Book 10

The elephant rarely falls in love, they say, for it is a chaste creature, as I have said above. Yet I have heard of an erotic passion among elephants that is worth marvelling at. What I have learned is this. A man not unpractised in hunting these animals, having received authority from the emperor of the Romans and been sent out to hunt according to a certain custom native to the Moors, reports in a written account that a young she-elephant, in the bloom of her beauty as it seemed to those people, mated with a young and handsome bull; but another, older bull, whether he was her mate or her lover, grew indignant, as though he had been dishonoured. Kindled with a violent rage he rushed forward, and coming upon the young and handsome bull and closing with him, he then fought, as one who grieves over a bride or a beloved. And they dashed against each other so hard that both lost their tusks. Neither won, but the hunters by their missiles turned them away from one another, since by now, stripped of their weapons, they were useless. So this contest of love between elephant lovers, equally matched to the end, came to rest there. And Paris was being dragged by Menelaus and was choking as the strap of his helmet pressed upon him, and the son of Atreus would surely have hauled him away and won boundless glory, had not the strap snapped, and had not the daughter of Zeus and Dione snatched him away, after he had fought a most shameful and unmanly fight; and the coward went off and slept with the adulteress.

Fish are not all eager for love at the same season; some are roused to mating in spring, others have received this impulse in summer, others in autumn, and some are kindled to the aforesaid purpose through the winter. Most of them, having brought forth once in the year, then cease; but I hear that the sea-bass also breeds a second time, and the red mullet is accused of conceiving three times, as its very name, they say, declares.

Herodotus says that camels have four thighs in their hind legs, and as many knees besides, and that their joints, through the hinder legs, are turned toward the tail.

Herodotus says that the sheep of Arabia have tails unlike those of other sheep. The same writer teaches, I believe, that there are two breeds of them, and indeed he says that some of them have very long tails, so that, if one measured them, they are not less than three cubits. If, then, one were to let these tails drag, they would be utterly chafed,

rubbed against the ground. The shepherds, he says, are skilled enough to do no more than fashion little carts which support the tails of these animals, so as to keep off the chafing from them. The other breed of sheep, he says, carry broad tails, and these grow broad even to a cubit. Snails know that the partridges and the herons are their enemies, and they flee from them; nor would you ever see snails creeping where these birds feed. But the kind of snails called the "stronger" deceive and outwit, by a certain natural cleverness, the birds just mentioned. For they come forth from the shells that have grown over them, and feed in great safety, while the birds I have mentioned swoop down upon the empty shells as though upon the snails themselves; and finding nothing, they cast them away as useless to them and depart. Then the snails return, and each goes back into his own house, filled from his feeding and saved by the very deception with which he tricked his foe.

The Pontic mackerel imitate the king of the Persians, who winters in Susa but passes the summer in Ecbatana. For these fish too winter in the so-called Propontis, since that region is warm; but in summer they live by the Aegialus, for the sea I have named provides them with gentle breezes.

I learn that those cooks who are exact in their craft, whenever they wish the bellies of red mullets not to burst while roasting, kiss the fishes' mouths; and when this has been done, they remain whole, so they say.

The female dolphin has breasts like a woman's, and suckles her young with milk most abundant and plentiful. They swim together, but separated according to age: the young and tender ones are stationed in the first rank, and the full-grown follow them in the swim. For the dolphin is a creature loving to its offspring and full of affection, and it is anxious for its young. And for the sake of protection, as in a soldiers' battle-line, some belong to the first rank, some to the second, some to the third; the young swim in front, the females swim behind them, and the males bring up the rear, watching over and guarding the swimming of their offspring and their mates. What has Nestor to say to this, fair Homer, whom you celebrate in song as the best tactician of the heroes of his time?

As to the male and female viper, some say that they differ in kind but not in nature, the one being male and the other female; others think they differ in nature as well, the one being one sort of creature and the other another. I hear some say that those bitten by the male viper are seized with convulsions, but not those bitten by the female. Others say that the bite of the female is white, but that of the male is not so, but livid. Nicander says that from the bite which the male viper inflicts there appear the marks of two teeth, but of more, if the female should bite.

When the hunting of elephants has been successful, it is worth telling what men do to tame them and make them gentle. First they lead them, bound, into some wood a little way from the trench in which they were caught, gripping them with ropes and allowing them neither to rush forward nor again to draw back and pull away. Then they fasten each one to a great tree at a measured distance, so that it can neither leap forward nor again retreat far with freedom to caper and run riot; and by starvation and hunger they break down their excessive strength and vigour, and gently wear away their spirit and the stubbornness of their souls, so that the elephants come to forget their once invincible ferocity and are released from their former fury. Then the trainers of such beasts approach and offer them food from the hand, and the elephants, compelled by need, take it and do no harm, and already look gentle and worn out. But the very strong and full-grown among them break their bonds, and with the points of their tusks and with their trunks tear up the trees, or even snap them off by their rush and fall upon them; these are tamed only with difficulty and after long time, some by hunger, some by sweet food, some by the goad. The food for these animals while they are being tamed is the largest loaves, barley, dried figs, raisins, onions, garlic, honey in abundance, bundles of mastich and palm and ivy, and every kind of edible vegetation that is also their natural fare and therefore dear to them.

Those are ignorant of the nature of fish who condemn them all utterly to silence; for some both hiss and grunt. The lyre-fish grunts, and so does the chromis and the boar-fish, as Aristotle says; the smith-fish hisses; and the cuckoo-fish, imitating in its voice the bird of the same name, utters sounds like it.

The elephant is, to look at, a mass of flesh, and a very great one; but its flesh is not edible, except the trunk and the lips of the mouth and the marrow of the tusks. The fat of the elephant is most hateful to venomous creatures; for if one anoints oneself with it or burns it as incense, they flee very far away.

The variety of colour and form among the animals of Arabia is enough to confound every painter, and this not only in the strong and noble kinds, but already even in the meaner sorts. For the locusts and the serpents are spangled with gold-like images upon them; and the fish, partaking of still more of this richly adorned colouring, are then astonishing to behold. Nor are the shellfish of the Red Sea without a share of the same splendour; for fiery bands run round them, and on seeing them you would say that they imitate the rainbow in their blending of colours, being marked out by Nature in parallel lines. The pearl, so famed among the foolish and so marvellous among women, is also a nursling of the Red Sea; and they tell the marvel that it is born when the lightning flashes upon the shells as they lie open. These shells, the mothers of the pearls aforesaid, are hunted when the weather is fine and the sea calm; and the hunters, having caught them, then take out this thing that bewitches the souls of the wanton. A small pearl may be found in a very large shell, and a large one in a small shell; one shell has none, another no more than one, and many have many; there are those who say that as many as twenty grow attached to a single shell. The shell is the flesh, and the pearls grow upon it like a thorn. If one were to open the shells before the proper time and before the full birth, one would find flesh indeed, but would not have the prize of the hunt. The pearl is like a stone that has been hardened, and is by nature unable to hold and keep moisture within itself, not even a little. To the dealers in pearls and to the buyers the very white and the large ones seem most beautiful and most precious, and not a few, by Zeus, have grown rich from them, men whose livelihood comes from this. Nor am I ignorant of this either, that when the stones have been taken out, the shells are released again, having paid, as it were, the much-sought prize as a ransom for their own safety, and then they grow it again. But if the creature that nourishes the pearl dies before the pearl is taken out, as one account says, the pearl too rots together with the flesh and perishes. By nature it has a smooth and well-rounded surface. And if one of those that have grown otherwise should be wished, by the craft of skill, to be rounded off and made smooth, the stone exposes the design; for it does not yield, but grows up roughnesses, and in this way declares that it has been plotted against to make it beautiful.

The Egyptians seem to honour the hawk to Apollo, and they call the god Horus in their own tongue, and they hold the birds in wonder, and rightly say that they belong to the god aforesaid. For of all birds the hawks alone look easily and without strain straight at the rays of the sun, and least dazzled, they travel the highest course, and the divine flame does not trouble them at all. And those who have seen it say that the hawk also flies upside down, as though swimming on its back. From this too the same bird looks toward heaven and toward the all-seeing Sun very freely and unwaveringly. It is the greatest enemy of serpents and biting creatures. Neither serpent, then, nor scorpion, nor any other offspring of evil stock could escape its notice. Of fruits and seeds it does not taste, but it delights in eating flesh, and it drinks blood, and rears its young on the same, and it is most fierce in lust. If a bone of its leg be set beside gold, it draws the gold and by some secret spell leads it to itself and charms it to follow, just as men sing that the Heraclean stone somehow bewitches iron. The Egyptians say that the hawk lives even to five hundred years; and they have not yet persuaded me of it; but what I hear, I tell. Homer too seems somehow to hint that the hawk is dear to the son of Zeus and Leto, when he says:

He went down from the mountains of Ida, like a swift hawk, the slayer of doves. The beetle is a creature without a female sex; it sows its seed into the ball which it rolls, and having done this for twenty-eight days and warmed it, on the day after these it brings forth its young. The warriors of the Egyptians used to wear engraved upon their rings a beetle, the lawgiver hinting that those who fight for their country must be in every way wholly male, since the beetle too has no share in the female sex.

The sow, out of gluttony, spares not even her own young, and indeed, if she comes upon a human body, she does not refrain but eats it. For this reason the Egyptians hated the animal as foul and all-devouring. But the prudent love to honour, even among the brute beasts, the gentler ones that have a share of frugality and of piety. The Egyptians, accordingly, even worship the storks, since these care for their fathers in old age and hold them in honour. The same Egyptians honour also the fox-goose and the hoopoe, since the one is loving to its young, and the other dutiful toward its parents. And I hear too that Manetho the Egyptian, a man who had advanced to the summit of wisdom, said that whoever tastes sow's milk is filled with leprous and scaly disease; and all the people of Asia hate these afflictions. The Egyptians have believed the sow to be most hateful to the sun and the moon. Whenever, therefore, they hold a festival of the moon, they sacrifice sows to her once a year, but at no other time will they sacrifice this animal either to her or to any other of the gods. But the Athenians sacrifice sows at the Mysteries, and very justly; for they ruin the crops, and often, leaping in among them, they break off the young ears not yet ripe, and dig others up. Eudoxus says that the Egyptians, sparing the sows, do not sacrifice them, since, when the grain has been sown, they drive their herds over it; and the sows trample it and push it down into the moist earth, so that it may remain alive and not be consumed by the birds.

When elephants are torn from their accustomed land, even if they are tamed, first by bonds and hunger, then by food and its variety, still the love of the country that reared them never grows faint in them. Most of them, indeed, are destroyed by grief, and some, weeping in floods and with measureless tears, have been blinded in their sight. They are led into the ships across a bridge, on either side of which boughs in full leaf and foliage are set fast, and other green vegetation is shaken, to deceive the beasts; for if the elephants see these, they think even then that they are still going across the land, nor do these things let the sea be seen. The waters before the country from which they must sail are shallow and not deep close in, and the merchant ships stand off at a distance; and for this reason there is need of the bridge and of the device and the contrivance by means of the boughs and the vegetation aforesaid.

I hear that the ram, for the six most wintry months, lies and sleeps upon his left side whenever sleep takes and enfolds him, but from the spring equinox he rests the other way and lies upon his right. So at each equinox the ram changes the side on which he lies.

The fish called phagri the people of Syene consider sacred, but those who inhabit the island called Elephantine hold sacred the maeotae; and this too is a tribe of fish. The honour paid by both peoples to either kind has its origin from this. When the Nile is about to rise and flow up, these fish run ahead and swim, as though messengers of the new water, and the

expectant minds of the Egyptians they gladden beforehand with fair hopes, being the first to perceive the coming of the stream and by some marvellous nature foretelling it. And the people aforesaid love to add this too, for the honour they pay these fish: they say that the two kinds never taste of one another. Now in the Red Sea there are also other shellfish, not smooth in their shells, but having certain notches and hollows. These have sharp edges, and when they come together they close upon one another, fitting their projections alternately, so that they seem like the canine teeth of two saws meeting together. So if they seize any swimmer among the fishermen and bite whatever part it may be, they cut it off, even if there be a bone beneath the part bitten; and biting at a joint, they cut even this off, and naturally; for their bite is most keen.

As for the crocodiles, some of the Egyptians revere them, as the people of Ombos; and just as we hold the Olympian gods in wonder, so do they hold these. And when their children are often snatched away, they rejoice exceedingly, and the mothers of the wretched victims are glad and go about proud, as though they had borne food and a feast for a god. But the people of Apollonopolis, a portion of the Tentyrites, catch the crocodiles in nets, and hanging them aloft from persea trees (these are plants native to the place), they scourge them with many lashes and flay them as they whimper and weep, and then cut them up and eat them. This animal is pregnant for sixty days, and lays sixty eggs, and broods over them for as many days; it has as many vertebrae upon its spine, and is girt, they say, with as many sinews; its delivery proceeds to so great a number, and it lives sixty years (I say these things as Egyptian reports and beliefs); one may also count sixty teeth in this animal, and lying hidden each year for sixty days it stays still and takes no food. To the people of Ombos the crocodiles are even familiar, and indeed those reared in the lakes made by them obey when they call. They bring to them the heads of the animals sacrificed (for they themselves would not taste of this part) and throw them in, and the crocodiles leap about for these. The people of Apollonopolis, however, hate the crocodile, saying that Typhon slipped into its form. But others give not this reason, but say that a crocodile carried off the daughter of Psammyntis, a king good and just to the utmost; and that then, in memory of that misfortune, they hate the whole tribe of them, even those born long after in time.

The Vaccaei (this is a Western people), abusing the bodies of those who die of disease as men who have died unmanly and soft deaths, bury them by fire; but those who have ended their lives in war, as good and noble men who have had a share of virtue, they cast out to the vultures, believing the bird to be sacred. Romulus, having taken omens on the Palatine hill from twelve vultures, and obtaining a favourable prophecy, in imitation of the number of the birds ordained that as many rods, equal in number to the birds then seen, should be carried before the magistrates of the Romans in procession. The Egyptians have believed the vulture to be a bird sacred to Hera, and they adorn the head of Isis with vulture feathers, and they have carved vulture wings on the roofs of their temple-gateways. I have said many other things about this animal above also.

In Coptos of Egypt the Egyptians revere Isis, both with their other rites and indeed with the service and worship rendered by women mourning either their husbands or their children or their brothers. There are scorpions there, very great in size, very swift in their sting, and most dangerous in experience (for they kill at once when they strike); and though the Egyptians devise countless contrivances for protection against them, yet the women mourning beside the goddess, sleeping on the ground and walking barefoot and all but treading upon the scorpions aforesaid, remain unharmed. The same people of Coptos revere also the female gazelles and deify them, but they sacrifice the males. They say the females are a plaything of Isis.

The crocodile (and this too I have heard about the animal, in addition to what has already been related) is by nature cowardly, and moreover spiteful and terribly cunning; it snatches and plots very keenly, but it shudders at all loud noises, and fears even the more violent shout of a man, and indeed it dreads strongly those who attack it more boldly. The people of Egypt called the Tentyrites know also from what point the beast is easily mastered; it would be wounded best of all if struck in the eyes or the armpits or the belly. Its back and tail are by nature unbreakable; for they are fenced and, as one might say, armed with scales and plates, and resemble strong shells or shellfish. The aforesaid people, then, are so industrious in hunting the crocodiles that the river there enjoys the deepest peace from them. There, indeed, men swim with confidence and sport as they swim. But among the people of Ombos or Coptos or Arsinoe it is not even

easy to wash one's feet, nor convenient to draw water; nor is it possible to walk along the banks of the river freely and unguardedly. The Tentyrites revere hawks. Accordingly, those who dwell in Coptos, choosing to vex them as enemies of the crocodiles, often crucify hawks. The one people liken the crocodile to water, and therefore revere it; the other liken the hawk to fire, and therefore worship it; and they bring as evidence that fire and water are unmixable, saying that the two are kept apart. Such marvels the Egyptians tell. When one has crossed the Egyptian Oasis, there meets one a deep desert of seven whole days. After this, men called the Dog-faced dwell along the road that leads to Ethiopia. These live by hunting gazelles and antelopes; to look at they are black, and they have the head and teeth of a dog. Since, then, they resemble this animal, it is very fittingly that I have made mention of them here. They are without voice, but they utter a sharp gibbering; a beard hangs down beneath their chin, so that one might liken it to that of serpents. Their hands are armed with strong and very sharp nails; their whole body is shaggy, in this too like the dogs. They are very swift, and they know the difficult places in those regions. From this they seem also hard to capture.

The wolf's neck is drawn together into a short space. It is therefore not able to turn round, but always looks straight ahead; and if it should ever wish to look behind, it turns its whole body. It is the sharpest-sighted of animals, and indeed it sees even by night, and when there is no moon. From this too that hour of the night is called "wolf-light," in which it alone, having received light by gift of nature, possesses it. Homer too, it seems to me, speaks of the "wolf-twilight" night, during which wolves walk about, seeing. They say the wolf is dear to the Sun, and on this account some say that the year too is called lykabas, in honour of the animal. There is a story that Apollo too delights in it, and the reason of this has reached even me as it has been current. For they say that this god was born when Leto changed her form into that of a she-wolf. For this reason Homer too says "wolf-born, famed for the bow"; and for this reason, too, I learn that a bronze wolf is set up at Delphi, hinting at the travail of Leto. But others say it is not for this reason, but because, when offerings had been stolen from the temple and buried by the temple-robbers, a wolf revealed it. For coming into the temple and seizing with its mouth the sacred robe of one of the prophets, and leading him as far as the place in which the offerings were hidden, it then dug it up with its forefeet.

There is an Egyptian village named Chusae (it belongs to the Hermopolite nome, and seems small but is charming); in it they revere Aphrodite, calling her Urania. They honour also the female cow, and they give this reason. They have believed that cows belong to this goddess; for the female cow has a strong frenzy for love, and is more on heat than the male. At any rate, when she has heard the bellowing, she is most ardently inflamed and kindled for the union. And those skilled in observing such things say that even from thirty stades away a cow hears the bull bellow his amorous and lustful signal. And the Egyptians both mould and paint Isis herself with the horns of a cow.

The sound of the trumpet the people of Busiris and Egyptian Abydos and Lyconpolis abhor, since it somehow resembles a braying ass. And indeed all who are concerned with the worship of Sarapis hate the ass. Knowing this, Ochus the Persian killed the Apis bull but deified the ass, wishing to grieve the Egyptians to the utmost. But he too paid the sacred bull a penalty not to be despised, and no less than that of Cambyses, who first dared this sacrilege. The same worshippers of the Zeus aforesaid hate also the oryx. The reason is, they say, that the Egyptians say it turns away toward the rising of the sun and voids the surplus of its own food. The Pythagoreans say of the ass this too: that it alone of animals was not born according to harmony; and for this reason it is most deaf to the sound of the lyre. And some have said that it was dear to Typhon. They say men attach also this reason to the ass, besides those mentioned. Everything fruitful is honoured; but this animal is by nature contrary to such things. At any rate, no account easily recalls an ass that has borne twins.

In Egyptian lore I have heard this too of the ibis. Whenever it hides its neck and head beneath the feathers under its breast, it traces the shape of a heart. Moreover, that it is most hostile to the creatures born for the harm of both men and crops, I have said already above. They mate with their mouths, and beget their young in this manner. The Egyptians say (and they do not easily find me believing) — they say, then, that those set over the embalming of animals, and skilled in this wisdom, agree that the intestine of the ibis is ninety-six cubits long. I have also heard that it walks measuring out a cubit at each stride. When the moon is eclipsed, it shuts its eyes until the goddess shines forth again. And they say it is dear to Hermes, the father of speech, since its

form resembles the nature of speech. For the black wing-feathers might be compared to speech kept silent and turned over within, while the white might be compared to speech now uttered and heard, the servant and messenger, as one might say, of the speech within. That the creature is very long-lived I have already said; but Apion says, and brings forward as witnesses the priests of Hermopolis, that they showed him an immortal ibis. This seems, even to him, to stand very far from the truth, and to me it would surely appear false. The ibis is by nature very hot; at any rate it is a great eater and eats foul things, since it feeds on serpents and scorpions. But some of these it digests easily, and others it most readily voids. One would very rarely see a sick ibis. Though the ibis everywhere thrusts in its beak, despising filth and stepping into it in order to track down something even from there, yet when it turns to roost it first washes and cleanses itself. It nests in the palm trees, fleeing the cats; for that animal cannot easily climb up and creep up the palm, being often struck against and thrown off by the projections on the trunk. These things too about baboons have now come to my mind. If a baboon gets things that are to be cracked, together with their shells (I mean almonds and acorns and nuts), it shells and cleans them, first cracking them very intelligently, and it knows that the inside is edible, but the outside must be thrown away. It drinks wine, and when boiled and roasted meats are set before it, it fills itself, and it delights in seasoned dishes, but is much vexed at meats carelessly boiled. It is sparing too of clothing when it has put it on, and does the other things I have mentioned above. If you bring a baby still at the breast to a woman's nipple, it will draw the milk like an infant.

The thermouthis asp, to which the Egyptians gave this name, they say is sacred, and the people there revere it, and they bind it about the statues of Isis as a kind of royal diadem. They say that it was born not for the harm and hurt of men; and they tell this marvel, that it spares the good but kills the impious. If this is so, Justice would value this asp at the highest price, since it punishes on her behalf and sees most keenly. Others add that Isis sends it against those who have committed the greatest offences. The Egyptians say that it alone of asps is immortal, reckoning sixteen kinds and varieties of this animal. And in the temples, as they themselves say, building in each corner certain chambers and crypt-like burrows, they then settled thermouthides there, setting calf's fat before them as food at intervals.

The bird Acanthus took its name, the experts in birds say, from the thistles that nourish it. It utters a tuneful and wonderfully musical song. Aristotle says that if one mixes the blood of this Acanthus and of the so-called aegithus into the same vessel and wishes to blend them, they will not come together nor unite into a single mixture. They say the Acanthus is sacred to the spirits that escort men along the road and guide them.

That the turtle-dove is chaste, and would never, apart from her mate to whom she joined herself from the first, consort and welcome a strange and alien bed, I have said above. But I hear from those exact in the inquiry about such matters that white turtle-doves have often appeared. They say these are sacred to Aphrodite and Demeter, but the others to the Fates and the Furies.

White swallows too have sometimes been seen, as Alexander of Myndus says. In the tent of Alexander the son of Pyrrhus a swallow built her nest, and then signified to him that the enterprise on which he was setting out would be left unfulfilled, being not at all good. And to Antiochus too a swallow nesting in his quarters hinted at what was to befall him; for going up to the Medes he then did not return to the Syrians, but threw himself down from a certain cliff. And he too had set out upon an enterprise that was not good. When Dionysius first left the citadel, the swallows nesting there went up together with him, and prophesied his return. The swallow is honoured by the gods of the inner chamber, and by Aphrodite, of the inner chamber too in this case.

When partridges are brooding upon their eggs, they set before them certain bushes and other thickets, to keep off dews and rains and everything moist. For if the eggs become wet, unless the mother comes quickly again and warms them beneath her, they become barren. She lays as many as fifteen eggs together. Theophrastus says somewhere that the partridges of Paphlagonia are seen to have a double heart. Others say that the partridge is a plaything of the son of Zeus and Leto.

I have spoken above also about swans, but now too let me say what I did not say before. Aristotle says that in the sea of the Libyans a flock of swans once appeared, and that a certain song of theirs was heard, as from a chorus singing in unison, very sweet indeed, yet mournful, and such as to break the hearers into pity. And he says that some of them appeared dead at the song. The swan was dear to springs and shallows and lakes and to all the natural confluences and abundances of waters. There, at any rate, the wise in these matters say that it pursues its own muses in love of wisdom.

The owl, accompanying a man set out upon some enterprise and settling upon him, is no good sign, they say. Here is the proof: Pyrrhus of Epirus was going by night straight to Argos, and this bird met him as he sat upon his horse, carrying his spear upright. Then it settled upon this, and did not depart, escorting with no good escort the man aforesaid. Pyrrhus, at any rate, went on into Argos, and died most ingloriously of men. From this, it seems to me, Homer too, knowing well the bird's never-favourable omen, says that Athena sent a heron from the rivers to the company of Diomedes, when they went off to spy out the affairs of the Trojans, but not the owl, even though it seems to be dear to her. And that the land of Ilium is dewy and well-watered, Homer is able to attest in the passages before the battle at the walls.

The octopus is fearful to the crayfish. At any rate, if ever they are caught in one net, the crayfish die at once. There is a river named Lusias in Thurii, which has the whitest of waters and flows most clear, but breeds intensely black fish.

A leopard, named "ampelos" after the plant of the same name, they say is so called as having a nature peculiar beyond the rest, and I hear that it has no tail. If it is seen by women, it casts them into an unexpected disease.

In the land of Scythia there are horned asses, and those horns hold the Arcadian water called the water of the Styx; but all other vessels it breaks through, even if they are made of iron. One of these horns, they say, was brought by Sopater to Alexander the Macedonian, and I learn that he, marvelling at it, dedicated the horn at Delphi as an offering to the Pythian god, and inscribed these lines: "To you, O Healer, Alexander the Macedonian dedicated this horn of a Scythian ass, a thing divine, which was not subdued by the unstained stream of Lusian Styx, but bore up the manhood of the water." Demeter, then, sent up this water near Pheneus, and I have told the reason elsewhere.

To Eupolis the comic poet, Augeas of Eleusis gave as a gift a puppy fair to look at, of Molossian breed, and Eupolis called it Augeas, after the giver. Coaxed by its food, and won over by long familiarity, Augeas the dog loved its master. And once a young fellow-slave of his, named Ephialtes, stole certain plays of Eupolis, and did not escape notice in his theft, but the dog saw him, and falling upon him and biting most unsparingly, killed him. Some time later Eupolis ended his life in Aegina, and was buried there; and the dog, howling and lamenting the lament of dogs, then, wasting itself away with grief and hunger, died upon its keeper and master, hating life. And the place is called, in memory of that event, "The Dog's Lament."

They say there is a kind of deadly ant, and that this ant has the name "laertes." And they used to call certain wasps "laertes" too. Telephus the critic, from Pergamum in Mysia, says these things.

Through the most fiery summer the Nile floods the plains of the Egyptians and gives them the appearance of a sea spread out and smooth, and the Egyptians fish over what was lately ploughland, and sail in boats made for this season and this visitation of the river. Then the river recedes and returns to its own measures, those appointed for it by nature, and fish are left behind, orphaned of their father and bereft of the water that flowed up, fed in thick mud as a dinner for the farmers. And though it will be put rather strongly, this is the Egyptian harvest of fish.

There are not a few kinds of cicada, and those skilled in knowing such things count them and sing their names. One is named "ashy" from its colour, another is the "membrax," from where I do not know, and "laketas" was a cicada's name too, and I have received by hearsay the "kerkope" and a certain "acheta" and "acanthias." For my part, having heard of so many kinds of cicada, I remember these; but whoever has come to know more than those mentioned, let him speak.

These things too I have heard about dogs. Puppies are born blind, and do not see when they have come forth from the mother's womb. For the first thirteen days they are held by this affliction, as many days as the moon also does not shine by night; but then the dog becomes the sharpest-sighted of animals. The Egyptians honour it, and named a nome after it, and they say there is a twofold reason for the honour: one which says that, when Isis was seeking Osiris everywhere, dogs went before her and partly tried to help her track the child, partly to keep off the wild beasts; and the other, that the star called the Dog, which report says was Orion's, now rises, and together with it in a way rises also the Nile, coming to water the land of Egypt and pouring over the fields. So, as bringing and summoning this fruitful water, the Egyptians honour it.

The fish called oxyrhynchus is so named, and seems to have taken its name from its face and from the shape of it. The Nile nourishes this fish, and indeed a nome is named after it, where this same fish has honours. A fish caught with a hook these men would never eat, fearing that perhaps their sacred and wonderful fish, of which I spoke, had chanced to be pierced upon it. And if ever fish are caught in nets, they search through them, lest that one had slipped in unnoticed, and they prefer a catch of nothing to the very best catch with that fish taken. The people round about say it was born from the wounds of Osiris; and they hold that Osiris is the same as the Nile.

The ichneumon is the same creature both male and female, having a share of both this nature and that, and nature has granted it both to beget and to bear with the same body. The defeated, after the battle, are assigned to the meaner sex; for the victors mount the vanquished and sow their seed into them. And these carry off, as the prize of defeat, the endurance of birth-pangs and becoming mothers instead of fathers. To the creatures most hostile to man, the asp and the crocodile, the ichneumon is the greatest enemy, and I have spoken above of their war. The ichneumons are said to be sacred to Leto and the Eileithyiae; and the people of Heracleopolis revere them, so they say.

To Lycaon the king of Emathia a son was born, named Macedon, after whom the country too was afterward called, no longer keeping its ancient name. To him in turn there was a son, brave and conspicuous for beauty, named Pindus; and he had other sons too, but these were foolish in soul and not strong in body, who afterward, in time, envying their brother both his virtue and his other good fortune, destroyed him, and destroyed themselves besides, paying the penalty according to Justice. For Pindus, perceiving the plot of his brothers against him, left the paternal kingdom, and dwelt in a country place, and was strong both in other ways, and a great huntsman. And once he was hunting fawns. They ran with all the speed of their feet, and he, pursuing, drove his horse at full gallop, and drew far away from his fellow-hunters; and the fawns, slipping into a hollow and very deep ravine and saving themselves from the sight of their pursuer, vanished. So Pindus, leaping down from his horse, tied it by the reins to one of the trees standing near, and himself set about searching the ravine and seeking out the fawns aforesaid. Then he heard a voice, and it said, "Touch not the fawns." So, when after looking all round he saw nothing, he feared the voice as having fallen upon him from some higher cause. And for that time he went away, leading his horse off; but on the next day he came alone, and did not enter the ravine at all, both in memory of the voice that had fallen upon his ears and out of fear. As he was turning over a plan within himself and was at a loss who it could have been that the day before had restrained him from his eagerness for the hunt, and as he looked round, as was natural, for either mountain herdsmen or other hunters, a great thing was seen — a serpent, dragging the greater part of its body, but raising up its neck a little toward him (and the neck together with the head was in size greater than a full-grown man); and being seen, it struck him with terror. Yet Pindus did not start in flight, but collecting himself, by cleverness he won the beast over; for of the birds he chanced to have caught he brought some, and offered them to it as gifts and as the ransom of his own life. The serpent, as though softened by the gifts and bewitched, as one might say, went off. This pleased the young man, and from then on, as a good man, he carried to the serpent, as a wage for his safety, the welcome first-fruits of whatever game he had, either of the mountain hunt or of the winged. And while his bringing of the aforesaid gifts was most effective, the blessings from the divinity began also to flourish for Pindus, and to advance day by day to greater grandeur; for as he hunted, good catches met him, both of the animals in the woods and of the birds. So he had great gain, and indeed his fame spread abroad that he went to grips with the beasts and took them unflinchingly; and he was great to look at too, and such as to astonish by the bulk of his body and his fine condition besides, and by his beauty he plainly inflamed all womankind and kindled them toward himself. And they came to his doors as though in Bacchic frenzy, all of the women that were unmarried; while those living with their husbands, guarded indeed by the law, yet enslaved by the fame of Pindus's beauty, would have preferred to live with him than to become goddesses. And most of the men too were amazed at him and loved him; his brothers alone were his enemies. And once they lay in wait for him as he hunted alone — and the hunt was near a river — then, falling upon him as he was bereft of allies, the three struck him with their swords, and he cried out. His comrade the serpent heard this; for the creature is sharp of hearing and very sharp of sight. So it came forth from its lair, and coiling about the impious men killed them, throttling them to suffocation; and it did not relax its watch until the kinsmen of the young man, longing for him, came, and found him lying there. They lamented indeed, but did not dare to approach to bury the corpse, out of fear of the guard. But the serpent, perceiving by some secret nature that it was keeping them off, went away at great leisure, leaving the dead man to receive the last kindness from his kin. So he was buried magnificently, and the river neighbouring on the murder was called Pindus, from the dead man and from his tomb. It is indeed peculiar to animals to repay favours to their benefactors, as has been said above, and not least now.

In Claros too the Clarians and all the Greek people honour the son of Zeus and Leto. Accordingly the place there is untrodden by venomous beasts and most hateful to them, partly by the will of the god, but altogether also because the beasts shudder at him, inasmuch as he himself knows how to save, and indeed begot Asclepius, the saviour and the adversary of diseases. And Nicander too is my witness for what I say. Nicander says: "No viper, nor hateful spiders, nor the deep-striking scorpion lodges in the groves at Claros, since Phoebus, having covered the deep dell with ash trees, set the grassy floor far from biting creatures."

I hear men say that in Eryx, where indeed stands the famous temple of Aphrodite, of which I made mention above when telling the peculiarities of the doves there, there is both much gold and very abundant silver and necklaces and rings of great value, but that these are inviolable and untouched through fear of the goddess, and that men of former times always held both the goddess aforesaid and her treasures in wonderful reverence. But I learn that Hamilcar the Libyan plundered these, and working them into gold and silver, then distributed them to his army, a wicked division; and that for this he was most painfully and grievously tortured and at once punished and hanged, and that all who had any share with him in the deed and the unrighteous sacrilege met with violent and dreadful deaths; and that his fatherland, blessed until then and seeming enviable, when a few of the sacred treasures had been brought into it, became enslaved. These things, though solemn, do not yet bear upon my present purpose; but this, which is in tune with the present discourse, shall be told. Every year and every day both the natives and the strangers sacrifice to the goddess. The altar is the greatest under the open sky; and though many victims are consecrated upon it, it burns all day long and into the night. But while it gives light, it shows neither charcoal nor ash nor the fragments of half-burnt brands, but is full of dew and of fresh grass, which grows up every night. The victims of each herd come of their own accord and stand by the altar, and it is the goddess first that leads them, then the power and the will of the sacrificer. If, for instance, you wish to sacrifice a sheep, behold, a sheep stands by the altar for you, and you must begin the lustral rite; but if you are among the wealthier and wish to sacrifice a cow, or even more, then concerning the price the herdsman will neither penalize you by exacting more, nor will you grieve him; for the goddess oversees the justice of the sale. And if you set down a fair price, you will have her gracious; but if you wish to buy more cheaply than is proper, you have laid down your silver in vain, for the animal goes away, and you cannot sacrifice. Let this too be told by us, after the foregoing, as peculiar to the animals of Eryx.