beside his many mates, as though drawn by some erotic spell, by Zeus indeed.

The land-hedgehog too is believed to be one of the envious, malign creatures. At any rate, whenever it is caught, it at once wets its own skin with urine and renders it useless—though the skin seems serviceable for many purposes. The lynx too hides its urine; for when it congeals it becomes a stone, and is suited for engraving, and serves, they say, as an ornament for women.

A lion that has eaten of the "lion-killer" dies. Insects are destroyed if one smears them with oil. Perfume is the death of vultures. And you will destroy a beetle if you throw roses upon it.

Indian dogs—these too are wild beasts, mighty in strength, most spirited in soul, and the largest of dogs anywhere. They look down on all other animals; but the Indian dog goes to meet the lion, and endures its onset, and barks back when it roars, and bites in return when bitten; and having greatly distressed and wounded it, in the end the dog is overcome. Yet a lion might also be overcome by an Indian dog, and indeed once the dog has bitten it holds on most firmly. Even if you come and cut off the dog's leg with a knife, it has no leisure in its pain to relax its bite, but the leg is cut off first and only as a corpse does it let go its mouth, and it lies there, forced to release its hold by

death. What is fitting I shall tell elsewhere. Of man alone and of the dog does the food rise up again when they are full. And in man the heart is attached to the left breast, but in other animals it is set in the middle of the chest. No crook-taloned bird drinks or makes water or herds together with others.

There is an Indian beast violent in strength, in size like the largest lion, red in colour so as to seem like cinnabar, and shaggy like dogs, named in the Indian tongue the martichoras. Its face is such as to seem to belong not to a beast but to a man. It has three rows of teeth set in above and three rows below, exceedingly sharp at the point, larger than the teeth of dogs. Its ears resemble a man's, but are larger and shaggy. Its eyes are grey, and these too resemble a man's. Imagine its feet and claws to be like a lion's. To the tip of its tail is attached a scorpion's sting, and this would be more than a cubit long, and on either side the tail is set with stings. The tip of the tail stings whomever it meets to death, and destroys him at once. If anyone pursues it, it shoots its stings sideways like arrows, and the creature is a far-darter. When it discharges its stings forward, it bends back its tail; but when backward, after the manner of the Sacae, it stretches it out straight. Whatever the missile strikes it kills—the elephant alone it does not destroy. The stings it hurls are a foot in length and the thickness of a rush. Ctesias says, and affirms that the Indians agree with him, that in the places where those stings are discharged others grow up beneath, so that there is a whole crop of this evil. It delights, as the same author says, above all in eating men, and it kills many men, and lies in wait not for one alone, but would attack two or even three, and overpowers so many single-handed. It masters the rest of the animals too, but could never bring down a lion. That this animal takes the greatest delight in glutting itself with human flesh, its very name proclaims; for in the Greek tongue it means "man-eater," and from this deed it is named. In speed it is like the deer. The Indians hunt the young of these beasts while their tails are still without stings, and they crush the tails with a stone so that they cannot grow stings. Its voice it sends forth as nearly as possible like a trumpet. Ctesias says he has also seen this animal among the Persians, brought as a gift from the Indians to the king of the Persians—if indeed Ctesias is a sufficient witness in such matters. At any rate, having heard the peculiar features of this animal, let one then give heed to the writer of Cnidus.

The sea-scolopendra, they say, bursts asunder when a man spits upon it.

If one were to give the crushed fruit of the willow to drink to dumb animals, they are not harmed at all, but rather are even nourished by it; but a man who drinks it destroys his power to beget children and bear fruit. And it seems to me that Homer, having tracked out even the secrets of nature, then said in his verses "and willows that lose their fruit," hinting at this. And a man who drinks hemlock dies through the congealing and chilling of his blood, but a pig gluts itself on hemlock and stays healthy.

The Indians cannot easily capture a full-grown elephant, but going to the marshes that border the river they take the young of them. For the elephant loves dewy and soft places, and is fond of water, and wishes to live in such haunts,

and is, as one might say, a marsh-dweller. So having taken them tender and tractable, they rear them with flattery of the belly and tending of the body and a coaxing voice (for elephants understand even the human speech of the country), and, to put it briefly, they rear them as children and bestow upon them care and various kinds of training. And they obey. When it is threshing-time and the oxen turn about the threshing-floor, and the floor is full of the sheaves, to keep the oxen from tasting the ears they smear their nostrils with dung, having devised this stratagem most aptly. For this animal, loathing the aforesaid smearing, would not taste anything, not even if it were pressed by the heaviest hunger.

The Indians hunt hares and foxes in the following way. They have no need of dogs for the hunt, but taking the nestlings of eagles and ravens and kites besides, they rear them and train them in hunting. And the lesson is this: they fasten meat to a tame hare and a domesticated fox, and let them run, and sending the birds after them at their heels they allow them to snatch away the meat. The birds pursue with all their might, and having caught the one or the other they hold it as the prize of their capture, the meat. And this is a bait for them, and a most enticing one. So when they have perfected the hunting skill, they let them loose upon the mountain hares and the wild foxes. And the birds, in hope of their accustomed meal, whenever one of these appears, give chase and seize it most swiftly, and carry it back to their masters, as Ctesias relates. And that in place of the meat formerly fastened to them the entrails of the captured prey serve them as dinner, this too we learn from him.

I am told that the griffin, the Indian animal, is four-footed like the lions, and has claws of the greatest strength, and these very like a lion's; and that it is winged, and the feathers of its back they sing of as black in colour, those of its front they say are red, but the wings themselves no longer such, but white. Ctesias records that its neck is variegated with dark-blue feathers, and that it has an eagle-like beak and a head such as artists draw and model. Its eyes, he says, are fiery. It makes its nest upon the mountains, and to take a full-grown one is impossible, but they catch the young. And the Bactrians, who are neighbours of the Indians, say that the griffins are guardians of the gold in those parts, and that they dig it up and weave it into their nests, and the Indians take what flows off. But the Indians deny that they are guardians of the aforesaid gold—for the griffins have no need of gold (and if they say this, they seem to me to speak credibly); rather the Indians themselves come to gather the gold, while the griffins, in fear for their young, fight with those who approach. And they contend with the other animals and overpower them most easily, but do not withstand the lion or the elephant. So the natives, dreading the strength of these beasts, do not set out for the gold by day, but come by night; for at that hour they seem more likely to escape notice. This region, where the griffins live and the gold is found, is dreadfully desolate. The seekers of the aforesaid wealth come a thousand and twice as many strong, armed, and they bring mattocks and sacks, and they dig, watching for a moonless night. Now if they escape the notice of the griffins, they gain a double profit; for they are saved and they carry their freight home, and those who have learned to refine gold, by a certain skill of their own, have very great wealth in return for the aforesaid dangers; but if they are caught in the act, they perish. And they return home, as I learn, every third or fourth year.

The severed head of a sea-tortoise sees and closes its eyes when a hand is brought near; and it would even bite if you brought your hand nearer. And for a long time it keeps its eyes shining; for its pupils are very white and very conspicuous, and when taken out they are set in gold and necklaces. Hence indeed they seem marvellous to women. These tortoises, as I learn, are found in the sea that men call the Red Sea.

The cock, when the moon rises, is filled with rapture, they say, and frolics. And the rising sun could never escape its notice, and at that hour it is most musical of all. I am told too that the cock is a bird dear to Leto. The reason is that they say it stood by her when she was in the double and blessed throes of childbirth. Hence even now the cock attends women in labour, and seems somehow to make their delivery easy. And when the hen has died, the cock himself broods upon the eggs, and hatches out his own chicks in silence; for he does not sing then, from some wondrous and secret cause—no, by heaven; for he seems to me to be conscious that he is then doing the work of a female and not of a male. And a cock defeated in battle and in the contest against another will not sing; for his spirit is cast down, and he sinks away in shame. But the victor is proud and holds his neck high, and

is like one exulting. And this too is surely worthy of wonder in the creature: when going under a doorway, even a very high one, it stoops, performing this most boastfully; for it seems to do so out of regard for its comb. Jackdaws love their own kind dreadfully. This is just what often destroys them, and the thing done is as follows. Whoever has a mind to hunt jackdaws contrives thus. Where he knows their feeding-grounds and pastures and sees them gathering in flocks, there he sets out basins full of oil. Now the oil is clear, and the bird is curious, and it comes and sits on the rim of the vessel, and bends down and sees its own reflection, and thinks it sees another jackdaw, and is eager to come down to it. So it descends and flaps its wings and covers itself with oil, and is least able to flutter up again, and without nets or snare or cords the creature remains, as one might say, fettered.

The elephant—some say it has tusks projecting, others horns. It has on each foot five toes, showing the beginnings of separation, but not divided. Hence indeed it is least able to swim. Its hind legs are shorter than its front ones; its breasts are by the armpits; it possesses a trunk more all-useful than a hand, and a short tongue; its gall, they say, is not by the liver but by the intestine. I learn that the elephant is pregnant for two years. Others say not so long, but agree it is eighteen months. It brings forth one as large as a yearling calf, and the calf draws the teat with its mouth. When inflamed to mating and burning with frenzy, it falls upon a wall and overturns it, and bends palm-trees, dashing its forehead against them after the manner of rams. It drinks water neither clear nor pure, but when it has muddied and stirred it. It sleeps standing upright; for to lie down and rise up again is laborious for it. The prime of an elephant is sixty years. It is least able to bear frost. It prolongs its life even to two hundred years.

The sheep-rearing of the Indians is worth learning what it is like. I am told that their goats and sheep are larger than the largest asses, and that each bears four; indeed an Indian goat or sheep would never bear fewer than three. The tails of the sheep reach to the foot, but the goats have very long ones, so as almost to touch the ground. Now from the sheep that are good at bearing the herdsmen cut off the tails, so that they may be mounted, and from their fat they press out oil too; but of the males they cut through the tails and take out the fat and sew them up again, and the cut grows together once more, and the traces of it disappear.

Alexander of Myndus says that the chameleon harasses snakes and brings them to starvation in the following way. Biting on a broad, firm twig, it turns itself about and comes face to face against the enemy. The snake is unable to lay hold of it, having no way to gape wide enough to take in the breadth of the twig. So the snake remains, as far as the chameleon is concerned, without its dinner; for biting the rest of its limbs it accomplishes nothing, since the chameleon has a firm hide, and feels nothing at all of the snake's teeth.

The lion's neck is composed of a single bone, not of many vertebrae. And if anyone cleaves the lion's bones, fire leaps out from them. They have no marrow; for they are not hollow after the manner of pipes. No season of the year holds it back from mating. It is pregnant for two months. It bears five times: at the first birth five, at the second four, three at the next, two at the one after, and one at all the last. The newborn cubs are small and blind like puppies; they begin to walk when they have lived two months from birth. The story that says they tear apart the womb is a myth. A hungry lion is hard to meet, but a sated one is most gentle; and they say it is then fond of play. A lion would never flee turning its back, but quietly retreats step by step, looking the foe in the face. When old age begins, it comes to the steadings and the huts and the cave-dwellings of the herdsmen, and with reason; for it can no longer take heart for the hunts on the mountains. It dreads fire. Now whichever of them is rounder and more compact and shaggier in mane seems more faint-hearted and less daring; but the one well-grown in length and straight-haired is believed more manly and more spirited. Being a glutton, it would, they say, swallow whole limbs by gulping. So when filled with these it often does not eat for three days, until what it first took has been consumed and digested. It drinks little.

The gentle ox would never forget the one who strikes and chastises it, but remembering, it takes vengeance even after an interval of time. For while under the yoke and in a way penned up, it is like a prisoner and keeps quiet; but when released, often it has struck with its leg and crushed some limb of the herdsman, and often, growing angry, has fallen upon him with its horn and killed him. Yet toward the others it is gentle, and comes into the stall quietly; for it is not savage toward those against whom it has no cause for anger.

The land of the Indians—the historians say it is rich in drugs and dreadfully prolific of such growths. Some of them preserve and rescue from danger those who, through bites, are at death's door (and there are many such things there), while others destroy and kill most swiftly—among which would be that produced from the purple snake. Now this snake is about a span long to look at, and in colour resembles the deepest purple. They describe its head as white and no longer purple, and white not, so to speak, ordinarily, but beyond snow and milk. This snake is toothless. It is found in the most fiery regions of India. It is least apt to bite, and in this respect you would say it is tame and gentle; but whomever it vomits upon, as I hear, whether man or beast, that limb must wholly rot away. So when it has been caught they hang it up by the tail, and as is natural it has its head down and looks toward the ground; and beneath its very mouth they place a vessel made of bronze. And through the mouth drops trickle from it into this, and what flows down sets and congeals, and on seeing it you would say it was the gum of an almond. And the snake dies, and they take away the vessel and set another in its place, of bronze too; and from the dead snake there flows again a watery ichor, and it resembles water. They leave it three days, and this too sets. And there would be a difference between the two in colour; for the one is dreadfully black, while the other is like amber. Now of this, if you gave to anyone as much as a sesame seed mixed into wine or food, first a convulsion will seize him, and a very strong one, then his eyes are distorted, and his brain slips out, trickling through his nostrils, and he dies most pitiably; but if he takes less of the drug, from then on his case is hopeless, yet he perishes only in time. And if you offer the black, which flowed from the dead snake, this too the size of a sesame seed, the man who takes it grows full of pus, and consumption seizes him, and within a year he is wasted away in decay; but many have gone on even to two years, dying little by little.

The ostrich lays many eggs, but does not hatch them all; rather it sets aside the infertile ones, and broods upon the fruitful. And from these it hatches out its chicks, while those that have been rejected it sets before them as food. If anyone pursues it, it does not venture upon flight, but runs with its wings spread; and if it is about to be caught, it slings with its feet the stones that lie in its way back at the pursuer.

The small sparrows, conscious of their weakness because of the smallness of their bodies, build their nests upon the slender tips of the branches that can bear them, and thus for the most part escape the plots of the hunters, who cannot climb out upon the twig; for it does not bear them, owing to its thinness.

Foxes, having reached the height of cunning and crafty ways, whenever they see a thriving wasps' nest, themselves turn aside from the hollow, swerving away and guarding against the wounds of the stings; but they let down their tail, which is very thick and long, and shake the wasps with it. The wasps cling to the thickness of the hairs. And when they have become entangled in it, the foxes dash the tail against a tree or wall or stone fence; and the wasps, being struck, die. Then the foxes come again to the same spot, and having gathered up and killed the rest just as they did the first, when at last they perceive that there is peace and freedom from the stings, they put down their mouth and eat the wasp-grubs, neither disturbed nor any longer wary of the stings.

A dog's skull has no suture. And one that has run a great deal becomes more lustful, they say. As a dog grows old its teeth grow blunt and turn black. It is so keen of scent that it would never taste roast dog's flesh, not even if it were bewitched with the most varied and crafty sauce. Three diseases, and no more, are allotted to the dog: quinsy, madness, and gout; but to men there are countless ones. Everything that is bitten by a mad dog dies. And a dog that has gout you will rarely see recover. The longest life of a dog is fourteen years. Argus, the dog of Odysseus, and the tale about him, seem to be a fancy of Homer's.

There is also a kind of very small Indian birds. It nests on the high crags and on the rocks called "leprous," and the little birds are in size about as big as a partridge's egg; imagine their colour to be that of realgar. The Indians in their own tongue like to call it dikairon, and the Greeks, as I hear, dikaion. If one were to take of its droppings as much as a millet seed dissolved in drink, he is dead by evening. And the death resembles sleep, and a most sweet and painless one, such as the poets like to call "limb-loosing" or "gentle"; for it too would be free of pain and therefore most pleasant to those who need it. The Indians set the highest value on obtaining it; for they consider it truly a remedy that brings forgetfulness of evils; and so among the most precious gifts to the king of the Persians the king of the Indians sends this too. And he, receiving it, prizes it above all the rest and lays it up in store as an adversary and defence against incurable evils, should necessity overtake him. So no one else among the Persians has it, save the king himself and the king's mother. And so let us, comparing them, examine of the two drugs, the Indian and the Egyptian, which was the more to be prized; since the Egyptian held back and checked the tears for a day, but the Indian provided eternal forgetfulness of evils; and the one was a woman's gift, the other a bird's, or rather of a mysterious nature that releases one from the truly heaviest of bonds through the aforesaid servant. And the Indians have had the good fortune to possess it, so as to be released from their watch here whenever they wish.

The bird called the attagas (Aristophanes too mentions it in his play the Birds) utters and sings out its own name with such voice as it has. They say that the birds called Meleagrides do the same, and that they are most fittingly attested to be related by descent to Meleager, the son of Oeneus. The myth says that all the women who were kin to the young son of Oeneus fell into uncontrollable weeping and unbearable grief and lamentation, admitting no remedy for their sorrow, and that through the pity of the gods they were changed in form into these creatures. And there is in them an image and a seed of that ancient grief, fixed deep within, and even now they sing of Meleager, and they sing too that they are his kin. And whoever reveres the divine would never touch these birds for food. And what the reason is, both the inhabitants of the island of Leros know, and it may be learned elsewhere.

I have learned this too about ants. So present in them is the love of toil and the willingness to labour, without any excuse and without any malingering pretext and pretence behind which sloth lurks, that even at the full moon they do not even by night grow idle or rest, but cling to their work. O men, who devise countless excuses and pretexts for taking your ease! And what need is there to recount and pour forth so great a crowd of them? For Dionysia have been proclaimed, and Lenaea, and Chytri, and Gephyrismi, and when one passes to Sparta there are other festivals, and to Thebes others, and in every city countless ones, some barbarian, some Greek.

As evidence of the nature of animals—that they are not altogether hard to manage, but, when well treated, are good at remembering the kindness—there are in Egypt the cats and the ichneumons and the crocodiles and still the race of hawks. Each is taken by flattery of the belly, and being thence tamed remains thereafter most gentle; and it would never attack its own benefactors, once the anger inborn and kindred to it has been loosed. But a man—a creature endowed with reason and deemed worthy of intelligence and granted a sense of shame and entrusted with the power to blush—becomes a grievous enemy to his friend, and the secrets entrusted to him, for the slightest and most casual cause, he spits out to the ruin of the one who trusted him.

Eudemus says there is a tale worthy of wonder, and this is the man's tale. A young hunter, able to live among the wildest of animals—reared, that is, from young and from cubs—had as his fellow-nurslings and messmates a dog and a bear and a lion that had grown up together. And these, Eudemus says, kept peace with one another for a time and were friendly in their feelings; but one day it happened that the dog, playing with the bear and fawning upon it and teasing it, the bear was contrary to custom turned savage and fell upon the dog, and tore the belly of the poor creature with its claws and rent it apart. The same author says that the lion was indignant at what had happened, and as it were hated the implacable and unfriendly act of the bear, and longed for the dog as a comrade, and came to a just anger, and laid upon the bear its punishment, and did to it the very things that it had done to the dog. Now Homer says that it is good that even a son of one who has perished should be left behind; but nature seems to show that to leave behind a friend to avenge oneself, dear Homer, is also a gain. Something of the like we think too about Zeno and Cleanthes, if we hear aright.

Among the Indians there are creatures as large as beetles might grow, and they are red; you would liken them to cinnabar, if you first beheld them. These have very long legs, and are soft to the touch. They grow upon the trees that bear amber, and feed on the fruit of these plants. The Indians hunt them and press them out, and from them dye their scarlet cloaks and the tunics beneath them and whatever else they wish to turn and dye to this colour. And such clothing is brought also to the king of the Persians. And the beauty of the clothing seems marvellous to the Persians, and when set beside the native Persian dyes it far surpasses and astonishes them, as Ctesias says; since it is keener and more brilliant than the famous Sardian dyes. There are produced too, in that part of India where the beetles are, the so-called Cynocephali, "Dog-heads," to whom the appearance and nature of their body gave the name; for in all else they have the features of men, and they walk clad in the skins of wild beasts. And they are just, and harm no man, and they utter no speech, but howl, yet they understand the language of the Indians. Their food is wild animals; and they catch these most easily, for they are very swift, and having caught them they kill them, and roast them not with fire, but tear them into pieces and dry them in the heat of the sun. They also rear goats and sheep. And they make the wild animals their food, but drink the milk of the flocks they rear. I have made mention of them among the irrational creatures, and with reason; for they have no articulate, distinct, and human voice.

Chloris is the name of a bird, which would make its nest from nothing else but the so-called comfrey; and comfrey is a root hard to find and to dig up. For bedding it spreads under itself hairs and wool. And the female bird is so called, but the male they call chlorion, and it is ingenious in its life, good at learning whatever you will and steadfast in enduring the trial that comes with learning, whenever it is caught. And through the winter one would not see it free and at liberty, but when the spring turnings of the year begin, then it would appear. When Arcturus rises, it withdraws to its own haunts, whence it set out hither.

A bull whetted by anger and rampaging with its horn and borne along by an uncontrollable rush—neither does the herdsman check it, nor fear restrain it, nor anything else of the kind; but a man stops it and looses it from its onset by binding fast his own right knee with a band and meeting it.

The leopard has five toes on its front feet, but four on its hind feet. The female is stronger than the male. And if it tastes unknowingly of the so-called leopard's-bane (it is a plant), having tracked out human excrement from somewhere, it saves itself.

Horses, they say, have no lower eyelashes. So they say that Apelles of Ephesus is blamed, since in painting a certain horse he failed to observe this peculiarity of the animal. But others say that it was not Apelles who incurred this charge, but Micon, a good man at painting this animal, who erred only in the thing mentioned.

I have learned that wild asses no smaller than horses in size are found among the Indians. And they are white over the rest of the body, but have the head somewhat purple, and the eyes send forth a dark-blue colour. They have a horn on the forehead about a cubit and a half in length, and the lower part of the horn is white, the upper crimson, but the middle exceedingly black. From these variegated horns I am told the Indians drink—and not all of them, but the most powerful among the Indians—pouring gold around them at intervals, as though adorning with bracelets the fair arm of a statue. And they say that the one who drinks from this horn becomes a stranger and unacquainted with incurable diseases; for he would not be seized by convulsions, nor by the so-called sacred disease, nor be destroyed by poisons. And if he has previously drunk something harmful, he vomits it up and becomes whole again. It is believed that the other asses over all the earth, both tame and wild, and the other solid-hoofed beasts, have no anklebones, nor any gall by the liver; but Ctesias says that the Indian asses which have the horn possess anklebones and are not without gall; and the anklebones are said to be black, and if one were to crush them, they are such within as well. And these are the swiftest not only of asses, but of horses and deer; they begin their running quietly, but gather strength little by little, and to pursue them is, in the poet's phrase, "to chase the uncatchable." When the female has given birth and leads about her newborn, the fathers, pasturing with them, guard the young. The haunts of these asses are the most desolate of the Indian plains. When the Indians go out for their capture, they let the tender and still young ones graze behind, while they themselves fight in their defence, and go to meet the horsemen, and strike with their horns. And so great is the strength of these creatures that nothing struck withstands them, but yields and is cut through, and if it chances is crushed and rendered useless. Already too they have fallen upon the flanks of horses and split them open and poured out their entrails. Hence indeed the horsemen dread to come near them; for the price of coming near is for them a most pitiable death, and they perish, both they and their horses. They are dangerous at kicking too. And their bites reach so deep that they tear away all they have grasped. A full-grown one alive you could not take, but they are shot with javelins and arrows, and the Indians strip the horns from them when dead and treat them as I have said. The flesh of the Indian asses is uneatable; the reason is that it is naturally most bitter.

Eudemus says that there are irrational animals which have a natural arithmetic without being taught, and he adduces as evidence the following about the animals in Libya. The name he does not give; but what he says is this. Whatever it catches, it makes into eleven portions, and eats ten of them, but leaves the eleventh (for whom, and with what notion, is worth considering) as a kind of first-fruits or a tithe, as one might say. So it is right to be amazed at this self-taught wisdom; for an irrational animal knows the unit and the dyad and the numbers that follow. But for a man, how many lessons are needed, and how many blows, that he may either learn these things well and rightly or often not learn them at all?

The Egyptians say (and philosophers do not lightly disregard them) that in a certain nome of Egypt, which they name after Heracles the son of Zeus, a beautiful boy, beautiful as an Egyptian, a keeper of geese, was loved by an asp, and indeed the love was marvellous on her part. Then, visiting her beloved, she would foretell to him in a dream the plots being craftily devised against him by another snake, which was, as one might say, her mate, the male trying to do this out of jealousy of the boy over his bride; and the boy, heeding her, was persuaded and kept on his guard. Now Homer gave a horse a voice, but nature gave one to the asp, "which cares nothing for laws," as Euripides says.

I have heard that camels live even fifty years, but I am told that those from Bactria go on even to twice that span. And the males being warlike, the Bactrians geld them, taking away their wantonness and lasciviousness, but preserving their strength. The females have the parts that kindle them to heat cauterized.

Eudemus says that a seal fell in love with a man accustomed to hunt sponges, and coming forth from the sea to where there was a hollow rock would consort with him. Of his fellow-craftsmen this man was the ugliest, but to the seal he seemed most beautiful. And there is perhaps nothing to wonder at, since men too have often fallen in love with the less beautiful, feeling nothing for the most beautiful, but neglecting them.

Aristotle says that one struck by the water-snake at once gives off a most heavy smell, so that no one can come near him. The same author says that forgetfulness is poured over the one struck, and indeed a great mist over his eyes, and madness comes upon him and a very strong trembling, and he dies on the third day.

One must know that the oinas is a bird, and not, as some think, a vine. Aristotle says that it is larger than the ringdove, but smaller than the pigeon. There are, as I hear, certain "oinas-hunters" even at Sparta. It might also be said that the female hawk differs from the male hawk not only in kind but also in nature.

Cyanus is its name, a bird by nature, unsociable in its ways, hating the haunts of the city and the lodgings in houses, and shunning too the haunts in the fields and wherever there are huts and the steadings of men, but delighting in solitudes and taking pleasure in mountain peaks and sheer crags. Nor does it take delight in mainlands or in goodly islands, but in Scyros and any other like it that is exceedingly wretched and barren and for the most part bereft of men.

Finches, indeed, are wiser even than men at foreknowing the future. At any rate they know when winter is coming, and they have most providently guarded against the snow that is to be. And for fear of being caught they flee to the wooded places, and the thickets are, as one might say, their refuges.