Book 11

The race of the Hyperborean men and the honours paid to Apollo there are celebrated by the poets and sung also by the prose-writers, among them Hecataeus too — not the Milesian, but the Abderite. The many other solemn things he says it does not seem to me my present purpose to bring forward, and so I shall postpone to another time the telling of each, when it will be more pleasant for me and better for my hearers; but those things which this work alone summons me to relate are these. There are priests of this god, sons of Boreas and Chione, three in number, brothers by birth, six cubits in height. So whenever these perform the customary rite at the usual season for the god aforesaid, there fly down from the mountains which they call the Rhipaean clouds of swans, irresistible in their multitude, and having circled the temple and, as it were, purified it by their flight, they then descend into the precinct of the temple, which is very great in size and most fair in beauty. So when the singers sing to the god with their own music, and the harpers join the chorus with an all-harmonious melody, then the swans too sing along, keeping time in unison, and in no way anywhere do they sing harshly or out of tune, but as though having taken the keynote from the leader of the chorus, they sing together with the native masters of the sacred songs. Then, when the hymn is finished, the swans withdraw, having rendered their customary service in honour of the god, and having celebrated the god, the aforesaid winged choristers, so to call them, singing and chanting throughout the whole day.

The Epirotes too sacrifice to Apollo in another way, both they themselves and all the strangers who are sojourning among them, and to him they hold the greatest festival of one day in the year, solemn and magnificent. There is a grove sacred to the god, and it has an enclosure round about, and within there are serpents, and these are a plaything of the god. The priestess, an unmarried woman, comes alone, and brings food to the serpents. They are said by the Epirotes to be descendants of the Python at Delphi. If, then, these serpents look gently upon the priestess as she comes and take the food eagerly, they are agreed to signify a fruitful and disease-free year; but if they frighten her and do not take the offerings she holds out, some divine the contrary of what was said, and others expect it.

In Etna of Sicily a temple of Hephaestus is honoured, and there is an enclosure and sacred trees and a fire unquenchable and unsleeping. There are dogs about the temple and the grove that are sacred, and on those who enter the temple and the grove modestly and as is fitting and proper, these dogs fawn and wag their tails, as though showing friendliness and recognizing them; but if anyone be polluted in his hands, this man they both bite and tear, while those who come merely from some unchaste intercourse they only chase away.

The people of Hermione revere Demeter, and sacrifice to her magnificently and grandly, and call the festival Chthonia. At any rate I hear that very great cows are led by the priestess of Demeter to the altar from the herd and offer themselves to be sacrificed. And Aristocles is my witness for what I say, who says somewhere: "Demeter rich in fruits, you are manifest both among the Sicilians and among the children of Erechtheus. But this one great thing is judged among the people of Hermione: for the wild bull from the herd, whom not even ten men can master, this one an old woman, walking alone, leads alone by the ear to this altar, and he follows like a child its mother. Yours is this, Demeter, yours is the strength; gracious may you be, and may the lot flourish wholly in Hermione."

In the land of Daunia they celebrate a temple of Athena of Ilium; and they sing that the dogs reared there fawn upon those of the Greeks who arrive, but bark at the barbarians.

In the land of Arcadia there is a sanctuary of Pan; "the Court" is the name of the place. So whatever animals take refuge there, the god, holding them in reverence as suppliants, then saves them with the greatest safety; for the wolves that pursue them shudder to enter within, and are checked merely by seeing whither the prey has fled. These too, it seems, have their own good means toward safety.

In Curias the deer (there is a multitude of these beasts there, and many hunters are intent upon hunting them), whenever they take refuge in the sanctuary of Apollo there (it is a very great grove), the dogs bark indeed, but do not endure to come near; and the deer, gathered together, feed an untroubled and fearless feeding, by some secret nature entrusting to the god their own safety.

I have said somewhere above that the flies in Olympia, at the coming of the festal assembly, willingly withdraw and, as one might say, go off together with the women to the opposite bank of the Alpheus. In Leucas there is a high headland, and a temple is founded to Apollo, and those who honour him name him Actian. So when the assembly is about to gather, at which they also perform the leap for the god, they sacrifice an ox to the flies, and these, filled with the blood, disappear. The flies of Leucas, then, depart when bribed, but those of Pisa are unbribed. Those, therefore, are the better, doing what is needful out of reverence for the god, and not for a wage.

There is an island, Icarus, and it lies in the Red Sea. There, then, is a temple of Artemis, and multitudes of wild goats and of gazelles very well-fed, and hares too. If, then, anyone, having asked leave of the goddess to take them, then attempts to hunt as many as he can with success, he does not fail of his eagerness, but both takes them and rejoices in the gift; but if he does not ask, he neither takes them and pays penalties, which others tell.

So then, since I made mention of the Rhipaean swans among the Hyperboreans, because they serve the son of Zeus and Leto every day with devotion, shall we not tell the peculiarities of the sacred bull which the Egyptians deify? And how would not both this work and Nature blame us, of whom this too is a work and a gift? But the account shall be not careless on this side either, and fittingly this piece of theology too shall be told. Apis is believed by the Egyptians to be a god most manifest. He is born of a cow, into which a heavenly light, falling, is the cause of his conception. And the Greeks call him Epaphus, and trace his mother to be Io the Argive, the daughter of Inachus; but the Egyptians reject this account as false, and use time as their witness. For they say that Epaphus was born late and recently, but that the first Apis took up his sojourn among men many myriads of years earlier. The signs and tokens of him are told by Herodotus and by Aristagoras, but the Egyptians do not agree with them; for they say there are twenty-nine of them and that they are conspicuous on this sacred bull. What these are, and how they are scattered over the body of the animal, and in what way they are, as it were, spangled upon him, you will learn elsewhere; but as to which of the stars each sign by symbols hints at its nature, the Egyptians are competent to give proof. For indeed they say that the signs reveal the rising of the Nile and the shape of the cosmos; and there is a certain sign and symbol, as they say, which hints that darkness is older than light. And the crescent shape of the moon declares another sign to the one who understands, and besides these there are other riddles of other things, not easy to read with the eyes for the profane and the ignorant of divine lore. When the report spreads abroad saying that the god has been born to the Egyptians, some of the sacred scribes, to whom the exact knowledge of the test concerning the signs has been handed down as a study from father to son, come there, where the calf of the god-beloved cow was born, and according to the most ancient direction of Hermes they raise a house, where surely it shall live for the first time, looking toward the risings of the sun and receiving the food of the calf in sufficient measure; for this calf must be at the milk for four months. And when it has been reared up, then, as the new moon rises, sacred scribes and prophets come to meet it, and indeed each year they adorn for this purpose a ship sacred to this god, and in it they ferry him to Memphis, where are his dearest haunts and welcome dwellings and pleasure-grounds and runs and wrestling-floors and gymnasia and homes of fair cows and a well and a spring of drinkable water; for the attendants and priests say it does not always profit him to drink of the Nile, since one grows fat on this sweet stream, which is good for a bulk of flesh. The processions which they conduct, and the sacred rites which they perform, sacrificing the epiphany-offerings of the new god — the Egyptians — and the dances they dance, and the feasts and assemblies they hold, and how every city and village goes through with mirth, it would be long to tell. And he in whose herd this divine animal was born seems blessed and is so, and the Egyptians hold him in wonder. And Apis was a good seer, not, by Zeus, by seating maidens or older women upon any tripods, nor by filling them with a sacred draught, but — what one prays for to this god — children playing outside and frisking to the pipes, becoming inspired, foretell in rhythm each several thing, so that what they say is truer than the words at the Sagra. The Egyptians liken him also to Horus, whom indeed they have believed to be most of all the cause of the bearing of crops and of all good seasons. From this too they philosophize about his many colours, hinting through symbols at the variety of the crops. And a certain account of the prophets, not known to all, says that Menis the king of the Egyptians devised to revere a living animal, and then chose the bull, having believed it to be the fairest of all and going in the footsteps of Homer's judgment about these matters, says Menis. For Homer too says in the Iliad: "As a bull stands forth pre-eminent among all in the herd; for he is conspicuous among the gathered cattle." But the things to which the Egyptians who have written about the animals turn aside into mythology about this beast do not seem to me agreeable.

"But come now, change your strain," the discourse might say, and sing not, by Zeus, a horse nor the ambush within it, but Mneuis the bull. And this bull the Egyptians say is sacred to the Sun, since they say that Apis is an offering to the Moon. And to this bull too there is, they say, a peculiar token of his being neither base nor spurious but dear to the god aforesaid. Of these matters another shall speak; but the Egyptian account I have heard concerning the trial and test of this bull, whether he is of a higher conception or not, this I wish to tell. Bocchoris the king of the Egyptians, having somehow snatched a false renown and a report saying nothing sound, seemed both just in his judgments and adorned in soul toward holiness; but in truth he was of a contrary nature. And most of the rest I now pass over, but concerning Mneuis, wishing to grieve the Egyptians, see what he does to him. He brings against him a wild bull as adversary. So Mneuis bellows, and the newcomer bellowed in answer. Then, carried away by his rage, the stranger, wishing to fall upon the god-beloved bull, stumbles, and falling against the trunk of a persea tree his horn was caught, and Mneuis, wounding him in the side, killed him. Bocchoris is put to shame, and the Egyptians hate him. And if anyone thinks it most shameful to fall from natural discourse into myths, he is a fool. For I say all that is done to these bulls and all that has been done, and I hear the Egyptians telling it. But it was not so; thus hateful is falsehood to those people.

The dolphins — their love of music and their earnestness and devotion about song has been proclaimed and gone abroad to many, and that they are friendly to man others have said, and we too have set forth somewhere above in our account; but here it is no worse to speak of their intelligence. Whenever, at any rate, a dolphin falls into a net, at first it keeps quiet and gives no thought at all to flight, but feasts on the fish caught along with it, and as though come as an invited guest to a banquet, it then fills itself with them; but when it perceives, as it is being dragged, that it is coming near the land, then, gnawing through the net, it gets free and is at liberty. And if ever it is caught, the more gracious of the fishermen, threading a rush through its nostrils, let it go; and the dolphin, as though ashamed at the reproach, no longer comes near a net thereafter. And Aristotle says that even if it is caught and bound and is in the boat, many dolphins swim round the fishing-vessel, and leap and frisk to such a degree, like suppliants, until the fishermen are moved to something and pity the prisoner, and yield to those that beg and release the captive to them.

When Daphnis the cowherd of Syracuse suffered at the hands of the nymph these things that are celebrated in song, his five reared dogs — Sannos and Podargos and Lampas and Alcimos and Theon — beholding the sufferings of their master, chose death over him, they say, and lamented much first, and wept exceedingly.

Various and manifold things about the peculiar nature

of elephants I have related above; but now it shall be told that this animal is good of memory, and knows how to keep commands and not to falsify in any way the expectation and hope of those who entrust anything to it. When, at any rate, Antigonus was besieging the people of Megara, with one of the war-elephants there was reared also a female, named Nicaea. To her, then, the wife of the man who reared the elephant entrusted a child whom she had chanced to bear thirty days before, addressing it in the tongue of the Indians, which the elephants understand. And it both loved the child and guarded it, and was pleased when it lay near, and looked toward it when it whimpered, and as it slept it kept off the flies with its trunk, with a reed-branch of the kind thrown to it for food; and if the infant was not present, then it would refuse food too. The nurse, then, had to fill it with milk and set it beside its guardian, or Nicaea was plainly indignant and enraged and intending some dreadful thing. And often, when the child had wept itself out, it would then shake the cradle in which it lay, soothing the infant with the rocking, just as nurses and wet-nurses are wont to do — doing this, O men, was the elephant. Of jealousy among various animals, most active in its season, I know I have spoken — of the purple coot and the dog and indeed, in the third place, by Zeus, the stork; but now I am about to tell of an elephant's anger at being wronged in his marriage. For catching in the very act the wife of the man who trained and reared him committing adultery, it ran one of its two horns through both of them and killed both the adulterer and the adulteress, and let them lie upon the outraged bedclothes and the trampled couch, so that the trainer, when he came, both condemned the wrong and recognized the avenger for him. And this was an Indian deed, but it spread abroad even here; and I hear that in the time of Titus, a good and noble man, the same thing happened in Rome. They add that the elephant there killed both, and covered them with a cloak, and when the keeper came, casting off the cloak, showed them lying near one another, and the horn too, with which it had pierced them, this also was seen stained with blood.

Prophecy too, it seems, was peculiar to serpents. In Lavinium, at any rate, the small town that is of the land of the Latins (it has been named after Lavinia the daughter of Latinus, when Latinus fought as ally with Aeneas against the people called Rutulians and then conquered them; and Aeneas the Trojan, son of Anchises, founded the city aforesaid, which would be, as one might say, the grandmother of Rome on the mother's side; for setting out from there Ascanius the son of Aeneas and Creusa the Trojan woman founded Alba, and of the Albans Rome is a colony) — in Lavinium, then, a great and thick grove is honoured, and it has near it a temple of Argive Hera. And in the grove there is a great and deep den, and it is the lair of a serpent. And sacred virgins on appointed days go into the grove carrying in their two hands a barley-cake, and with their eyes bound up by fillets. A divine breath leads them straight to the lair of the serpent, and they go forward without stumbling, step by step and quietly, as though seeing with uncovered eyes. And if they are virgins, the serpent accepts the food as pure and befitting a god-beloved animal; but if not, the food remains untouched, since he foreknows and has divined the corruption. And ants, crumbling into small pieces the cake of the woman who has lost her virginity, so that it may be easy for them to carry, then bear it out of the grove, cleansing the place. And the deed is recognized by the natives, and those who went in are tested, and she who has shamed her virginity is punished with the penalties of the law. Thus I would demonstrate the prophetic power of serpents.

Homer, then, says: "Hard are the gods to look upon when they appear manifest." So the serpent, too, that is held in the most sacred honours has something the more divine about it, and it is not profitable to look upon it. And what I say is this. In Melite of Egypt there is a sacred serpent in a tower, and it is honoured and has attendants and ministers, and there is set for it a table and a mixing-bowl. Into this, then, each day, they steep barley-groats in honey-water and then go away; and on the next day, returning, they find the bowl empty. So the eldest of these ministers conceived a very keen longing to behold the serpent, and going in alone and doing the customary things he withdrew; and the serpent, climbing up onto the table, was feasting. And the busybody, opening the doors (for he had chanced to shut them as was customary), made a loud noise. The serpent grew indignant and withdrew; and the man, having seen what he longed for to his own hurt, became out of his mind, and having told all he had seen and confessed that he had committed sacrilege, was speechless, and then not long after, falling down, died.

Peculiar to animals are these things too. The peacock, that it may not be bewitched, seeks out the root of flax as a kind of natural amulet, and stuffing it under one of its wings carries it about. And it is said too that if a horse's urine be retained, a virgin loosing the girdle she wears and striking it across the face with the girdle, the horse straightway urinates copiously and ceases from its pain. And a mare maddened very violently for mating one can easily stop, as Aristotle says, if one shear off the hairs along its neck; for it is ashamed, and is not unruly, and ceases from its insolence and its much frisking, downcast at the shame. This too Sophocles hints at in his play Tyro; she is made to say, and what she says is this: "I suffer grief for my hair like a filly, who, seized by the cowherds in the horse-pastures with a savage hand, has the yellow harvest of her neck reaped off, and going to drink in the meadow of the river waters, sees in a shadow the image of herself outraged by the shearing, her mane plucked off without honour. Alas, even one without pity would pity her, cowering for shame, how she rages, mourning and weeping for her former mane."

When a house is about to fall down, the mice in it, and indeed the weasels too, have a sense of it, and they anticipate the collapse and move out of house. This too, they say, happened at Helice. For when the people of Helice committed impiety against the Ionians who had come to them, and slaughtered them at the altar, then surely (this is the Homeric saying) "to them the gods showed forth portents"; for five days before Helice disappeared, all the mice in it, and weasels and snakes and centipedes and beetles and the rest of such creatures, withdrew in a body by the road that leads to Cerynia. And the people of Helice, seeing what was being done, marvelled indeed, but could not conjecture the cause. But when the aforesaid animals had departed, an earthquake came by night, and the city subsided, and a great wave overwhelming it, Helice disappeared, and by chance ten Lacedaemonian ships

lying at anchor perished together with the aforesaid city. And Justice uses, for the punishment of impious men, the animals as ministers. And here is the proof: Pantacles the Lacedaemonian, having forbidden the artists of Dionysus who were departing to Cythera to pass through Sparta, then, as he sat in the ephors' office, was torn apart by dogs. In Sicily there is a city, Adranus, as Nymphodorus says, and in this city a temple of Adranus, a local god; and he says this god is very manifest. And the other things he says about him, and how he is conspicuous and to those who pray gracious and propitious, we shall learn another time; but now these things shall be told. There are sacred dogs, attendants of his and ministering to him, surpassing the Molossian dogs in beauty and along with this in size too, not fewer than a thousand in number. So these, by day, fawn upon and wag their tails at those who pass into the temple and the grove, whether they be strangers or natives; but by night they lead, like escorts and guides, very kindly, those who are by now drunk and stumbling along the road, going before each to his own home, and from the drunken and disorderly they exact a sufficient penalty; for they leap upon them and tear their clothing, and so far chasten them; but those who attempt to steal cloaks they tear most bitterly apart.

The sea-snail that is found in the Red Sea was very fair to look at and very great. For its shell is of purple, and it has also a spiral, finely wrought and varied by Nature. You would say you were looking at a garland woven of some many-coloured flowers, green and gold-like and vermilion, the colours scattered alternately at equal intervals.

Nature, they say, made the dolphin ever in motion, and the limit of this motion is also that of its life. When, at any rate, it needs sleep, it raises its body and floats up to the surface of the water, so that the whole of it is seen, and then it falls asleep; yet it too is not sleepless and without a share of this god. While it sleeps, then, it is pushed down into the depth, until it touches the earth below. And when it draws near to it, it is awakened by being struck against the bottom, then it rises again. And again drawn into sleep and overcome by the god, it slips down, and once more awakened by the same striking it floats up again. And it does this many times, being between rest and activity, yet never falling into complete motionlessness.

In the Red Sea there is a fish flat in shape like the sole, as they say. And in its scales it is not very rough to the touch, but in colour it is golden, and it is marked with black lines from the top of the head to the tail. One might say these were strings stretched taut; from this the fish itself is called "the harper." Its mouth is set close together and is intensely black, but it is girdled with a saffron-coloured band; and its crown is variegated with the gold-like gleam and indeed with certain black outlines. And it has gold-like fins, but its tail is black except at the tips; these are intensely white. And other harpers too are sung of as being born. And they are purple over the whole body, having golden lines at intervals; and they have on the head bands like violet flowers, the one creeping before the eyes as far as the gills, the other passing after the eyes to the middle of the head, and another running round the neck like a necklace.

A leopard-fish grows in the Red Sea, as those who have seen it say, and it resembles in colour and in its round spots the mountain leopard. And the oxyrhynchus that is found there has a long mouth, but its eyes are golden, and its eyelids are white; on its back are sprinkled pale markings, and its fins, those on either side, are black, but those on the back are white; and its tail is long in shape, but in colour green, and a golden line divides it down the middle.

To Ptolemy the Second, whom they also call Philadelphus, an elephant calf was given as a gift, and it was reared in the Greek tongue, and understood those who spoke it. It had been believed before this animal that elephants gave ear to the tongue of the Indians alone.

It seems that even among the brute beasts the male is honoured by Nature. At any rate, the male serpent has the crest and the beard, the cock too has the comb and the wattles, the stag the horns, the lion the mane, the cicada the voice.

The cause of the war for the Achaeans and the Trojans, they say, was Helen the daughter of Zeus, and for the Persians against the Greeks Atossa the wife of Darius, who longed to possess Attic handmaids; and the cause of the long war for the Greeks was the tablet against the Megarians. The Magnesians and the Ephesians a locust set at war, a dove the Chaonians and the Illyrians; and the Thebans in Egypt are said to have warred against the Romans over a dog.

A certain account says that Pythochares the flute-player checked an onset of wolves by playing an intense and noble strain on the flute. A multitude of flies drove out the Megarians, wasps the people of Phaselis, and centipedes the Rhoetians.

They say that sheep in Pontus have no gall, and in the island of Naxos a double gall.

The bee-eater bird seems in this respect more righteous than the storks; for it does not wait to feed its parents when they have grown old, but does this as soon as it has grown its wing-feathers.

This too, it seems, is a peculiar good thing of animals. The gods take forethought for them, and neither despise them nor hold them in slight regard. For even if a creature has no share of reason, yet at least it is not unfortunate in understanding and the wisdom proper to itself. How, then, the animals too are loved by the gods I shall tell, and if not many examples out of many, yet enough. A horseman, Lenaeus by name, had a horse fair to look at, very swift to run, and most brave in spirit; and it was good in the displays at running through the cavalry-drill it had been taught, and steadfast in war itself, and very noble both at pursuing where there was need and at retreating where the occasion called him. So from all these things it was a good possession, and he seemed most renowned among his fellow-cavalrymen. This horse, then, of such a kind, was unable to see with one of its eyes, the right, owing to a blow that had fallen upon it. So Lenaeus, seeing all his hope tottering in the affliction of that noble horse — since indeed the cavalry shield also covered for him the left eye, the only one that saw — comes to the temple of Sarapis, bringing the horse as a most unusual patient, and Lenaeus beseeches the god, as on behalf of some brother or son, to pity the suppliant the horse, and that too one who had wronged him in nothing. For men, he said, are causes of evil to themselves, either by doing some impious thing or by saying something forbidden; "but of a horse," he said, "what sacrilege, what murder, what blasphemy, or how or whence?" And he himself called the god to witness that he had never wronged anyone in anything, and for this reason he begged him to deliver his fellow-soldier and friend from the eye-disease. And the god did not despise nor make light of healing the speechless and reasonless creature, great a god though he is, and for this reason he pitied both the sick one and the one who prayed on its behalf, and gave a cure: not to drench the eye, but to warm it with fomentations at midday in the precinct of the temple. And these things were done, and the horse's eye was made strong. And Lenaeus offered thank-offerings and life-ransoms, but the horse frisked and snorted and seemed greater and fairer, and was bright and ran to the altar and gloried, and indeed was seen rolling at the foot of the steps, paying thank-offerings to the god its saviour, as far as it had strength.

In a vineyard a farmer was digging a trench, that he might plant a fair and noble vine-shoot; then, bringing down his mattock, he unawares cut through the middle a sacred asp that was lurking there, an asp least hostile to men. And carding the earth, seeing the tail-part held fast in the sand, but the half from the belly up to the neck still creeping and full of the gore from the cut, he is struck with terror, and becoming out of his mind he passes into downright madness and as strong as could be. And by day he was without mastery of himself and of his reason, and by night too he was raving, and would start up from his couch and say he was pursuing the asp, and as though he were all but at the very biting, he would cry out most terrifyingly and call for allies, and indeed he said he saw the image of the creature slain by him, raging and threatening, and he confessed at times even to have been bitten, and that he was in pain was plain from his groanings. When, however, the disease was far advanced in time, his kinsmen lead the man as a suppliant to the temple of Sarapis, and begged the god to check and make disappear the phantom of the aforesaid creature. The god, then, pities the man and heals him; but that the asp did not remain unavenged has been said, and quite sufficiently.

The king of the Egyptians, having received as an Indian gift a peacock, the greatest and fairest of peacocks to look at, does not think fit to rear it with the common ones, as though it were a household plaything or for the belly's sake, but dedicates it to Zeus the Guardian of the City, judging the bird aforesaid a worthy offering to the god. A profligate young man, and very rich too, longs to seize it and make a dinner of it; for always and on every occasion this profligate gratified his belly, accounting the variety of food, and what was procured with danger, and what was bought with many toils, gain toward pleasure, in his excess of gluttony and loathsomeness. So he holds out a generous wage for the sacrilege to one of the god's attendants, and promises another besides. And he, lightened by an empty hope, went where he knew the bird roosted and attempted to seize it and bring it to the rich man. And he does not see it, but saw a very great asp upright and enraged against him. And at first he was afraid and went off, but as the profligate pressed and urged him on, the servant went after the peacock, but it, darting higher and raising itself on its wings and lifted light, settled neither on any of the sacred trees nor on any other high and lofty place, but on the middle of the temple, and looked at them unflinchingly, as though hinting that it was by nature superior to the plot from them, and that it was not theirs to take it. So when nothing had been accomplished, the profligate demanded back the silver he had paid in advance, but the other would not give it back, saying that he had done all that was his, but was unable to steal a possession of the gods. As was natural, then, there was strife about these things and by now an outcry, and many heard; then the priest set over all comes up, and asks the ground of the quarrel in the temple, and they accuse one another. And the rich man, abused with threats and blasphemies and revilings, departs, and swallowing the bone of another bird and in pain ended his life most painfully, and the wicked servant, as a temple-robber, the governor of the city punished, but the bird they beheld neither living nor dead, but, having lived loud and famous a hundred years, as the story goes, it then disappeared.

This too resembles and agrees with that. A man named Cissus, who served Sarapis devotedly, having been plotted against by her who was first his beloved and afterward his wife, and having eaten serpent's eggs, was in pain and ill, and was expected to die. He beseeches the god, and the god bade him buy a living moray and put his hand into the live-tank. And Cissus obeys and puts it in, and the moray, fastening on, held to it, and being drawn off, drew off together with itself the disease in the young man. This moray, then, having become a minister of the god's healing, has come to our hearing.

Chrysermus too, in the time of Nero, vomiting blood and already wasting away, this same god healed by his drinking bull's blood. And I say these things because animals are so beloved of the gods that they are even saved by the gods, and save others when those gods will it. Moreover this god made Basilis the Cretan, who had fallen into a wasting disease, free of so great an evil by tasting the flesh of an ass. And it fell out that this happened to him according to the name of the animal; for the god said this treatment and cure would be "profit-bringing" to him. And concerning these matters these things too are enough.

Peculiar to animals are these things too. Mares are believed to be most suited for chariot-driving. And I learn that the men who train them say that horses delight in bathing and anointing. And that horses were anointed with perfume too, Simonides says in his iambics. The Persians, after the battle of Cyrus in Lydia, rear camels along with their horses, trying to cast out, by the rearing-together, the fear of the horses that is kindled in them by the camels.

Those creatures are called cartilaginous which have no scales; these would be the moray, the conger, the torpedo, the sting-ray, the ox-ray, the dogfish; the dolphin, the whale, the seal. These alone of water-creatures bear their young alive. Those are called soft-bodied which have no bone; these would be the octopus, the cuttlefish, the squid, the sea-nettle. These too are without blood and entrails. The soft-shelled are the lobsters, shrimps, crabs, sea-crabs; and these too cast off their old shell. The hard-shelled are oysters, purple-shells, trumpet-shells, conches, sea-urchins, crayfish. Saw-toothed are the wolf, the dog, the lion, the leopard; these too eat flesh. With teeth in both jaws are man, horse, ass, which also have fat. With teeth meeting in front are the ox, the sheep, the goat. With tusks are the wild boar, the mole; for the elephant I say has not teeth but horns. Insects are the wasp, the bee; and they say these have not even lungs. Amphibious are the river-horse, the otter, the beaver, the crocodile. Scaly are the lizard, the salamander, the tortoise, the crocodile, the snake; and these too cast off their old skin except the crocodile and the tortoise. Solid-hoofed are the horse, the ass. Cloven-hoofed are the ox, the deer, the goat, the sheep, the pig. With many divisions of the foot are man and dog. Web-footed and flat-clawed are the swan and the goose. With curved talons are hawks and eagles. The peculiar nature of the other animals I have told elsewhere.

The fox-goose too, it seems, is a creature loving to its young, and does the same things as the partridges. For it too rolls itself before its young, and gives hope to the one who comes upon it that he will catch it; and they, meanwhile, escape. And when they have got well on their way, it too, lightening itself with its wings, departs.

The Egyptians say that the hawk, while living and still surviving, is a god-beloved bird, but when it has departed from life, it both prophesies and sends dreams, having put off its body and become a naked soul. And the Egyptians say too that a three-footed hawk once appeared among them, and they seem to those who believe them to speak soundly.

The partridges of Paphlagonia are double-hearted, as indeed Theophrastus says. And Theopompus says that the hares in Bisaltia each have a double liver. And Apion says, if he is not playing the wonder-monger, that deer too in certain places have four kidneys. And the same man says that in the time of Oenis the son of Menis a two-headed crane appeared, and Egypt flourished; and in the reign of another king a four-headed bird, and the Nile flooded as never before, and there was abundance of crops and a wondrous prosperity of harvests. And Nicocreon the Cyprian had a four-horned deer, and dedicated it at Delphi and inscribed beneath it: "For your sake, child of Leto mighty with the bow, Nicocreon conceived this design and took this four-horned deer." And indeed there were four-horned and three-horned sheep in the temple of Zeus the Guardian of the City. And I myself have beheld a five-footed sacred ox, an offering to this god in the great city of the Alexandrians, in the celebrated grove of the god, where persea trees growing together showed forth a most beautiful shade and coolness. And there was a calf there, in colour like wax, and it had on its shoulder a foot hanging down, superfluous indeed for treading upon, but complete in its formation. And these things do not seem to agree very well with nature, but I have told what came to my sight and hearing.