Book 14

In the Ionian Sea, near Epidamnus, where the Taulantii dwell nearby, there is an island called Athena's, and fishermen live there. There is also a lake on the spot, and shoals of tamed and domesticated mackerel are reared in it. The fishermen throw food to these, and there is a truce between them, and the fish are free and have been granted exemption from being hunted, and they live on to a great age, and even old mackerel dwell there. Yet they do not feed in idleness, nor are they ungrateful for their keep; rather, when they have taken their morning food from the fishermen, they then go off to the hunt themselves, as though paying for their nurture. Going forth from the harbour they set out against the foreign mackerel, and when they meet them, as it were a troop or a battle-line, they swim up to them as to fellows of their own kind and nature; and neither do those flee these, nor these turn away from those, but they come together. Then the tame ones, surrounding the newcomers and forming a ring and packing themselves close, cut off a great multitude in the middle and do not let them slip away, but wait for their keepers; and in return for the food on which they were fed they feast the fishermen in turn. For the fishermen come up and take the foreign fish and work a great slaughter. The tame ones then go off in haste to the harbour, and slipping into their own hollows await their afternoon meal. And the fishermen come bringing it, if they wish to have fellow-hunters and faithful friends. And this is done day by day.

If you give a man suffering in the liver and afflicted with jaundice the gall of a parrot-fish to eat, he will be saved, as the skilled fishermen teach.

Fish are caught even without weels and hooks and nets, in this way. Many sea-gulfs end in certain shallows, and these can be waded into. So when there is calm and a peace of the winds, the expert fishermen lead many men there, and bid them walk and trample the sand, pressing down their soles as hard as they can. Then deep footprints are left behind, which, if they are kept — provided the sand does not collapse and confuse them, and the water is not stirred up by wind — the fishermen wait a little, then, wading in, find lying at rest in the hollows of the steps and in the footprints the flat fish: plaice and turbot and sole and torpedo-fish and the like.

About the sea-urchin I have spoken above, and now too I will tell what I have further heard. It is good for the stomach; for one who was before a poor eater and loathed everything whatever, this restores. It is also an emptier of the bladder, as those skilled in these matters say. And if you smear it on a body that is scaly with itch, it makes whole one who before was suffering the said disease. Burnt in its very shells, it cleanses away the foulness of wounds. And the ash of a land-hedgehog burnt, mixed besides with pitch and smeared on the bald parts, makes the hairs that were before fugitive (to add a little jest) grow up again. Drunk in wine it is good for the kidneys, and saves those who are dropsical when it is drunk, as I have already said. And the liver of this hedgehog, dried in the sun, heals those who are seized

by the disease called the elephant's. The female elephant — the wise ones celebrate that her tusks are the more valuable, and they teach us this too. In the land of Mauretania the elephants are wont to shed their tusks invariably in the tenth year, just as deer shed their horns, only deer do so every year. These elephants, then, choose out level and dewy ground in preference to the rest, and set their tusks into it, crouching down on bended knees, exceedingly eager to be rid of them. They thrust them so far in as to hide them completely; then, smoothing the place with their feet, they leave it standing guard over their treasure. And since the ground is most fertile, it very quickly grows grass over it, and conceals the sight of what has been done from those who pass that way. But those who track down these hidden hoards, and have a certain cunning against the elephants' stratagem, bring water in goatskins, and then scatter the filled skins about in different places, while they themselves remain there. And one of them sleeps, another drinks, and one perhaps, even while sipping from his cup between draughts, sings a little, and through his song calls to mind the girl he loves. Nor should I be surprised if one of them also makes advances to a handsome youth who is present and a partner in the search; for the Moors are both beautiful and tall, and have a manly look, and apply themselves to the works of hunting, and indeed they inflame many to love, being still mere boys and of that age. So if the tusks lie buried near, by some secret and marvellous attraction they draw that water out of the skins, and prove them empty. Thereupon, with mattocks and pickaxes, they dig up the place, and have their quarry, having tracked it by scent without hounds. But if the skins stay full where the hunters of these tusks set them down, they go off to another hunt, and indeed carry off the skins and water again, the instruments of the said chase.

The elephant is said to have a double heart and to think with two minds, raging with the one and growing gentle with the other; and I follow Moorish accounts in saying this. For the same men celebrate this too, that there are lynxes there. They say the lynxes are even more snub-nosed than the leopard, but shaggy at the tips of their ears. This beast is a terrible leaper, and powerful to grip its prey most forcibly and firmly. Euripides too seems to bear witness to this beast, even when he does not name it, where he somewhere says: "He comes upon his shoulders bearing a weight, either of a boar or of the misshapen lynx, a hard-to-bear creature." But what he means by "hard-to-bear" it is better to ask the critics.

About the great ostrich one might say this too. When it is killed, its stomach is found, when cleaned out, to hold stones, which the ostrich swallows and keeps and digests in time within its gizzard. These stones would also be good for men's digestion, and the bird's sinews and fat are good for men's sinews. The ostrich is caught by horses; for it runs in a circle, but circling round on the outer side, while the horsemen cut across by the inner circle, and going round a shorter course they catch it in time, when it gives out from running. It is taken also in this way. It makes a low nest on the ground, scooping out the sand with its feet. The very middle of it is hollow, but it builds the edges round about high, walling them off in a manner, so that the rain from heaven may be kept out by the rims and may not flow into the nest and flood the ostrich's chicks, which are tender. It lays even more than eighty eggs, yet does not hatch them all at once, nor do they all come to the light at the same time; but some are already hatched, others are still forming within the eggs, and others are being kept warm. So when the ostrich is engaged in this, a man who is not foolish but practised in such hunting, having observed it, fixes sharpened spear-points about the nest, setting them upright on their butt-ends, and the iron gleams; then he withdraws and lies in wait for what happens. So the ostrich comes back from feeding, loving its chicks strongly and thirsting for their company. At first it looks about this way and that and rolls its eye, fearing lest someone see it; but then, overcome by longing and goaded, spreading its wings like a sail, borne along at a strained pace and with a rush, it leaps into its own nest, and most pitiably, entangled and impaled upon the spear-points, it dies. So the hunter comes up and has taken the offspring along with the mother.

There is a city in the western regions of Italy; its name is Patavium. They say the city is the work of Antenor the Trojan. He founded it, having been saved from his home when he departed after his fatherland Ilium was taken, the Greeks having shown him respect, since he had saved Menelaus when he came on embassy with Odysseus concerning Helen, though Antimachus advised that they be killed. And Antimachus gave this advice having received Alexander's gold, splendid gifts, as Homer says. Now another city neighbours this Patavium, and they call it Vicetia, and a river flows past it named the Eretaenus, and this river passes a good deal of country and then falls into the Eridanus, and shares its water with it. Now in the Eretaenus there are eels of the greatest size, and by far fatter than those elsewhere; and they are caught in this way. The hunter sits upon a jutting rock in some bay-like spot, where the stream spreads out wider, or he sits upon some tree that has been thrown roots and all near the bank by a strong wind, which rots beneath but is useless to cut up and burn. So this eel-fisher, taking his seat, and taking the gut of a newly slaughtered lamb, three or four cubits long and very fat, lets one end of it down into the water, and it is whirled about, turning in the eddies; but the other end he holds in his hands, and into it has been inserted a piece of reed, as long as a sword-hilt. The food does not escape the eels; for they delight in this gut. And the first one that comes up, goaded by hunger and gaping wide, fixes in its teeth, which are curved and hooked and hard to disengage, and continually leaps about and tries to drag the bait down. The man, perceiving from the trembling of the gut that the eel has hold, puts into his own mouth the reed to which the gut is attached, and blowing down it with all his might, inflates the gut very strongly, and from the inrushing breath it swells and grows distended. So the wind slips down into the eel and fills its head with breath and fills its throat, and stops up the creature's breathing. And unable to breathe, nor yet to draw out from the entrail the teeth fixed in it, the eel is choked, and is hauled up, caught by the gut and the breath and the reed as a third agent. Now this is done day by day, and many eels are caught by many fishers. Let these things too be told by me as peculiar to these fishes.

That the sea-lion resembles the crayfish in a way, we too know; but we see that it is slighter in the build of its body, and somewhat tinged with blue, and that it is sluggish and has very large claws, like in shape to those of crabs. It is said by the more skilled fishermen to have certain membranes attached to its shell, beneath which membranes are tender little pieces of flesh, and these are called the fat of that lion. And men derive this benefit from them: it cleanses muddy complexion from the face, and mixed with oil blended with roses and made into an ointment it lends to beauty and brightness. I have also heard this further: that the lion on land is greatly afraid of the strange look of the sea-lion, and cannot bear its smell; and that the same lion fears the cock, I have said above. They say too that, when its shells are crushed and the powder cast into water, the land-lion that drinks it is delivered from a sickness troubling its belly. Let these too be told by me as peculiar to the sea-lion.

The Moorish asses, swiftest to run, are at their first onset most keen, so that one might think there was some rush of a breeze, or, by Zeus, the very wing of a bird; but they soon tire, and their feet give out, and their breath fails, and they forget their swiftness and stand fettered, and let fall plentiful tears — not, it seems to me, so much over their coming death as over the weakness of their feet. So the men, leaping down from their horses, then throw nooses about their necks, and each, fastening the captive to his horse, leads it off as a prisoner. That the Libyan horses are small to look at but swiftest to run, I have said above.

The herd of Libyan oxen was indeed beyond number, and the wild and free among them are swiftest. The hunters often go astray pursuing one and fall in with others that are fresh; for one slips into a thicket or a glen and vanishes, while others appear, like it, and deceive the eye. And if one should set about pursuing one of them, his horse will give out before the ox; for he will catch in time the one already tired, but those that are just beginning their run, his horse having worn itself out beforehand, he will not catch. Many are caught and killed every year, yet their breeding succeeds them most abundantly. The bulls roam together with the calves in common, and the females too, some pregnant, some newly delivered. If one should catch a calf still young, and not kill it at once, he will have a double gain; for he has caught its mother along with it, by doing what it is not absurd to relate. He ties the calf with a rush-rope and leaves it and withdraws; and the mother, worn with longing for her young and inflamed and goaded, wishing to loose it and lead it away, drives her horns at the rope to fray and burst the bonds. And whichever of her horns she thrusts into the twist of the rush-rope is held fast, and fettered along with the calf she remains, not having loosed it, but having flung about herself an inescapable bond. So the hunter takes out her liver for himself, cuts out the udders still swelling, flays off the hide, and leaves the flesh as a feast for birds and beasts. But the calf he carries home whole; for it is most pleasant to eat, and will furnish curd for the cheese-making, yielding rennet.

The sea-dragon is like the other fishes in the rest of its body, but in its head it resembles the land-dragon, and in the size of its eyes (for these too are large), and indeed its jaws also present somehow the form of those of land-dragons. It has scales too, and they are rough, and seem not far from the dragon's skin, if one should touch them. There grow upon it dangerous stings, and the stings bear venom, and they are no good thing to one who touches them.

It would be for me to tell also what is peculiar to animals. The king of the Indians eats for his dessert such things as the Greeks ask to nibble — the fruit of the ground-palm; but he dines on a certain grub bred in that plant, roasted, sweetest of all, as the Indian accounts say; and those who tell of so great a pleasure from eating it win even me over by what they say. He has these too as side-dishes: the eggs of swans and those of land-ostriches and of geese. Now in other respects I do not blame him; but as for swans, which are servants of Apollo and most tuneful, as the report that goes about says, to plot against their offspring and destroy their eggs, dear Indians — no more of that.

As for the Libyan gazelles and the young deer there, my heart bids me speak of them now. The gazelles are swiftest, and yet they do not escape the Libyan horses. They are taken also with nets. They are grey in the belly, and this colour goes up into the flanks; and along either side of the belly black bands run down. For the rest of their body they are tawny, long in the legs, black in the eye, their heads adorned with horns, and their ears are very long. The creature called

by the poets the "young deer" is swiftest to run, like a storm, but to look upon it is red-haired and very shaggy, and it has a white tail. Its eyes are likened to a dye of blue. Its ears are full of the thickest hairs. Its horns are facing each other and fair, so that, fair as it is, it both meets the hunt and at the same time both frightens and is harmed. This young deer displays the swiftness of its feet not on land alone, but, falling into a river's current, rowing as it were with the hooves of its feet, it then cuts through the stream. It delights also to swim in a lake, and there too it gets its food, dining ever on flourishing reed and galingale. So at the beginning of spring it lightens its filled belly, and lets down its udders, and indeed the young deer rears its own offspring. The murry, I learn, is a fish. From what it drew that name I cannot say; but it has been called so. They say it is a sea-snake. Whichever of its eyes is taken out and made into an amulet rids a man of dry ophthalmia; and they say another eye grows again for this murry. But one must let the fish go alive, or you keep the eye in vain.

The wild goats that tread the Libyan heights are in size like oxen to look upon, but their thighs and breasts and necks bristle with the thickest hairs, and with these their chin too. Their foreheads are curved and rounded, their eyes flashing, but their legs are stunted. Their horns, after the first joining together, stand apart from each other and slantwise; for they are not at all upright like those of the other mountain goats, but go down crosswise and reach toward the shoulders. So very long are they. From the topmost ridges, which both herdsmen and the sons of poets like to call "crags," they leap easily to another peak; for these are the best leapers of all goats. And even if one should fall farther than where there is anything to receive it, so as to be beyond its reach, yet such strength resides in its limbs that it remains unharmed when it has come down. At any rate it breaks nothing, even if it falls upon a cleft rock, neither horn nor skull; for these are strong and like the resistance of the rock. Most of them, then, are taken on the very heights with nets and javelins and foot-traps, by the cunning that is in huntsmen generally and in goat-hunting especially; but they are hunted also in the plains, and there they are too weak to flee. So even one who is slow of foot will catch them. Both the hide and the horns are useful; for the hide, in the fiercest winters, keeps the cold from coming near herdsmen and woodcutters; and those horns are good for drawing up and drinking from a river flowing by, or some spring rising in the summer season, and serviceable for quenching thirst; for it lets you drink at a draught no less than the largest cups, until you have cooled your breath and quenched all that smoulders and inflames within. So if the inside be cleaned out by one skilled in scraping horns, one of the two would easily hold three measures.

There are also tortoises bred in Libya, the most curly-shelled to look upon, and these are mountain tortoises, and they have a shell good for lyres.

When a mare gives birth, a piece of flesh, not large but small, grown out of the foal, hangs attached — some say to its forehead, some to its loins, others to its genitals. This the mare bites off and makes away with, and this little piece of flesh is called the "horse-frenzy." It is done out of pity and mercy of nature toward horses. For if, they say, that piece were always and right through attached, the males and females among them would be kindled to a frenzy of unrestrained mating. Let it be, if you please, a gift given to horses by Poseidon the Horse-god or by Athena the Horse-goddess, that their race may endure and not be destroyed by a madness of lust. Horse-keepers know this well and rightly, and if ever they need the said piece of flesh for some plot against a person, to kindle love in him, they keep watch over the pregnant mare, and when she gives birth they at once snatch away the foal and cut off the said flesh, and put it into the hoof of a mare; for there alone could it be well kept and stored up. The foal they sacrifice at sunrise; for the mother no longer suckles it, the token having been taken away and it having lost the ground of her affection; for it is from biting off that flesh that the mother begins to love her young strongly. And whoever, by some plot, tastes that little piece of flesh is held by a love most unrestrained, and is parched and cries out, and rushes uncontrollably even upon the basest favourites and upon a woman past her prime and ugly, and bears witness to his disease, and tells those he meets how he is goaded. And his body wastes and pines, while his soul is driven by erotic madness. I am told, then, that even at Olympia the bronze mare, with which horses fall in love and go mad and wish to mount, and neigh an erotic neigh when they see it, has within it, in the bewitched bronze, a plot derived from this horse-frenzy lying hidden, and that by some secret device of the craftsman the bronze plots against living creatures; for there could not be such accuracy that horses seeing it should be thus deceived and goaded by the work itself. And perhaps those who say this say something, and perhaps they say nothing; but what I heard about these matters too I have told.

It is said that in Libya there is a lake of boiling water, and in this water, they say, fish live and swim, and when food is thrown in they leap up toward the food. But if one should throw them into cold water, they die; this too I have heard besides.

Men skilled in fishing say that if one should melt down the belly of a sea-horse in wine by boiling, and give this to someone to drink, the wine is a poison strange when set against other poisons. For the one who drinks of it is first seized by the most violent hiccup, then coughs a dry cough, and is racked, yet nothing comes up; and his upper belly swells and grows distended, and hot fluxes rise to his head, and through his nose phlegm runs down and strikes with a fishy smell; and his eyes become bloodshot and fiery, and his eyelids swell. Desires for vomiting are kindled, they say, yet nothing comes up. And if nature prevails, the man passes through what is perilous to the point of death, but slips into forgetfulness and madness. But if it slips down into the lower belly, there is nothing more to be done, and the man taken so dies altogether. Those who survive, run aground upon madness, are seized with a great longing for water, and thirst to see water and to hear it flowing; and this lulls and soothes them to sleep. And they like to spend their time either by ever-flowing rivers or near shores or by springs or certain lakes, and they are not very eager to drink, but they love to swim and to wet their feet or wash their hands. But some say that it is not the belly of the sea-horse itself that is the cause of these things, but that the creature feeds on a certain seaweed exceedingly bitter, whose quality passes into its belly. The sea-horse was found also serviceable for saving life, by the shrewdness of an old fisherman, wise in matters of the sea. There was an old Cretan fisherman, and he had young sons who were also fishermen. Now it chanced that the old man caught sea-horses along with other fish, and that the young men were bitten by a mad dog — the others having come to the aid of the first bitten and fallen into the same misfortune. So they lay near the shores of Rhithymna in Crete (this is a village, as they say), and the onlookers shared in grief at the misfortune, and bade them kill the dog and give its liver to the young men to eat as a remedy of the evil; while others bade them take them to the Artemis called Rhoccaea and ask healing from the goddess. But the old man, very fearlessly and unshaken, let those who gave such advice be praised, but he cleaned out the bellies of the sea-horses, and roasted some and gave them to the young men to take, and others he crushed into vinegar and honey, and plastered with these the wounds of the bite; and then he overcame the young men's madness by the longing for water which the sea-horses kindled in them. And in this way he healed his sons, late though it was.

About sea-dogs we have spoken at length; but the river-dogs are to look upon like the small land-dogs, and they are shaggy in the tail too. They are said to soothe swelling sinews in men with their blood, if you pour it on mixed with water and vinegar; and their hide gives good shoes, and these good for the sinews, as they say.

The fish called the grayling is bred by the Ticinus (this is the name of an Italian river), and in size it reaches even to a cubit, and to look upon it is between a bass and a grey mullet. When it is caught, its smell is worthy of wonder; for it does not at all strike a fishy air like the rest, but you would say you held in your hands a grayling freshly gathered, and indeed it is sweet-smelling, and one who has not seen the creature will think there is within a herb that is above all the nurse of bees, whence indeed it has its name. So it would be most easily taken with a net; but with bait and hook you will not catch it — not with pig's fat, not with a gnat-grub, not with a cockle, not with the gut of another fish, not with the sinew of a whelk. With the mosquito alone it is caught — a wicked creature, hostile to men by day and by night both to bite and to buzz, yet it catches the said grayling; for the fish delights in it alone.

At the foot of the Alpine mountains, toward the north wind, under the Bear, are men so called. These are a race of horsemen. From there comes forth the greatest of the European rivers, the Ister, from no many springs, but facing the first assaults of the sun. Then, as it were a bodyguard about it, as about the king of the local streams, many rivers rise along with it, and their stream is ever-flowing, and those who dwell around them know the name of each. But when they fall into the Ister, their name from birth ceases, and they give up their name to it, and are all called from it, and pour out together into the Euxine. There are various kinds of fish there: corvina and mullet and antacaei and carp (these are dark), and "swine-fish" and blackbird-fish (white to look upon), and besides these perch and swordfish. These fishes suit their name, and the proof is this: in all the rest of their body they are soft and harmless to one who touches them, and their teeth are not at all crooked or cruel to see, no upright spine grows on their backs, none at the tail; but — a wonder both to hear and to see — beneath the very snout, through which it breathes and the stream flows into its gills and passes out, its jaw runs out to a point, and it is straight and grows little by little in length and thickness, and as the fish grows monstrous it grows along with it, and resembles the beak of a trireme. And the swordfish, falling in a straight line upon other fish and killing them, then feasts, and with this same weapon defends itself against the greatest of the sea-monsters. And this unforged weapon has grown upon it, and is sharpened by nature. So these swordfish, advancing to great size, go even against a ship. And some men boldly tell that they saw a Bithynian ship hauled up, that its keel, worn by age, might get the needful care; and that they saw the head of a swordfish nailed into it: for the beast having driven its natural point into the hull, and trying to draw itself out, by the violence of its rush its whole body was split from the neck, while the point remained fixed as it fell in at the first. This fish is hunted both in the sea and in the Ister, and it delights in both salt water and a sweet stream.

When the fiercest summer is at its height, the sea-dogs and the other creatures that have boldness bred in them come up to the shores and go straight to the cliffs, and run beneath the headlands where currents flow, and swim into the narrow and deep straits. They flee the haunts of the open sea, and

at that season scorn the pasture there. Now there grows on the deep reefs a certain seaweed, in size like the tamarisk, and it bears a fruit like the poppy. For the rest of the year it is shut, and is resistant and hard by nature, like an oyster's shell; but after the summer solstice it opens, just like the buds in rose-gardens. The casing that surrounds it guards what is within, and goes round it like a fence, and it is most tawny to see. But what is beneath this tunic is blue in colour and loose, like a swollen bladder, and exceedingly translucent, and there drips from it a baleful poison. By night it sends out a gleam like fire, and gives off certain flashes; and as the Dog-star rises, the malignancy of the poison grows still stronger. And from this those who hunt in the water, giving it the name "all-dog," then think that the rising of the star brings it to birth. So the sea-dogs, falling upon the fiery appearance of the flower by night — as it were upon this sea-tamarisk on a reef — some of the poison soaking them, some swallowed, and yet other slipping in through their gills, then die and at once float up. So those skilled in tracking such things gather this poison from the said monsters, partly from the rest of their limbs, partly from the mouth of the beast. The second such evil is that of the land-plant called the aglaophotis. They have given it also the name "dog-torn"; and what the reason is, if I remember to tell, you shall learn it. The Mysians — not those who dwell about Telephus's Pergamum, but think of those lower ones by the Pontus, who dwell next to the Scythian land, keeping back the Scythians' raids and guarding the said whole region for Rome — I mean those near Heraclea and the streams of the Axius. There too the natives celebrate that Medea daughter of Aeetes dared that deed against her brother Apsyrtus with wicked hands — yes, by Zeus, the Mysians sing this unhappy report of the Colchian sorceress, besides those others among the Greeks. But these men hunt that kind of fish. A man, an Istrian by birth, a fisherman by trade, drives a yoke of oxen near the bank of the Ister, by no means needing to plough; for as the saying goes, an ox has nothing in common with a dolphin, so whence could friendship come between the hands of fishermen and a plough? So if he has a yoke of horses at hand, he uses the horses. The man carries the yoke upon his shoulders, and goes where it seems good to him to seat himself and where he is persuaded he is in a good place for the catch. The cord being firm and very strong to drag, he ties one end of it to the middle of the yoke, and sets food in plenty before either the oxen or the horses, and they fill themselves. And he attaches to the other end of the cord a hook, strong and exceedingly sharpened, and threading on it a bull's lung, he lets it down as food for the Istrian sheatfish, food most delicious, having hung upon the line that holds the hook a sufficient weight of lead, to serve as ballast for the hauling. So the fish, when it perceives the bull's flesh, at once rushes to the catch; then, meeting all at once with what it craves, and gaping wide and ungovernably, it draws into itself the evil banquet that has fallen to it. Then, writhing with pleasure, the glutton has unwittingly impaled itself upon the said hook, and thirsting to escape the evil that has befallen it, it disturbs and shakes the cord as best it can. So the hunter perceives it and is filled to overflowing with pleasure, and then springs up from his seat and gives himself over from river-works and watery huntings, and like an actor in a play changing his mask, he drives the two oxen or the two horses. And the strength of the monster and that of the draught-beasts are matched. For the beast bred in the Ister drags down with all the might it has within it, while the team pulling the other way stretches the cord. But it avails nothing more; for in the pull on both sides the fish is beaten, and giving out is dragged to the shore. A son of Homer would say that certain mules were dragging trunks of oaks, as Homer sings of those celebrated things at the funeral of Patroclus.

The Ister has also a gulf of the deepest kind, and resembles the sea in much of its compass. And that this gulf reaches a good depth, this too is enough to prove. The merchant ships that cross the sea sail into the gulf here too, and they dread this also as a sea, when it grows wild under the winds that blow down, kindling it into waves and driving it mad. There are islands in it, and indeed certain harbours of refuge along the bank into which one may flee. There are beaches too, and headlands that jut out, and a wild swell breaks upon them and is split about them, whenever, filling itself to the full, it is then thrust out as it were into a narrow space toward the sea. And it is wont to do this when the autumn season has now run past and the wintry is beginning, and at its height it advances flooding. As it swells, the north wind drives it back and kindles it to come down wild. And the river bears down upon itself its own ice, as a cargo for sailing, while the north wind falls upon it, blowing hard and most frosty. So it does not allow the river to cast its birth-pang, as one might say, out into the sea, but holding it in check and thrusting it back it stops it. So the ice, kept back and held in, goes to the depth and grows thick to a great extent; and from this the genuine water of the Ister flows beneath by hidden ways, as one might say, while the added and bastard part lies upon it like a plain, and over this, at that season, the men there journey in yokes and single horsemen. Now how the wicked and crafty beast the fox tests and proves the freezing of this river and of Thracian Strymon, I have said above. But the ice on the Ister, growing thick about a cargo-ship borne along the stream, then fetters it, and there is no more need of spread sails, nor does the lookout man see ahead, nor does the captain of the ship turn the rudders; for they are frozen fast, since the whole hull is gripped by the encircling bond, and it is no longer, by Zeus, like a ship — for it is no longer beaten by the waves — but like a hill rising in a great plain, or, by Zeus, a watchtower or a headland. So the passengers and sailors leap out and run upon the river, and bring wagons and shift the cargo over what was lately water. And again after the wintry season, when the river runs strongly, they bear and carry the loads. The ship remains until the frost relaxes and the ice melts and is loosed, and the merchantman is set free from its strange cable. At that moment the fishermen too, taking pickaxes, cut through the freezing of the water where their heart leads them, and make a circular trench going down to the water; you would say it was the mouth of a well or of a very large and big-bellied jar. So many fish, wishing to escape the ice that lies over them like a roof, and longing for the light, swim gladly into the opened mouth, and become an irresistible multitude, and thrust against one another, and are easily caught, as in a narrow pit. And one may take carp and corvina in plenty, and perch, and swordfish — but not yet large, and still without the snout-spine — and antacaeus, this too soft, since the great ones advanced in age might grow as big as the largest tunny. This is fattest in the flanks and belly, and you would say it was the udders of a sow suckling her young. It has a rough hide, and indeed spear-makers smooth their spears with it. Beneath the marrow of this creature there runs a moist and narrow membrane, beginning from the middle of the head and reaching to the tail. If you dry this in the sun, you will have, if you wish, a whip for driving a yoke of horses; for it differs little or nothing from leather. But when it has now advanced to great size, one would not see it slip out from beneath the ice and fall into the pit, but either it goes beneath a much-sheltering rock, or, hiding itself in deep sand, it then warms itself most contentedly. At that season it needs neither grass nor another fish for food, but in the frost it wishes to be idle, and delights in its leisure, and eats its own fat; and just as octopuses, in the season when there is no hunting, gnaw their own tentacles and feed themselves, so does it. But when winter is ending and spring beginning and the Ister runs free, it hates its idleness, and swimming up it fills itself with the foam upon the water; and there is much of this when the stream murmurs and is thrust along most strongly. There too it is easily caught, the fishermen lying in wait for it and letting the hook down into the foam along with the line. And the hook is hidden by the whiteness, and the gleam of the bronze is not easy for it to see, and on this account, gaping and greedily drawing in the said food, it swallows the trick, and perishes from the very source whence it was first fed.

The name of a plant is "dog-torn" (the same is also called aglaophotis; for I wish to pay a debt now that I have been reminded). By day it is hidden among the others and is not at all visible, but by night it shows itself and shines forth like a star; for it is fiery and resembles fire. So men fix some mark beside its roots and go away, having no means by day of remembering its colour, unless they do this, nor its shape. When the night is past they come, and seeing the mark they left, and recognizing it, they can infer that this is the very plant they need, since it is wholly like those standing by and differs not even a little from them. But they do not pull up this plant themselves, or they will surely come to no good. So no one digs about it or pulls it up, since, they say, the very first man who touched it, in ignorance of its nature, it destroyed before long. So they bring a young dog that has been starved for days and is fiercely famished, and fasten to it a very strong cord, and to the lower stem of the aglaophotis they attach a knot hard to loose, from as far off as they can; then they set before the dog much roasted meat giving off savour; and the dog, inflamed by hunger and racked by the savour, darts at the meat set before it, and by its rush pulls up the plant roots and all. And as soon as the sun sees the roots, the dog dies on the spot. They bury it in that very place, and after performing certain secret rites and honouring the dog's corpse as having died on their behalf, they then dare to touch the said plant, and carry it home. And they make use of it, they say, for many useful purposes; and among others they say it heals the disease said to be sent upon men by the moon, and the affliction of the eyes which, when fluid floods over and freezes, takes away their sight.

There is a sea-snail, small in size but most beautiful to see, and it is bred in the purest sea and on the underwater rocks and on what are called the reefs. Its name is the nerites, and a double story runs about this creature, and both stories have come down to me; and indeed to relate at some length certain small matters in a long treatise is nothing other than to give the ear a rest and to sweeten the discourse. To Nereus of the sea — whom we ever hear to be true and without falsehood — Hesiod sings that Doris daughter of Ocean bore fifty daughters; and Homer too mentions them in his verses. But that a single son was born to him besides so many daughters, those poets do not say, though sea-stories celebrate it. They say he was called Nerites and became the most beautiful of men and of gods, and that Aphrodite, while she dwelt in the sea, took delight in this Nerites and held him dear. But when the appointed time came, and she had to be enrolled among the Olympians, her father calling her up, I am told that as she went up she wished to bring with her her companion and playmate. But he, the story has it, would not obey, preferring to dwell with his sisters and his parents rather than Olympus. And it was open to him to grow wings, and this, I suppose, was the gift Aphrodite gave; but he set even this favour at naught. So the daughter of Zeus grew angry, and turned his form into this snail, while she herself chose as attendant and servant, in his stead, Eros, who was also young and beautiful, and gave him the other's wings. The other story proclaims that Poseidon loved Nerites, and that Nerites loved Poseidon in return, and that from this came the birth of Anteros who is celebrated. So I am told that in all else the beloved spent his time with his lover, and that when Poseidon drove his chariot over the waves, the other monsters and the dolphins and besides the Tritons leapt up from the depths and danced about the chariot and circled round it, but were left behind by the speed of the horses altogether and everywhere; only the favourite kept pace alongside, very close, and the wave was smoothed for them and the sea parted in reverence for Poseidon; for the god wished his beautiful beloved to be esteemed in all things and especially to excel in swimming. But the Sun, the tale says, grudged the boy his speed, and changed his body into the snail it now is, angered for some cause I cannot tell; for the tale does not say. But if one must guess about things past finding out, it might be said that Poseidon and the Sun were rivals in love. And perhaps the Sun was vexed that the boy moved in the sea, and wished him to be numbered not among the sea-monsters but to be borne among the stars. And there let the two tales end; but for me, let the things from the gods be gracious, and let what comes from me toward them be reverent. And if anything too bold has been said in the tales, theirs be the blame.

Where the river Tanarus and the Eridanus meet (the latter going about in glory and renown, the former not very well known), there are, by Zeus, hunts of fish peculiar to the place, which have come down to me in the verses of a man of Mytilene, whom I myself knew; let these too not go unrewarded by me in this account. When their streams are fettered by ice, all who dwell about them, in the winter season, both plough and sow; for somehow they have been allotted a fertile region. Then at the beginning of spring, the said streams still standing for the reason I have given, the farmers — for the time being now fishermen — choose out a certain bay-like spot, and cut around it with well-sharpened axes, and the water appears in a circle like a pool; yet they do not cut close to the bank, but leave the ice as it was bred from the first. So they throw about the bared spot a wide net, and indeed throw around it a stout rope. And this net men standing on the bank draw in, both fishermen and others; and many who know nothing of the craft watch the taking of the fish, and a certain delight steals over them. But when the fish, drawn in, come near the bank, then too —

the water-hunters outside cut the ice there; for they are engaged in the hunt, and check the way out for the fish. And when this has been done, that net, full of fish, thrusts and brings along with it the cut-out rock of ice, and the fishermen standing upon it seem to be borne along on a floating island. These too are things peculiar to the fish there, and not to be likened to other hunts. And Homer will grant me to say that these men receive a double wage, one from the river, one from the land, so that the same men are both sailors and farmers.