Book 17
Imperial Claudius Aelianus GreekAlexander, in his Periplus of the Red Sea, says that he saw snakes forty cubits long, and a kind of crab whose shell had a circumference of a foot on every side, while very large claws hung from it and projected; and these were plotted against by no one. The reason is that they are said to be sacred to Poseidon. They are dedicated to the god, so that the crabs are, as it were, his votive offerings, unharmed and unplotted against.
Cleitarchus, in his work on India, says that there are snakes sixteen cubits long. He celebrates also another kind of snake, not like the others in appearance; for they are much shorter, but are seen variegated in colour, as though painted with dyes; for some have bronze-coloured bands running down from the head to the tail, others bands like silver, others crimson, and indeed some gold-gleaming. He says that they are terrible at biting and killing most swiftly.
In the ninth of his books about Ptolemy, Nymphis says that in the land of the Troglodytes there are vipers of an unmatched size, if they be compared with other vipers; for they are even fifteen cubits long; and that the tortoises there have a shell so great that it holds even six Attic medimni.
There is also a kind of snake called the prester, which, if it bites, first makes its victims sluggish and least able to move, then little by little weak and unable to breathe; and indeed the bite pours forgetfulness over the mind, and stops the bladder, and makes the hair fall out; then follows suffocation, and it causes convulsions, and the end of life is most painful.
Phylarchus, in his twelfth book, sings such things about the Egyptian asps. He says that they are greatly honoured, and that from this honour they become very tame and gentle to handle. So, reared among the children, they do no harm, and when called they crawl out of their holes and come. Their summons is the snapping of the fingers. The Egyptians offer them gifts of hospitality besides. For when they have finished dinner, they soak barley-groats in wine and honey and set them on the table at which they happened to have dined; then, snapping their fingers, they call them as it were as guests. And the asps, as though at a signal, appear, and crawl out one from one place, another from another, and standing about the table they leave the rest of their coil on the floor, but raising their heads they lick all round, and quietly and little by little they fill themselves with the groats, and consume them. And by night, if anything presses the Egyptians, they snap their fingers again; and this sound signifies to the asps to withdraw and depart. So they understand the difference of the sound and for what purpose this is done, and at once they draw back and vanish, crawling into their crannies and holes. And the man who rises neither treads on any of them nor falls upon them.
The crocodile often grows very long. In the time of Psammitichus, king of the Egyptians, a crocodile of twenty-five cubits is said to have appeared, and in the time of Amasis one of twenty-six cubits and four palms. Sea-monsters, I hear, grow to the greatest size about the Laconian sea, and some of the critics say that it was from this that Homer called Lacedaemon "full of sea-monsters." About Cythera they celebrate still greater sea-monsters as growing. Their sinews too, it seems, are useful for the twisting of strings for harps and other instruments, and indeed for engines of war. In the Red Sea, besides those already mentioned, there are bred scorpion-fish and gobies two cubits long, and even three. Amometus says that in Libya there is a certain city in which the priests, charming crocodiles out of a lake with very alluring incantations, lead out crocodiles sixteen cubits long. Theocles, in his fourth book, says that about the Syrtis there are bred sea-monsters greater than triremes. And about the country of the Gedrosii (which is a part of the land of India by no means inglorious) Onesicritus and Orthagoras say that there are bred sea-monsters half a stade in length. They say that these have such power that often, when one of them blows through its nostrils, it throws up so great a swell of the sea that to the ignorant and inexperienced these appear to be waterspouts.
Aristotle, in the eighth book on animals, says that elephants eat nine Macedonian medimni of barley, and on top of these six of barley-groats — or, if you give it, even seven; and the same writer says that they drink fourteen Macedonian measures, and again in the afternoon drink eight more. He says that elephants live two hundred years, and that some go on even to three hundred. Clear and pure water is most hateful to the camel to drink, but muddy and filthy water it counts the sweetest of drinks. And indeed, if it comes to a river or a lake, it does not stoop to drink before it has stirred up the mud with its feet and destroyed the beauty of the water. If it remains without drink, it can hold out even eight days.
Pythagoras, in his work on the Red Sea, says that there comes into being a certain land animal about that sea, called the kepos. The name fits it, for it has many colours. The full-grown one is the size of the Eretrian dogs. I wish to go over its variegated nature and show it in words, as he writes. The parts about its head, and its back, and the spine ending in the tail, are pure tawny, and you may see also certain golden hairs scattered about; its face is white as far as the cheeks, but from there golden bands run down to the neck. The parts below this, as far as the breast, and the forefeet, are all whitish. There are two breasts, dark, each filling the hand; the belly is all white, and the hind feet are black. As for the shape of the face, you will speak truly, be sure, if you compare it to a baboon's.
There is a creature they call the onocentaur, and whoever has seen it would not disbelieve that there were also tribes of Centaurs, and that the craftsmen did not lie against nature, but that time brought forth those too, united from bodies that were not alike. But let us leave them, whether they really came to be at one and the same appearing, or whether rumour, which is more pliable and more persuasible than any wax, moulded them, and mixed half-parts of horse and man by some divine joining, and gave them a single soul. But this creature, about which the present account has set out to speak, came to my hearing in the following way. It is likened in the face to a man, and deep hair runs round it. A neck beneath the face, and breasts, and these too human; nipples raised and standing on the chest, and shoulders and upper arms and forearms, and besides hands and breast down to the loins, and these too human; but the spine and the ribs and the belly and the hind feet are very like an ass's, and ash-coloured
like it is the hue, while the parts below the flanks are gently whitish. The hands serve this creature a double use; for where speed is needed, they run before the hind legs, and it is not surpassed in running by the rest of the four-footed beasts; but when again it must take something up, or set it down, or grasp and grip it, then the feet that before were hands become hands again, and it does not walk, but sits. The creature is exceedingly ill-tempered. If indeed it is caught, then, not bearing slavery and longing for its former freedom, it refuses all food and dies of hunger. Pythagoras says these things too, as Crates of the Mysian Pergamum confirms. The land of the Boeotians is free of moles, and this creature does not burrow it about Lebadea; and if somehow they are brought in from elsewhere, they die. About the land of the Orchomenians, however, there are many of them. In Libya there is a scarcity of wild boars and of deer. In Pontus neither soft-bodied creatures nor shell-fish are bred, save rarely and a few. Deinon says that in Ethiopia there are bred the single-horned birds, and four-horned pigs, and sheep bare of wool but with the hair of camels.
In Zacynthus those skilled at testing and tracking out such matters say that to those bitten by venomous spiders there befall not only as many symptoms as to those bitten elsewhere, but more than those. For their whole bodies become full of numbness and somehow trembling and exceedingly cold, and there are vomitings that breed convulsions, and the bladder is distended; and their ears too ache violently, and the sole of each foot pains them as well. And those who lay their hands on them feel each of the things I have mentioned. But what is astonishing even to hear, and still more wonderful to see, is that, when some of the unbitten either step into the bath-water of those who were bitten or, indeed, wash their feet (such things as are wont to happen often; and such things also befall through certain plots of enemies), all the same pains come upon them too as upon those who were bitten.
There is a kind of toad, I hear, terrible both to drink and bitter to look upon. To drink: if anyone, having crushed it, then gives the blood to someone to drink, casting it by way of a plot either into wine or into other drinks, of which the accursed contrivers of such things judge the mixture with that blood to be suitable, it kills, somehow, not after delay but at once. To look upon, the toad is an evil in this way. If anyone gazes at the beast, then looks it full in the face with a keen look, and it too looks back boldly, after its own nature, and breathes out a certain breath connatural to itself but hostile to human skin, it makes him pale, very pale, so that one who did not see it but met the man first would say he had seen a sick man. And the pallor remains for not many days, then vanishes.
The following too, it seems, was a gift of the plover, which it is by no means right to dishonour. If anyone whose body has been filled with jaundice then looks keenly at it, it looks back, and that quite unflinchingly, as though contending against him in honour; and such a returning of the look heals the man of the aforesaid affliction.
I, for my part, have not believed it; but if another trusts Eudoxus, let him believe what Eudoxus says — that, having passed the Pillars of Heracles, he saw in certain lakes some birds even larger than oxen. And that he who says this does not persuade me, I have already said; but what I heard, I did not pass over in silence.
Aristotle says that the female partridge, when she gets to windward of the male, becomes pregnant by some secret nature. This bird weaves its nest in seven days, and in seven lays its eggs, and in as many rears its young. Timaeus and Heracleides and Neocles the physician say that toads have two livers, and that the one kills, while the other is its opposite by nature; for it saves.
Theopompus says that the Heneti who dwell about the Adriatic, when it is the season of ploughing and sowing, send gifts to the jackdaws; and the gifts would be certain cakes and barley-loaves nicely and well kneaded. The purpose of the setting out of these gifts is that they may be soothing offerings to the jackdaws and agreements of truce, that those birds may not dig up the corn of Demeter when it has been cast into the earth, nor pick it out. Lycus agrees to these things, and adds besides the following: that there are also thongs purple in colour, and that those who set these out then withdraw. And the clouds of jackdaws remain outside the boundaries, while two or three, chosen like ambassadors from the cities, are sent to inspect the abundance of the hospitable gifts; and these, having looked, come back and call the rest, in the way in which the one kind are wont to call, the other to obey. So they come in clouds; and if they taste of the aforesaid gifts, the Heneti know that they are under truce with the said birds; but if they overlook them and, dishonouring them as cheap, do not taste, the natives are persuaded that the price of that contempt is famine for them. For the said birds, remaining untasting, fly down so to speak untithed upon the fields and plunder most of what has been sown, and that most bitterly, with anger both digging it up and tracking it out.
Amyntas, in his work entitled by him the Stages, says that in the Caspian land there are many herds of cattle and of horses, too many to count. He adds also this: that in certain turns of the seasons there come migrations of mice, an unmatched multitude, and he brings forward as proof, saying, that when the ever-flowing rivers come down with much roaring, the mice quite unflinchingly swim upon them, and biting one another's tails hold this as ballast, and make this a most strong bond for crossing the channel. And having swum across to the fields, he says, they crop the corn, and creep up through the trees, and make the ripe fruit their meal, and even break through the branches, not being unable to gnaw even these to pieces. So the Caspians, to ward off the inroad and the ruin from the mice, spare the crook-taloned birds, which, themselves flying in clouds, snatch up the mice, and by a peculiar nature stay off famine from the Caspians. As for the Caspian foxes, their multitude is so great that they not only frequent the steadings in the fields, but now even come into the cities. And a fox will appear in a house, not, by Zeus, for ruin or plunder, but as though tame; and they fawn and cajole like the lapdogs among us. The mice that are an epidemic evil to the Caspians are in size to be seen like the Egyptian ichneumons; and they are wild and terrible and strong of tooth, and able to cut through and gnaw through even iron. Such too are the mice in Teredon of Babylonia, whose skins their dealers bring to the Persians as merchandise. They are soft, and being sewn together they become at once tunics and keep the people warm. These are called kandytanes, as is dear to them. And the following too is worth marvelling at in these mice. If a pregnant mouse is caught, and then the embryo is taken out, and that one too, when cut open, is in turn laid open, that one also has a young one within.
The following too I have further heard as peculiar to the sea-ray. On the fishing-boat someone dances, when he sees it swimming up below, and indeed makes some mocking jest, and besides this, if he be skilled with the pipe, he carries the pipe as a bait and plays an accompaniment; and the ray is over-delighted (for it has ears, they say, that take in music, and eyes that understand dancing), and then, enchanted, it swims up quietly. And while the one waves the said charms most effectively, another sets the basket-net, and brings up the fish; and — this, I suppose, the strangest thing of all — being enchanted, it has then unawares been caught.
The Galatians of the East, Eudoxus says, do such things; and if they seem credible to anyone, let him believe, but if they seem otherwise, let him pay no heed. When clouds of locusts come upon their land and then injure the crops, the people make certain prayers and offer sacrifices of birds, that charm the locusts; and the birds obey, and come in a common host, and make the locusts vanish. But if a Galatian hunts one of these birds, the penalty for him by the local laws is death. And if he meets with pardon and is let go, the people throw the birds into wrath, and avenging the captured one they refuse to obey, even if they be called again.
Aristotle says that in Samos there is a white swallow; and that if anyone pricks out its eyes, it becomes at once blind, but afterward its eyes are restored and its pupils made bright, and it sees from the first again, as he says.
The cinnamon, I hear, is a bird, and indeed it carries twigs of the plant of the same name from the ends of the earth, and weaves its nests where Herodotus and others tell, and these birds somehow love to weave their own beds and lodgings. So those who care for these twigs shoot heavy arrows with most violent rush and a strong drawing of the bowstring against the nests; and the nests break, and the twigs slip down, and indeed the much-celebrated cinnamon is just this.
Let us give a place to Cleitarchus too. Cleitarchus says that in India there is a bird, and that it is exceedingly amorous, and he says that its name is the orion. Come, let us describe it too in words, as he teaches. In size this orion is like the birds called herons, and its legs too, like theirs, are red; but it has dark eyes (this is not as theirs are), and it has been taught by nature to make music, such songs as are sung at weddings, sweet, and rivalling the Sirens.
There is a bird, Indian by race, called the katreus, which Cleitarchus says is by nature surpassing in beauty; for in size it would be like the peacock, and the tips of its wings resemble the emerald. And while it looks elsewhere, you do not know what kind of eyes it has; but if it should look at you, you will say its eye is vermilion, except for the pupil; that is likened in colour to the apple, and looks keenly. What in all other eyes is white is, in this katreus, pale yellow. The feathers of the head are blue-grey, and have drops as it were likened to saffron, scattered one here, another there. Its feet are red-orange. It has also a tuneful voice, clear like the nightingale's. The Indians, it seems, had the rearing of birds, so that those who looked on them might feast their eyes. At any rate it is possible for them to see birds wholly purple and resembling the purest flame; and the flights of these are in such numbers that one might think them clouds; others again are variegated and not very easy to describe in form, but in melody and sweetness of mouth and grace of tongue unmatched, so that they are — if it is not too rough to say it — a kind of Sirens. For that the maidens of the myth were winged, the poets sing and the painters show.
The haunts and resorts of the swan are lakes and marshes and pools and ever-flowing rivers that run gently and quietly. They are peaceful, and come to an old age that is light to them. They are valiant too in strength, and confident in it, yet not so as to begin injustice, but to ward off the aggressor. So they easily get the better even of eagles, when those dare to set upon them. And I have told above the manner of the fight.
Cleitarchus says that there are kinds of apes in India variegated in colour, and the greatest in size. In the mountainous regions their multitude is so great that Alexander son of Philip, he says, was quite dismayed, even with his own force at hand, supposing, when he saw them in throngs, that he beheld an army gathered together and lying in wait for him. The apes happened to be standing upright when they appeared. They are hunted neither with nets nor by the cunning of scent-tracking hounds skilled in the chase. The creature is fond of dancing, if it sees dancing; and it wishes also to play the pipe, if it learns to blow. Besides this, if it sees someone putting shoes on his feet, it imitates the shoeing; and when a man paints his eyes round with black, it wishes to do this too. So, with a view to what has been said, men set out hollow and heavy shoes made of lead, having laid nooses beneath them, so that the apes thrust in their feet but are held by the trap, and that an inescapable one; and as a bait for their eyes is set out birdlime in place of the black. The Indian, using a mirror while they watch, then takes the mirrors away, and sets out others in their stead; and to these they fasten strong weights beneath; and indeed they are such. So the apes come, and nobly do as they saw done in imitation; but a sticky strength leaps out upon their eyelids from the resistance against the brightness, when they look intently; then, no longer seeing, they are caught most easily; for they are now least able to flee. Other things too have been said about apes, both Indian and not Indian; and these things have something not unworthy of effort, by Zeus, for one who understands.
That lions grow to the greatest size in India I do not doubt; the reason is that this land is a good mother of the other creatures too. They are most savage and most beast-like. The mane of those lions is black to look at, and bristling it stands erect and sends out a kind of terror that strikes dismay. If they can be caught, they are tamed — but not the largest; and they are made gentle and very easily domesticated, so as to be led on a leash to the hunting of fawns and deer and boars and bulls and wild asses. For they are clever, I hear, even at scent-tracking.
In the land of the Libyans there was, they say, a people called the Nomaeans. And in all else they prospered, with a portion most well-ordered and happy, by Zeus; and then they were utterly destroyed, when lions came upon them in vast multitude and of the greatest size and unmatched in daring, by whom they were destroyed, all the people and all the race together, and then perished utterly. For an invasion of lions in throngs is an irresistible thing.
Euphorion, in his Memoirs, says that Samos in the most ancient times became desert; for there appeared in it beasts of the greatest size, wild, and terrible to come near to, called the neades. These by their mere cry split the earth. So there is a proverb current in Samos that says, "He shouts louder than the neades." And their bones, the same writer says, are shown even now, great ones.
When the king of the Indians marches against his enemies, a hundred thousand war-elephants lead the way. Another three thousand, I hear, the greatest and strongest, follow, which have been trained to overthrow the walls of the enemy, falling upon them when the king bids; and they overthrow them with their breasts. Ctesias says these things, writing what he heard. But in Babylon, the same writer says, he himself saw the palm-trees overthrown root and all by the elephants in the same manner, the beasts falling upon them most violently; and they do this if the Indian who breaks them in bids them do it to the trees.
Zenothemis says that a certain Paeonian lake bears fish which, if one casts them gasping to the cattle, the cattle eat very gladly, as the rest do the grass. But of the fish when dead the cattle would no longer partake, that writer says.
Among the Armenians, I hear, there is a high rock, and this casts out very much water. Beneath the rock, I learn, there lies a spring four-square on every side, and each side is half a stade long, and the depth is three fathoms. There fall out together with the aforesaid water, I further hear, fish often a cubit in length, and even larger, and indeed smaller ones too, but not by much. And some of them slide down half-dead, while others gasp and, struggling violently, die. Rumour says that they are exceedingly black and unsightly to look upon. And if either man or beast tastes of them, it perishes at once. The Armenians, then, because their land is full of game and abounding in beasts, gather these fish and dry them under the sun's heat, then pound them, having bound something over their nostrils and their mouth, so that they may not, drawing in with their breath the air from the pounded fish, then die. So, having made the fish into flour, they sow it in the regions most full of beasts, and they are wont to mix figs in with the flour. In this way there perish the wild boars and the gazelles and the deer and the bears and the wild asses and the goats — wild ones too, these; for these creatures eat figs and barley-meal. But lions and leopards and wolves, being flesh-eaters, they kill otherwise. For having cut open the side of tame sheep and goats, far enough to let the hand down, they stuff in the same flour, so that there lies, by Zeus, an evil bait for the aforesaid. So when a lion or a leopard or a wolf or any other such beast meets it and tastes it, it dies at once. And the whole of Armenia is at once nurse and mother of wild beasts, and the plain country still more, and that by the river most of all.
In the Caspian land, I hear, there is a very great lake, and great fishes are bred in it, called sturgeon. So the Caspians hunt them, and sprinkling them with salt and making them into salt-fish and drying them, they load them on camels and carry them to Ecbatana. And they make an unguent from these fishes, taking off the fat, and they anoint themselves with the fish-oil, very greasy and not ill-smelling; and they draw out the entrails of the fish and boil them, and from these they make a glue able to be very useful; for it holds everything strongly, and clings to whatever it is joined to, and is most bright to look upon. And it so holds together whatever it binds and fastens, that even when soaked ten days it is neither loosened nor comes apart. Indeed, those who work ivory use it too, and finish their works most excellently.
A certain account says that among the Caspians there is bred a bird the size of the largest cocks, variegated and flowered with many colours. It flies, I hear, on its back, having stretched its legs out beneath its neck and as it were holding itself up by them. It gives out a cry like a puppy's. It makes its flight not in the deep air but near the ground, being unable to lighten itself to a height. This bird too is Caspian, or rather Indian (for it is said to be of that breed there as well), and it would be the size of a goose. And it has a head broad but thin, and long legs. Its colour is blended and mixed; for its back is adorned with purple, and the parts under the belly are likened to the most genuine and most beautiful scarlet, and the head and neck are both white. It cries like a goat.
The Caspian goats are exceedingly white, without horns, and small in size and flat-nosed. The camels are too many to count, the greatest of them the size of the greatest horses, and very fine-haired. For their hair is exceedingly soft, so that in softness it rivals the Milesian wool. So from this the priests, and the richest and most powerful of the Caspians, clothe themselves in garments.
In his Cretan accounts, Antenor says that upon the city of the people called the Raucii there came, by some divine visitation, a swarm of bees, which are sung of as bronze-coloured, and that, driving their stings into the people, they grieved them most bitterly. The people, unable to bear the assault, rose up from their fatherland and came to another place, and out of love for their mother-city — to speak in the Cretan way — founded Raucus, since, even though the deity drove them from the place, they would not endure to be wholly torn away from the name. Antenor says that still upon Cretan Ida there are likenesses of that breed of bees, not many, but there are some, and bitter to encounter, as those were.
The lion delights to eat camel's flesh. And the proof is that Herodotus says lions attacked the camels of Xerxes that carried the corn. But the rest they did not harm, neither beast of burden nor man, he says. Herodotus knew but little when he examined the food of Thracian lions; the Arabs too know these things, and all who have a land that is at once mother and nurse of lions and camels. I should not, then, marvel if by some secret nature a lion delights in camel's flesh and would eat it even without having seen it, if ever he met with it; for natural desire kindles even those who have not seen toward the desire for that food.
Reaping men, sixteen in number, oppressed by thirst as the sun blazed down, sent one of themselves to bring water from a neighbouring spring. So the one who went held in his hand the reaping-sickle, and carried the drawing-vessel on his shoulder. And coming, he finds an eagle firmly and warily wrapped about by a snake. The eagle had happened to swoop down upon it, but had not got the mastery of its design, nor (this is the Homeric phrase) carried the feast to its own young; but falling among that creature's coils it was about to — not, by Zeus, to destroy, but to be destroyed. So the farmer, knowing that the one was the messenger and servant of Zeus, and knowing too that the snake was an evil beast, cuts the beast through with the aforesaid sickle, and indeed frees the eagle from those inescapable prisons and bonds. These things had been done by the man as a by-work of his journey; and having drawn the water he came, and mixing it with the wine handed it to all, and they drank at a draught, and many draughts after their meal. And he too was about to drink after them; for he happened to be at that moment a servant and not a fellow-drinker. But when he was bringing the cup to his lips, the eagle that had been saved, paying him the ransom of his life and by good fortune still lingering about the place, falls upon the cup and overturns it and spills the drink. He was angered (for he happened to be thirsty), and says, "So you are that one" (for he recognized the bird), "is this how you render thanks to your saviours? But how are such things any longer good? And how would another wish to do anyone a kindness, out of reverence for Zeus the overseer and watcher of kindnesses?" So he had spoken, and was vexed; but turning round he sees those who had drunk gasping and dying. The snake, it seems, as one may infer, had vomited into the spring and mixed it with its venom. So the eagle paid to the one who saved it a recompense equal to the saving. And Crates of Pergamum says that Stesichorus too sings of these things in a certain poem not widely circulated, bringing it in as venerable and ancient, so far as I can judge as a witness.
In the Caspian sea there are islands, they say, and there are bred in them birds various indeed, but one that has obtained the following peculiarity. They say it is the size of geese, but has feet like a crane's. Its back is scarlet-dyed and very pure, and the parts under the belly green; its neck is white, and it has certain drops as it were of saffron-colour scattered over it. It is no less than two cubits long, and its head is at once thin and long, its beak black; and it gives out a voice like the frogs'.
In the Prasiacan country (this is part of India) Megasthenes says that there are apes no smaller than the largest dogs, and that they have tails five cubits long; and that there grow on them forelocks and beards let down and deep; and their whole face is white, but their body is black to look at, and they are tame and most kindly to men, and do not have the malice that is connatural with the apes elsewhere.
In India there is a country about the river Astaborras, in the land of the so-called Rhizophagi. At the rising of the Dog-star there appeared certain dreadful clouds of gnats, such as to fill the air, and then they did much harm. And about the lake called Aoratia (this too is Indian, and is near the aforesaid river) this same beast, the gnat, swarms; and the place is desert and is so called. The reason the Indians who dwell round about give is this: that the aforesaid place was not desert of men from above or from the beginning, but that scorpions swarmed there in an unmatched multitude, and a certain horde of venomous spiders came upon it, spiders such as they call four-jawed. These evils, they say, were bred by the corruption of the air. And for a while the people there endured the assault of the evil patiently and bore it with toil; but when it was utterly irresistible, and every age was perishing, then at last, in their helplessness to ward off the onset of the aforesaid visitation, they left the country, and abandoned to desolation that land which was before dear, and the best of fatherlands; nor shall I err, perhaps, if I call the same a mother-land.
An incursion and host of field-mice, no good thing, by the gods, drove some of the people in Italy from their ancestral land, and made them exiles, like droughts or frosts or some other unseasonable weather, shearing the crops and cutting through the roots. A horde of sparrows that came upon Media drove out those inhabitants too, destroying the seed and making it vanish. And half-formed frogs, falling in numbers from the air, made the Autariatae migrate to another place. And a certain Libyan people, of whom I made mention above, when lions came upon them, then were forced to rise up from their ancestral land.
In the land of Babylonia there are bred ants, and they have the procreative body turned to the rear, opposite to the others and the reverse.
The Carian and Lycian leopard is not high-spirited, nor very ready to spring, but long in body; and when wounded with spears and points it is resistant, and does not easily yield to the iron, doing that Homeric thing, "And truly, pierced through by the spear, it does not give up."
To describe the form of the rhinoceros is to tell a thrice-stale tale; for many of the Greeks and Romans know it from having seen it. But to tell its peculiar traits in its way of life is no worse a thing. At the tip of its nose it bears the horn, whence indeed it has its name; and it is exceedingly sharp at the point, and the hard part of it is likened to iron. Rubbing it against the rocks, it then will set upon the elephant, coming to close quarters, being otherwise no match for it, both because of the other's height and because of so great a strength of the beast. So it gets beneath its legs, and cuts and rips up the belly with its horn; and the elephant, not long after, when its blood has flowed out, slips down. The fight of the rhinoceros against the elephant is over pasture, and one may meet with many elephants dead in this way. But if the rhinoceros does not first do this, but, running somehow beneath, is pressed down when the elephant falls upon it, the elephant, throwing about its trunk, holds it and draws it to itself, and falling upon it with its tusks cuts it up as with axes. For even if the rhinoceros has a hide hard and hard to pierce, yet the force of the one that falls upon it is very strong.
Most savage of creatures, it seems, were the bulls of the Ethiopians called the flesh-eaters. They are twice the size of those among the Greeks, and swiftest of speed. They are red-haired, grey-eyed, and these surpass the lions. Their horns at other times they move as they do their ears, but in their fights they raise them and, having set them up firmly, then fight thus; and the horns, once raised, are not bent down by their rage, by a nature, by Zeus, that is marvellous. They are unwoundable by spears and by every weapon; for the iron does not pierce in; for the bull, bristling, casts it off when it has fallen on him in vain. It attacks even herds of horses and other beasts. So the herdsmen, wishing to help their own herds, make deep hidden trenches and lie in wait for them with these; and the bulls, when they fall in, are choked by their own rage. And this creature has justly been judged the best among the Troglodytes; for it has the valour of a lion, the swiftness of a horse, the strength of a bull, and is stronger than iron.
Mnaseas says that in Europe there is a temple of Heracles and of his wife, whom the poets sing to be the daughter of Hera. So within the precinct of the shrine, he says, many tame birds are reared, and this too, that these birds are cocks and hens. They graze and herd together by kind, and have public feeding, and are votive offerings of the aforesaid gods. The hens, then, graze in the temple of Hebe, and their mates in that of Heracles. And a channel of ever-flowing and pure water runs through the midst. No female at all comes in to the temple of Heracles; but the males, when it is the season for mating, fly over the channel, and then, having consorted with the females, go back again to their own quarters beside the god whom they serve, having purified themselves with the water that divides the kinds of the birds. So there are born, as is natural, first from the consorting eggs; then, when the mothers have warmed them and hatched the young, the males take their sons to themselves and rear them; and as for the female birds, it is their task to rear the daughters.
epilogue. All, then, that my own zeal and care and toil, and my mind advancing toward learning yet more even in these matters, has tracked out and discovered — things which approved men and philosophers made a contest of, setting up experience in them as a prize — has now been told by me, as well as it was possible to tell it, neither passing over what I knew nor playing the sluggard, as though I had despised and dishonoured a herd irrational and voiceless; but here too the love of wisdom that dwells with me and is connatural to me kindled me. I am not unaware that some of those whose eyes are keen upon money, and who are whetted toward honours and powers and all that loves glory, will hold it against me that I laid out my own leisure upon these things, when it was possible both to be haughty and to be reckoned among the courts and to advance to great wealth. But I, going round about foxes and lizards and beetles and snakes and lions, and what the leopard does, and how the stork is affectionate, and that the nightingale is sweet of mouth, and how the elephant is wise, and the kinds of fishes, and the migrations of cranes, and the natures of serpents, and all the rest that this work has laboriously gathered and keeps — I find it not dear to me to be reckoned among those rich men and tested against them; but if there are those whom both wise poets and men clever at seeing and observing the secrets of nature, and writers who have advanced their inquiry to the furthest, have judged worthy of themselves, among these I try, somehow or other, to reckon myself, and I wish to; and clearly I am a better counsellor to myself than their judgment is. For I would wish to gain one well-learned piece of knowledge rather than the much-sung riches and possessions of the very wealthy. And of these matters enough for now. I know too that some will not praise the following: that I did not separate my account according to each of the creatures, nor speak the particulars of each by themselves all together, but mixed up the various things variously, and went through many subjects, and here left off the account of these creatures, and there returned to speak other things about their nature. But I, first of all, in what is my own, am not the slave of another's judgment and will, nor do I say that I must follow another wherever he may lead me; and second, by the variety of the reading I hunt after attractiveness and flee the loathing that comes from like things, and so I thought I ought to weave and plait this work as a kind of meadow or seasonable garland out of the many colours, since the many creatures bring flowers, as it were. And if to huntsmen it seems somehow a piece of good luck to find a single creature, yet the tracks of so many, and the gathering of their members, I say, is no ignoble thing — that is, all that nature gave them and all that she granted to be tracked out. What against this are the Cephali and Hippolyti, and any other clever at pursuing wild beasts in the wild mountains, or again, of those clever in the water-hunts, Metrodorus of Byzantium, or Leonidas his son, or Demostratus, or any other most skilful hunters of fish, many, by Zeus? And as for painters, a horse painted most beautifully made them proud, as it did Aglaophon, or a fawn, as Apelles, or a sprouting little ox, as Myron, or some other thing. But if one man sets forth and brings to the light the works of so many — characters and shapes and wisdom and shrewdness and justice and temperance and courage and affection and piety, having hunted them out — how is he not already worthy of admiration? And having come to this point in my account, I am quite vexed, that we sing the piety of irrational creatures, but convict men of impiety. And this I shall not prove here; but it is most just to say besides the following, of which indeed at the beginning of these accounts I made mention: if I said these things, all that everyone, or at least the most, have said, it is not yet just to blame me; for I could not myself mould other creatures, but I displayed many that I came to know. Indeed, I have also told some things that no other has told, having come to them myself through this experience of mine; and truth is dear to me, both elsewhere and here not least. But how I told them, and with how much toil, and what the nobility of the diction is, and of the composition, and the beauty of the nouns and the verbs — those will know to whom I do not appeal as bad judges.