Book 15

I know from hearsay of a Macedonian way of catching fish, and this is the manner of it. Between Beroea and Thessalonica runs a river called the Astraeus. There are in it fish of a mottled colour; what the natives call them it is better to ask the Macedonians. These fish feed on flies native to the river, flies in no way like those elsewhere, nor resembling wasps in appearance, nor could one fairly liken this creature in form to the so-called anthedons, nor to bees themselves; yet it has a share of something peculiar to each of the aforesaid. It resembles a fly in boldness, while in size you would call it an anthedon; it has taken the colour of a wasp, and it hums like the bees. The whole country there calls it the hippurus. So these flies, settling on the stream, seek out the food dear to them; yet they cannot escape the fish swimming below. When one of these sees a fly floating on the surface, it swims up quietly and underwater, fearing to stir the water above lest it scare off the prey. Then, coming near, in the fly's shadow, it gapes and swallows the fly, as a wolf snatches a sheep from the flock or an eagle a goose from the yard; and having done this, it slips back beneath the ripple. So the fishermen know what happens; yet they do not use these flies as bait for the fish at all. For if a human hand touches them, they lose their natural colour, their wings wither, and they become uneatable by the fish; and for this reason the fishermen do not go near them, having by some secret instinct come to hate the ones that are caught. So they get round the fish by a fisherman's craft, devising for them a trick of this sort. They wrap the hook with crimson wool, and to the wool are fitted two feathers of a cock, those that grow beneath the wattles and are like wax in colour. The reed is a fathom long, and the line is of the same length. So they let down the trick, and the fish, drawn by the colour and goaded, comes to meet it, supposing it will get a wonderful banquet from the beauty of the sight; then, gaping wide, it is caught on the hook, and has enjoyed a bitter feast, taken captive.

The sea-rams — whose name reaches the many, but the account of them is not very clear, except in so far as it is shown by the catching — pass the winter about the Cyrnian and Sardinian strait, and they are even seen above the water. Dolphins of the greatest size swim about them. Now the male ram has a white band running round its forehead (you would say it was the diadem of Lysimachus or Antigonus or some other of the kings in Macedon); but the female ram, just as cocks have wattles, so this too has tresses hanging beneath its neck. Each of these rams seizes dead bodies and makes them its food. But it also seizes the living, and with the swell of its swimming, being huge and prodigious, it even overturns ships, working for them so great a storm from itself. It seizes also those who stand on the nearby land. The people of Cyrnus say that, when a ship was wrecked in a storm, a man very skilled at swimming, after crossing a great stretch of sea, took hold of a headland of theirs, and climbing up stood there very fearlessly, as one now free of all dangers and in safety and command of his life. But a ram, swimming alongside, saw the man standing there, and inflamed by hunger coiled and arched itself, and with its tail drove much water, and then raised itself, lifted by the swelling wave, and reached up onto the headland and, like a squall or whirlwind, snatched away the man. So much for the Cyrnian seizing and hunting of the ram. The dwellers about the Ocean tell as a tale that the ancient kings of Atlantis, of the seed of Poseidon, wore on their heads the bands of the male rams, as a token of their rule; and that their wives, the queens, wore the tresses of the females, as a proof of their rule. This creature is exceedingly strong in the nostrils, and breathes in a great breath, and draws to itself a vast quantity of air, and hunts the seals too in this way. The seals, perceiving that a ram is somewhere near and brings them destruction, swim off as fast as they can, and reaching the land and slipping beneath the cavernous rocks they hide. But the rams, aware of their flight, pursue, and standing opposite the cave they understand by the smell of the flesh that their prey is within, and as by some most violent magic charm they draw with their nostrils the air between themselves and the seal. And the seal, like an arrow or a spear-point, swerves from the assault of the breath, and at first withdraws, but at last, by the most violent drawing, it is dragged out of the cave, and follows unwilling, as though stretched along by thongs or ropes, and squeaks, and becomes a dinner for the ram. Those skilled in examining such things say that the hairs growing from the ram's nostrils are good for many purposes.

In the Bibonian gulf there are countless tribes of tunny. Some of them, like wild boars, are solitary and swim by themselves, being very large; others go in pairs and feed together like wolves; others in herds, like flocks of goats, ranging over broad pastures. As the Dog-star rises and its ray is keenest at its height, they set out for the Euxine; and as the wave seems to them fiery, they swim woven into one another, and by the joining of their bodies they get somehow a share of some shade.

Demostratus, a man skilled in the science of fishing — and, by Zeus, good at expounding it too — says that there is a fish fair in form, and that this is called the "moon," small in size, blue in form, broad in shape. He says it has crests on its back and raises them; and that they are soft and neither resistant nor rough. So, when this fish swims below, it parts these crests and shows a half-circle, and there is, to look upon, the shape of the moon when halved. And this the Cypriot

fishermen say; and this account too is from Demostratus. When the moon is full, this fish, when caught, is itself full, and fills the trees too, if you bring and fasten it to them; but when the moon is waning, it is itself melted away and fails, and brought to plants it withers them. And when wells are dug, if one throws this fish into the water found, at the time when the month is beginning to show, the water will be ever-flowing and will never fail; but if at the waning, the water will cease. And indeed if you throw the same fish into a rising spring, you will have it either full or the place from then on empty. How the tunny swim into the Propontis, and how they swim out, I know I have said somewhere above in these discourses; but let one here think of Heraclea and Tius and Amastris, cities of Pontus. So those who dwell in this whole region know best the visit of the tunny, and indeed they come at that season of the year, and many weapons are made ready against them — ships and nets and a high watchtower. This watchtower stands fixed on some beach, in a position with a very open view; and to describe its construction is no labour for me, and to you, the hearer, it brings a delicacy for the ears. Two tall trunks of fir stand divided by broad cross-beams, these woven close together and very good for the watcher to climb and stand upon. The ships have, each, six rowers on either side, young men who row well; and the nets are long, not too light or held up by floats, but rather weighted with lead. The shoals of these fish swim in all together. As spring shines forth and the winds now blow peacefully and the air is bright and, as it were, smiling, and the wave is at rest and the sea is smooth, the watcher, seeing by some secret skill and a most keen-sighted nature, tells the hunters from where they are coming; and if the nets must be stretched out toward the shore, he teaches this too; and if further in, he gives, like a general, the signal, or like a chorus-master the keynote; and indeed he will often even tell the whole number, and will not miss his mark. And it goes thus. When the shoal of tunny has thrust itself out into the open sea, the man keeping watch on the tower and observing closely the movements of the aforesaid fish, crying out very sharply, says to pursue there and to row straight out to sea. So they, having hung from one of the firs that hold the watcher a very long rope attached to the nets, then row their ships one behind another in a line, and hold to one another, since the net is divided among each. And the first, casting out its own portion of the net, withdraws; then the second does this, and the third, and the fourth must let down hers; but those rowing the fifth still hold off, and those after her must not yet let down; then others row off this way and that and carry their portion of the net, and then they rest. The tunny, being sluggish and unable to do any deed requiring boldness, stay penned in and keep still; and the rowers, as of a captured city, take a populace of fish, a poet would say. So, dear Greeks, the Eretrians too know these things, and the Naxians by report, having learned about such hunting all that Herodotus and others tell. The rest of the hunting you shall hear from others.

When the tunny have been caught in the Pontic hunt (and I should say in the Sicilian too; or with what purpose would Sophron have written his charming Tunny-Hunter? but certainly there are catches of these tunny elsewhere as well) — when they are now entangled in the net, all then pray to Poseidon the averter of evil. And — to tell whence I think fit to give this god his name, demanding it of myself and wishing to speak well of him in this — they beseech the brother of Zeus, who rules the sea, that neither the swordfish come as a fellow-traveller with this shoal, nor the dolphin. For the noble swordfish often cuts through the net and lets the herd escape free. And the dolphin too is a creature that plots against the net; for it is terrible at biting through.

The land of the Indians is rained upon in spring with liquid honey, and still more the country of the Prasii, which, falling upon the grasses and the foliage of the marsh-reeds, furnishes wondrous pasture for the oxen and the sheep; and the animals feast on this most pleasant feast (for the herdsmen lead them chiefly to the places where the sweet dew settles when it has fallen); and the animals in turn feast the herdsmen, for they yield a milk exceedingly sweet, and have no need to mix honey with it, as the Greeks do.

The Indian pearl (for above I spoke of the Red Sea pearl) is got in this way. There is a city ruled by a man named Soras, of royal race, at the time when Eucratides ruled the Bactrians; the city's name is Perimula, and Fish-eaters dwell in it. From there, they say, the said men set out with their nets and enclose with great arms a fair-sized circle of shore; and the said stone is formed in a shell like a large whelk, and the pearl-oysters swim in herds and have leaders, as in the hives the bees have those called kings; and I am told that this leader too is distinguished both in colour and in size. The underwater divers make it a contest to catch this one; for when it is taken, they take the whole herd, which is then, as one might say, left desolate and without a champion; for it keeps still and goes no further, like a flock that has lost its herdsman by some hostile chance; but the leader escapes and very cleverly winds away, and goes before and saves its subjects. Those that are caught they are said to salt in jars; and when the flesh rots and runs off, the pebble is left behind. The best is the Indian and that of the Red Sea. It is found also in the Western Ocean, where the island of Britain is; but it seems somehow more golden to look upon, and to have its lustre duller and dimmer. Juba says it is found also in the strait by the Bosporus, and is inferior to the British, and that it cannot at all be compared with the Indian and the Red Sea pearl. The land-pearl in India is said to have no peculiar nature of its own, but to be an offspring of crystal — not of the crystal that forms from frosts, but of the mined kind.

Now about the cranes among birds I well know I have spoken in earlier discourses; but I declare I have heard of a sea-crane, a fish bred in the Corinthian sea. This sea, where this crane was tracked down, slopes toward the sea facing Athens, on the side of the isthmus that looks toward them. In length, then, it ran to about fifteen feet, measured by a just measure, and it had, as I hear, the thickness of an eel, though not of the largest.

Its head and mouth are those of the winged crane, and its scales — these too you would call a crane's feathers. It does not move with a winding swim, like those of the fish that are narrow and long after the manner of eels. It has a strength very apt for leaping; at any rate it springs like an arrow shot from a bowstring. Now the Epidaurian accounts say that this creature is the offspring of no fish, but that the winged cranes, fleeing the Thracian frost and the other western cold, fall in with the wind; and the females are goaded to mating, and the males are inflamed for them, and indeed swell toward union with them, and for this reason wish to mount them, but the females do not endure it, for they cannot bear mating aloft; and the males, unable to master their desire, cast forth their seed. And if they chance to be borne over land, it falls upon nothing, but perishes idly; but if they fly over the sea, then the sea, receiving the embryo as it were a treasure, guards it, and brings this creature to birth, and does not destroy it as though it had fallen into some barren and sterile womb. And this account, the Epidaurian, has now been told. But another, whose race I do not know, taking a different road, then does not agree with the same things; and that I may not seem ignorant of it, that account too shall be told. Demostratus, of whom I made mention above also, said: "I saw the fish, and wonder at it came over me, and I wished to make it into a salted specimen, that it might be there for another also to see. So while the cooks were busy and opening it, I myself examined the entrails. I saw spines from either side coming together and inclining their ends toward one another, and they were three-cornered like the official tablets; and a liver lay within, running out in length, and beneath it lay a gall-bladder with a long passage along the pouches; and seeing the gall you would have said it was a moist bean. So when both were taken out, the gall and the liver, the one swelled up and was like the liver of a very large fish, while the gall, having melted the stone (for it chanced to be set upon a stone), then vanished." And here we set bounds to both accounts. To tell of the catching of the bonito, a thing not very commonly told, is not outside this endeavour. Ten young men in the prime of their bloom board a light and therefore very swift ship; dividing themselves equally to either side, and having eaten their fill, they then each set to the oars, wandering this way and that. One sits at the stern, and from this side and that lets down trailing lines; and from these others hang, and to all the hooks are joined, and each hook bears a bait wrapped in a tuft of Laconian purple, and a gull's feather is attached to each hook, so that it shakes gently with the inrushing water. So in longing for these the bonito swim up; and when the greediest one fixes its mouth, the rest come too, and the hooks are shaken at the same moment, impaled upon the fish. So the men leave off rowing and let go the oars, and standing up they haul up the lines, well-caught and indeed weighted with fish; and when these fall into the ship, the proof of the good catch shows from the multitude of the fish taken.

That the land-marten was once a human being I have heard; and that this was her name, and that she was a sorceress and witch, and that she was terribly licentious and sick with a lawless lust — this too has reached my ears; and that the wrath of the goddess Hecate turned her into this evil creature, this also has not escaped me. May the goddess be gracious; but I leave tales and storytelling to others. That it is a most plotting beast, and that martens set upon dead men and leap upon them when unguarded, and rob and gulp down their eyes, is plain. They say too that the testicles of a marten, fastened upon a woman by a plot or with her consent, keep her from becoming a mother again, and check her from mating. And the inwards of a marten, taking on a certain preparation which those skilled in these things know, and cast into wine by a plot, set friendship at variance, as the story goes, and cut off goodwill that was hitherto united. But concerning these things let us leave it to dear Ares to punish and bring to justice the sorcerers and witches. There is also a fish called the marten, a small one, having nothing in common with the so-called dogfish. For those are cartilaginous and of the open sea, and advancing to great size then resemble a dog; but the marten — you would say it is the so-called hepatus. This fish is small, and its eyes are half-closed; it has pupils likened to the colour of blue. And it has a chin larger than the hepatus, but again is inferior to the chromis in this respect. Being a rock-fish and feeding on seaweed, I am told that it too, like the land-marten, eats the eyes of all the dead bodies it meets. Fishermen use it for similar purposes, all those along Epirus who deal in poisons, wicked men, sophists in evil. And since the tribe of these fish is raw-eating, all the kind that share life with the water-hunters and go down to the lowest hiding-places blacken their own feet and the hollows of their hands, trying to do away with the gleam from them; for the limbs of men, shining most brightly in the water, draw on these fish.

Sea-cockles too are a varied creature; for some of them are by nature rough, others quite smooth; and some you will crush by pressing with the fingers, others you will break with a stone; and some of them are very black in colour, others you would say were like silver, and others wear the said colours blended together. Their kinds are various and their beds quite diverse; for some lie scattered in the sands of the shores, and rest on the mud; some lie beneath the moss; others, fastened to the rocks, then cling to them very firmly. In the so-called Istrian sea these cockles, in the summer season, when the harvest is beginning, come together like a herd to one another, and swim up lightly — at first heavy and burdensome and not swimming up, but at that time no longer such. They flee the south wind, and shun the north, and do not endure the east either. They delight in a waveless sea, and in the pleasant and soft breezes when the west wind blows. So under these breezes, leaving their own mud, still shut and closed fast, they come up from the depths, and the sea being waveless they swim; and then, opening their own roofs, they peep out, like brides from their own chambers, or roses warmed by the sun and peeping out of their buds. So, taking heart little by little, very gladly they keep still and remain at rest, awaiting their companion the wind; and one shell they spread beneath, the other they raise upright, and the cockles sail, using the one for a sail and the other for a hull. And they go forward in this way, there being quiet and fair weather (you would say, seeing them from afar, it was nothing but a fleet of ships); but if they perceive the approach of a ship or the onset of a beast or the swimming of a large fish, folding themselves up with a single clap of their shells, they slip down all together and vanish.

The haemorrhois (this would be a kind of viper) has its haunts and dwellings chiefly in rocky hollows. It is a foot in length, and from a broad head it goes down tapering to the tail; and in part it is fiery to see, in part terribly black; and it bristles its head as it were with certain horns. It crawls slowly, pressing the scales of its belly, and goes forward on a slanting course. So it makes a faint sound, so that one would judge it sluggish and of no account. But when it bites it makes a puncture, and this at once is seen to be blue, and the one struck suffers most pitiably at the heart, and his belly discharges streams. The first night comes, and blood flows out through the nostrils and the neck and indeed through the ears, with a bilious venom, and the bladder lets out bloody urine. And if there are any old scars about the body, these too burst open. And if a female haemorrhois strikes, it lets out from the very tips of the nails, and the venom runs up into the gums, and blood pours out in plenty, and the teeth are squeezed out of the gums. They say that the helmsman of Menelaus, Canobus, fell in with this beast in Egypt when Thonis was king, and that Helen, perceiving the strength of the biting creature, broke its spine and took out the venom. But for what use she was eager to take this treasure, I do not know.

The Indians bring to their king tamed tigers and gentle panthers and four-horned oryxes, and two kinds of oxen, racers and others terribly wild. From these oxen they make fly-whisks; and in the rest of their body these are wholly black, but they have tails very white. They bring also pale doves, which they say are neither tamed nor ever made gentle, and birds which they like to call cercorones, and noble dogs, of which I have spoken above, and white apes and others very black; for the red ones, as woman-mad, they do not bring into the cities, but, springing upon them from somewhere, they kill them, hating them as adulterers.

The great king of the Indians sets up, on one day in each year, contests for all those others I have spoken of elsewhere, and among them also for irrational creatures — but for those that have horns. These butt one another, and by some marvellous nature strive to the point of victory, like athletes contending either for the greatest prizes or for august glory and some good report. These irrational contestants are wild bulls and tame rams and the so-called "middle ones" and one-horned asses and hyenas. They say this creature is smaller than a gazelle, but far bolder than a deer and quick to anger with its horn. Then, after all, the elephant contestants come in; and these go even to death, wounding one another with their tusks, and often the one prevails and kills its adversary, but often they die together.

Theophrastus says that the young of the viper do not eat through their mother's belly, knocking at the door, as it were (to add a jest), and breaking out a barred exit, but that, the female being squeezed and her belly straitened (I speak in Homer's way), she does not hold out but bursts asunder. And he persuades me by what he says, since the sea-needles too, being without a pocket and slender, suffer the same things from their own young, as I have said somewhere above. But I beg Herodotus not to be wroth with me if I set down among tales all that he sings about the birth-pang of vipers.

There was, then, a certain natural fellowship and secret kinship between the lion and the dolphin. For it is not enough that the one is king of land creatures and the other of sea creatures; but indeed, even when they waste away advancing into old age, the one has the land-ape as a remedy, while the other seeks out its kindred ape. For that there is an ape in the sea too, I have said somewhere; and this is good for the dolphin, as that one for the lion.

There is, among the things past telling and beyond number, also the sepedon, an evil reptile; Nicander says that this too is of the same colour as the haemorrhois, and its sister in shape. And this he says; it seems also to be swifter, and it gives some appearance of smallness; for it goes forward on a curved and winding course, and chiefly in this it deceives those who see it as to how great it is in size. The wound from it is dreadful; for it spreads and rots beneath, and proves the said beast true to its name. The venom is thrust over the whole body with irresistible speed, and indeed the hair too, rotting, disappears, and the eyebrows and eyelashes run off, and a mist holds the eyes, and they become blotched.

The land-tortoise is a most lustful creature — the male, that is; the female mates against her will. And Demostratus, a man, as I say this too, of the Roman

senate (and not, indeed, for this reason already qualified to bear witness, but it seems to me he drove the science of fishing to its height and told most beautifully all that he knew; and if some other, more weighty matter was also his study, and he touched besides on wisdom concerning the soul, I should not wonder) — this man says that for what other reason the female refuses union he cannot clearly know, but he conjectures this. The female does not mate except looking toward the male; and he satisfies his desire and then goes off, but she is least able to turn herself over, both by the bulk of her shell and being propped against the ground. So a ready dinner is left by her mate for the other creatures and indeed for the eagles. The females, then, dread this, as he says; but the males cannot persuade them, prudent as they are and setting safety before pleasure. So the males, by some secret nature, shake at them an erotic charm that makes them forget all fear. Now these charms of the amorous tortoise were not songs, by Zeus, such as Theocritus, the composer of pastoral trifles, prattles, but a secret herb, of which neither he says he knows the name, nor admits that any other has known it; and they seem to deck themselves out with the herb and certain secret amulets. So if they hold that herb in their mouth, the opposite of the aforesaid happens; for the male is coy, and the female, who hitherto fled, now runs after, inflamed, and is goaded and longs for union; and fear is gone from them, and they have no dread at all for themselves. Near Thessalonica of Macedonia there is a place called Nibas. Now the cocks there have no share in their natural song and are silent wholly and everywhere. And there is current a proverbial saying, used of things impossible, which goes: "Then you may have this thing, when Nibas crows."

When Alexander was shaking some of the land of the Indians and taking other parts, he met with many other creatures, and among them a dragon, which the Indians, holding it sacred in a certain cave, used with much religious awe to worship. So the Indians became urgent in begging Alexander that no one should attack the creature; and he consented. So when the army was passing the cave and a din arose, then the dragon perceived it; for it is the keenest of hearing of creatures and the keenest of sight. It let out a most loud hiss and snort, so as to astound and confound all. It was said to be seventy cubits long, though it did not appear wholly; for only its head peeped out. And its eyes are sung to be the size of a Macedonian shield.

It is the crows' work to provoke the eagles. But the eagles despise them, and leave to them the lower flight, while they themselves cut the higher air with swiftest wings — not, surely, from fear (for how could one say that, who well knows the strength of eagles?), but by some peculiar magnanimity they let the crows go beneath.

The fish called the pilot-fish they say is not only sacred to Poseidon, but also dear to the gods in Samothrace. A certain fisherman, in times long ago, paid a penalty to this fish. The fisherman's name, as the story goes, was Epopeus, and he was from the island of Icarus, and he had a son. Once, when there was a dearth of fish, he hauled up a catch that had taken pilot-fish alone, which Epopeus made into a dinner along with his son. But not long after, avenging justice came upon him; for a sea-monster, coming upon his fishing-boat, swallowed Epopeus in his son's sight. They say too that dolphins are enemies of the pilot-fish, yet that even they do not come off well when they taste of it; for they at once writhe and go mad, and unable to keep still they are carried up onto the shores, and once cast up by the wave they become a dinner for sea-crows and gulls. And Apollonius of Rhodes, or of Naucratis, says that this too was once a man, and was a ferryman. Apollo loved a girl and tried to lie with her; but she, fleeing, came to Miletus and asked a certain Pompilus, a man of the sea, to carry her across the strait; and he consented. But Apollo, appearing, snatched away the girl, made the ship a stone, and changed Pompilus into this fish.

The Indians take pains also about their racing oxen. And both the king himself and many of the nobles contend over their swiftness, and make wagers on much gold and silver, and do not think it shameful to dispute over these creatures; and they yoke them and gamble over the victory. Now the horses run as the yoke-pair, and the oxen as the trace-team, and the one grazes the turning-post, and they must run thirty stades. The oxen run a match for the horses, and you could not tell which is swifter, ox or horse. And if ever the king makes a wager with someone over his own oxen, he goes to such a pitch of rivalry that he himself follows on a chariot and urges on the driver. And the driver draws blood from the horses with the goad, but holds back his hand from the oxen; for these run without the goad. So great is the eagerness about the ox-race that not only the

rich strive over them for much money, nor only the owners, but also the spectators, just as Idomeneus the Cretan and Locrian Ajax in Homer are shown striving. There are also other oxen among them, to look upon like the largest he-goats; and these too are yoked by themselves, and run very swiftly, and are not more sluggish than the Getic horses. There is a story that the horses which drink from the river Cossinitus (this is in Thrace) become terribly wild; and this river empties into the land of the Abderites and is spent in the Bistonian lake. There too were once the palaces of Diomedes the Thracian, whose those untamed mares were, the Labour of Heracles. They say the same befalls the horses that drink from the spring of Potniae. Potniae, the place where the spring is, is not far from Thebes. They say that the Oreitae and Gedrosii set fish as fodder before their horses. And I am told that the Celts give fish as a dinner to both their oxen and their horses. There too they say that the horses, fleeing the breath that comes from men, are carried off to the more southerly parts of Europe, especially when the south winds blow. And some agree that the Macedonians and Lydians too feed their own horses on fish, and that the Lydian and Macedonian sheep are fattened on the same. Among the Mysians, when the mares were being mounted, certain men piped, singing as it were a wedding-song over the horses' marriages; and the mares, charmed by the melody, very quickly became pregnant, and indeed bore beautiful foals. And this too I have heard about horses. They say the older ones, now advanced in age, beget weak offspring; for among other things their feet are ignoble. They reckon the life of horses at so many years: of the males up to thirty-five, but Aristotle the son of Nicomachus says that a horse has lived seventy-five years.

Going from Susa of the Persians to Media, at the second stage there is said to be so vast a multitude of scorpions that the king of the Persians, whenever he passes through, three days beforehand commands all to hunt them, and gives gifts to whoever catches the most. For if this were not done, the place is impassable; for under every stone and every clod there is a scorpion. They say too that the Rhoetians were driven from their homes by centipedes, so great a multitude of these came upon them. And they say that in Cyrene there are various kinds of mice, differing not only in colours but in shapes; for some of them are broad-faced like martens, and again others are hedgehog-like, which the natives call echineae. In Egypt I am told there are two-footed mice, and that they grow to a very great size, and use their forefeet as hands; for these are shorter than the hind. They walk upright on their two feet; but when pursued, they leap. Theophrastus says this.

There is a story that the birds called francolins, brought over to Egypt from Lydia and let loose in the woods, at first uttered a quail's cry; but later, when the river ran low and a famine came, and many throughout the country were perishing, these birds did not cease uttering, far more clearly and articulately than a child, and saying: "Threefold to the wicked their wickedness." The same story says that, when caught and snared, not only are they not tamed, but they no longer utter even the cry they uttered before; for slavery condemns them to silence. But if they are let go and spread their wing free, and come again to their own haunts, they become vocal, recovering at once both their cry and their freedom of speech.

They say too that the scops-owls (which Homer too mentions in the Odyssey, saying that many of them roosted about the cave of Calypso) are caught by dancing. Men skilled in dancing say that a kind of dance has even been named from them, and, if one must believe them, this dance is called the "scops." And to mimic someone in a ludicrous way and to make fun seems most pleasant to these birds; whence indeed the word has been turned, and we too call mocking thus. This scops is said to be smaller than the little owl, and to have a colour like the deepest lead, and they say its wings have whitish spots. It shows two feathers from the brows, one at each temple. But Callimachus says there are two kinds of scops, and that some utter sound, while others are allotted silence; and that some of them are called scopes, others aei-scopes ("ever-scopes"). Aristotle says that those in Homer are not spelled with a sigma, but are simply named copes; so that those who put in the sigma err from the truth of the name and from Homer's judgement and knowledge about the bird. And in the other seasons of the year they are not eaten, but in autumn, on two days or one, those caught are even edible. The scopes differ from the aei-scopes in fatness, but they are similar in appearance to the turtle-dove and the wood-pigeon.

But the nation of the Pygmies, I am told, this too

is ruled by itself, and indeed there was among them, when the male king failed, a certain queen who ruled the Pygmies, named Gerana, whom the Pygmies, deifying her, honoured with honours more august than befit a human being. From this, they say, her mind was carried away by the wind, and she set the goddesses at naught. Hera especially and Athena and Artemis and Aphrodite she said did not come even near to her beauty. So she was not to escape harm, sick with such things; for, by the anger of Hera, she changed from her original form into a most shameful bird, and she is the bird now called the crane, and she makes war on the Pygmies, because they drove her mad with excessive honour and destroyed her.