Book 3
Imperial Oppian of Apamea Greek- But now that we have sung the tribes of horned beasts, bulls and deer and the splendid broad-horned ones, and gazelles and oryxes and the gleaming iorci, and all others on whose heads is armour above, come now, goddess, let us tell of the jagged-toothed company of flesh-eating beasts and the tusked breeds. And first to the lion let us dedicate the famous strain. The Curetes were the nurses of Zeus, the overpowering son of Cronus, when he was newly born, and Rhea, who stole the child away from his pitiless father Cronus, laid him in the bosom of Crete. But the son of Heaven, seeing the strong new-suckling boy, first changed the splendid guardians of Zeus and made them beasts, transforming the Curetes. And they, since by the counsels of the god a human form they had cast off, Cronus's gift, and clothed themselves as lions, afterward, by the gifts of Zeus, hold great sway over the mountain-haunting beasts, and the dread swift car of Rhea, blessed in childbirth, they draw beneath the yoke. Varied are the tribes and the forms among these beasts, each kind apart. Those that, by the outpourings of the loud-roaring river, by the wide-flowing Tiris, the archer land of Armenia bore, and the much-sowing, well-pastured land of the Parthians, are yellow-haired and not so strong. A thicker neck they bear, and a great head, gleaming eyes and brows high and deep, ample, drooping over the nose; and from the neck and from the jaws on either side swift manes wave thick. Those again the great-gifted soil of the Erembi rears, which the tribes of men call blessed; these too have necks and shaggy chests, and from their eyes flash gleams of fire, and they are conspicuous beyond all others; but the boundless earth has got a small breed of these. A great throng in deep-clodded, thirsty Libya roars and rumbles, the roaring of mighty lions, no longer shaggy, and a faint gleam runs over them; terrible in face and neck; and over all their limbs they bear faintly the dark flower of cyanus, soiled; boundless is the strength in their limbs, and over the kingly lions the Libyan lions hold great sway. And once from the Ethiopians there came over to the Libyan land, a great marvel to behold, a black-skinned, fair-maned lion, broad above in the head, hairy of foot, fiery of eye, reddened only at the yellow mouth. I saw, I did not learn by hearsay, that bloody beast, and it came as an envoy to kingly eyes. The tribes of lions do not crave food all their days, but the one cares for feasting, the other again for toil; nor do they take their sleep in the innermost corners of a rock, but openly they sleep, rolling a bold-hearted spirit, and slumber wherever the towering evening night overtakes them. I heard this too from the lion-keeping men, that the tawny lion bears beneath its right paw a swift numbness, with which it bends all the knees of beasts. Five times the female loosens her girdle for offspring; the report is truly idle, that she bears but one. Five she bears first; then four she travails of cubs; and next in order below, from the third womb three came forth; from the fourth twin children; and last the mother bore one, from the womb that bears the best, the famous king, the lion. The deadly leopards are a twofold race; some are larger to look upon and thicker in the broad back, and others are smaller, but in spirit no whit inferior; the forms of both are wrought alike, save only the tail, which is the other way to behold; in the smaller it is the larger, in the large the smaller. Well-knit are the thighs, the body long, the eye bright; the pupils gleam grey-glancing beneath the lids, grey-glancing at once and red within, like things on fire, blazing; but beneath the teeth about the mouth are pale and venomous. The hide is dappled, and over the all-shining colour it is dusky, with thick-set darkening spots. Most swiftly it runs, and bravely charges straight; you would say, when you saw it, it was borne through the air. And this tribe too the singers proclaim to have been of old the nurses of grape-bearing Bacchus; therefore even now they greatly rejoice in wine, receiving in their mouths the great gift of Dionysus. What cause from men changed the famous women into this savage race of leopards, I shall sing again. Yes, and you may behold another swift twofold race, the conspicuous lynxes; for some are to see small, and arm themselves against the smaller hares; others again are larger, and leap easily upon fair-horned deer and the sharper oryxes. In form both have clothed themselves quite alike; equal beneath the lids are the gleams from their eyes that flash lovely; the faces of both are bright, the head small, the ear curved; only the colour is unlike to behold; over the smaller lynxes runs a reddish hide, over the larger a saffron and brimstone-like bloom. Above all these tribes are amazed at their own offspring, the bright-eyed lynxes and the fiery-eyed lions, the deadly leopards and the windswift tigers. And when their new-suckling cubs in the thickets fearless hunters secretly carry off, and they afterward, returning back, behold suddenly the empty homes and the deserted dwellings, they wail shrilly an endless lament, and from afar they send forth a much-groaning cry, just as when, the homeland sacked by the spear and burning with fierce fire, the women, flung about their children, weep greatly. So great a love of offspring and of new-born young did the god instil in the heart; not in men alone, who devise all things by their minds, but also in serpents and fishes and even in the ravening beasts and the high-soaring flocks of birds; so much is nature stronger than all else. What care of offspring in the waves the dolphin ever has, and the grey shark and the ill-blowing seal! How among birds an unceasing longing they have for their young, the vultures and the deep-voiced doves and the eagle tribes and the long-lived crows! How a hen in the house, sharing the hearth with men, newly delivered, frisking about her young chicks, when she sees a hawk swooping down over the roof, shrieks sharply at once and starts up with a sharp cry, and lifts her neck high, arching it to the air, and on either side quickly bristles all her feathers, and lets all her wings sink to the ground; and the timid chicks, foot-soldiers, twitter beneath the winged wall; but she both routs and drives off the shameless bird, guarding her dear children, which she still feeds while small, wingless, loosed from the bonds of the birth-loosing chambers. So too among beasts the loud-roaring lionesses and the swift leopards and the dapple-backed tigers stand before their young and fight with the hunters, and for their own offspring they endure to be slain, setting themselves against the spearmen, against men; nor ever do they shudder, in the contest for their race, not at the oncoming throng of javelin-hurling men, not at the gleaming bronze and the flashing iron, nor at the swift casts of darts and the thick-flung stones, but they strive either to die first or to save their young. The wild bears, a murderous race, of shifting counsel, have clothed themselves in thick, hard-to-handle fur, and a form not gentle, with utterly mirthless faces; a jagged, deadly, long mouth, a dark-blue nose, a swift eye, a swift ankle, a keen body, a broad head, hands like the hands of mortals, and feet again like feet, a terrible roar, a treacherous heart, a savage spirit, and much Cythera, going beyond all measure; for day and night, longing for love, the females themselves rush eagerly upon the males, seldom leaving the all-delightful marriage-bed, conceiving young when they swell in the womb. For it is not the law among beasts, when the belly is full, for those going to the bed to perform the work of love, save only for the lynxes and the feeble hares. But the bear, longing for love and loathing to keep the bed widowed for her young, has dared to devise this: before the hour of birth comes, before the appointed day, she presses out her womb and forces the birth-goddesses. So great is her lust, so great her race toward Aphrodite. She bears young half-finished and without limbs, flesh without mark, jointless, formless to behold, and her care is for both love and the rearing of children; new-delivered though she still is, at once she beds with the male. She licks with her tongue her dear offspring, just as calves lick one another with their tongues by turns, delighting in each other; and the fair-horned ox is gladdened by the ox's skin; nor do they wander apart, until they have shed sweet desire; and they cheer the heart of the herdsman following them. So the bear, licking, moulds her dear children, until with their whimperings they mutter shamelessly. Yes, and above all she fears the wintry onset, shaggy though she is; and when snow powders everything, the western wind scattering it thick over all, she hides in a cave, where she may find sufficient shelter, and, lacking food, she licks her feet and hands, as if being milked, and so steals away the urging of her belly. Such things, I suppose, in the depths of the wide-wayed sea the crooked octopuses devise beside the waves, which in midwinter, dreading the chilling threat, hide in the flat rocks, eating their own tentacles; but when the wet, well-nourishing spring blooms, swiftly the new shoots grow for them again, and once more, fair-tressed, they swim the long sea. Next let us tell of the well-ankled, dusky, swift, storm-footed, strong-hoofed, lofty wild ass; the eye is bright, the body sufficient, broad to behold, silvery in colour, long-eared, swiftest to run; a black stripe runs about the middle of its spine, ringed on either side with snowy crowns. It eats fodder; the grass-feeding earth feeds it abundantly, but it itself is good food for strong beasts. The storm-footed tribes of wild asses, wholly jealous, glory in their many mates, and pride themselves; the females follow where their mate leads; to pasture they make their way, when he chooses to bid them, to the springs of rivers, the wine of beasts, and again straightway to the shaggy homes, when evening brings sleep. Jealousy in all the males against their own infant sons a wholly savage, shameless frenzy stirs; for when the female has the labour of childbirth, he sits very near and watches his own offspring face on; and when the babe falls beside the mother's feet, if it is female, he loves the child, and on either side licking with his tongue he cherishes his dear offspring; but if he sees it is male, then, then indeed he stirs his heart, the beast raging at the mother with baleful jealousy; and he leaps forth, eager to cut off with his jaws the young one's manhood, lest afterward the new race should grow up. But she, though new-delivered and weak from the birth, as a mother defends her wretched child under attack. And as when in much-grieving war, before its mother's eyes, pitiless spearmen slay the infant, and again drag the mother herself, while it still gasps in death, twined about her son, wailing a great mournful cry, tearing her soft cheek, and below her breasts drenched with warm blood and lukewarm milk; so too the female wild ass over her son seems wholly to make a piteous moaning and to wail her ill fortune. You would say that the wretched one, bestriding her own child, spoke gentle words and uttered a pleading speech: "Husband, husband, why now are your features made harsh, and your eyes reddened, that before were gleaming? Do you not see before you the brow of stone-working Medusa, not the venom-eating brood of the pitiless dragoness, not the all-lawless cub of the mountain-roaming lioness? The child whom I bore in misery, whom we prayed for to the gods, your own child—will you with your jaws make him no male? Hold, my love, do not cut; why have you cut me? what have you done? You have made the child nothing, blinding his whole body. Wretched am I, all luckless in this most untimely birth, and you, child, all wretched in your most sinful sire. Wretched am I, thrice unhappy, who travailed an empty birth, and you, child, cut not by the claws of lions, but by the hateful lion-jaws of a sire." Such things, one would say, the all-luckless mother speaks about her infant child; and he, caring nothing, with bloody mouth feasts on the joyless food of his child. Father Zeus, how wholly savage is the heart of jealousy! That beast, mightier than nature to behold you made, lord, and gave it the sharp rush of fire, and granted it to bear an adamantine blade in its right hand. It did not spare dear children for their sweet parents, nor, when it comes, does it know comrades and kinsmen, nor blood-kin, whenever it meets, grievous and boundless. That beast too of old armed against their own children the very demigods and the blameless demigoddesses, the son of Aegeus, Theseus, and the son of Aeolus, Athamas, the Attic woman and Procne and Thracian Philomela and Colchian Medea and conspicuous Themisto. But nevertheless, after the race of grievous mortals, it set before the beasts the deadly Thyestean table. There is on the well-cliffed borders of the Ethiopians a great tribe of wild horses, armed with venomous double tusks; and of their feet not a single hoof, but they bear a double cloven hoof, like deer; the neck-mane, bestriding the middle of the spine, runs back to the very tail; nor ever did the dread overweening race endure the slavery of mortals; but even if at some time the black-skinned Indians should take the wild horse with well-twisted nooses in their crafty ambushes, it will neither taste food at once with its lips nor drink, but the deadly creature is ready to die rather than bear the slavish yoke. Mark also two foe-meeting, jagged-toothed tribes, the sheep-slaying wolf and again the hard-to-look-on hyena, the one the destroyer of flocks and goatfolds, the other hateful to whelps and the braver hounds; the one the nightly, inescapable raider of the belly, the wily snatcher of lambs and kids, the other being a night-rover and a night-wanderer, because for her by night is light, and again darkness after dawn. The forms of both these bloody beasts are unlike; for the one you may see all like to the larger shepherd hounds, and a shaggy tail follows; but the other arches the middle of her spine, and all about is shaggy, and her dread body is inscribed with dark stripes thick-set on either side; narrow and long is she in back and tail; and the singers proclaim the hides of both to be chilling; if you cut the hyena's and wear it about your feet, you would wear a great terror to mighty hounds, and the dogs, when you tread in such sandals, do not bark at you in return, though before they were barking. And if you flay a wolf and fashion from its hide a sweet-sounding Didymaean drum, a fruit-destroying drum, alone among all it has rung a deep-booming sound and alone it clatters, and the drums that before were tuneful it silences and deafens every voice. For even dead the sheep shudder at the dead wolf. A marvel too I have heard about the dappled hyenas, that male and female change with the year, and now one becomes the hard-to-look-on bridegroom, ceaselessly longing for love, and then again is seen as a female bride in travail and a careful mother. But there are five grey-haired races of wolves, and their forms men have marked as unlike one another, the shepherd men, to whom they are most hostile. First, the one they call the bold-hearted archer; tawny in all its form, but with rounded limbs, and it bears a head much larger and swift legs; its belly is whitened with grey spots; terribly it howls and leaps quite on high, ever shaking its head and glaring fire. Another is greater in size, but again long of limb, swifter than all the wolves; men call it the hawk and the snatcher. With much whirring it goes very early to the hunt, at the first twilight; for easily it lacks food; a silvery hue gleams on its flanks and tail, and it dwells in the great mountains; but when, in the winter season, the chilling snow, poured from the clouds, has covered them, then the deadly-minded beast comes near the city too, clothed in all shamelessness for the sake of food, and it draws near secretly and very quietly, until it presses upon its prey; and at once with its swift claws it seizes it. There is one that, over the snow-stricken peaks of Taurus, haunting the Cilician heights and the headlands of Amanus, is fair to see, pre-eminent among beasts, which they call the golden one, flashing with abundant fleece, no wolf, but a beast far surpassing the wolf, most lofty, whetted with bronze lips, boundless in strength. Often the unwearied bronze, often the stone it has steadily pierced, and the pointed iron. And it knows the Dog-star and fears it when it rises; at once it sinks into a cleft of the wide earth or into a lightless cave, until the sun and the star of the deadly Dog cease from their parching heat. Two are the Acmones, a murderous race, small in the neck, broadest in the back, but shaggy-haired in the thighs and feet and face, smaller, small in the eyes. Of these the one with silvery back and white belly shines all over, and is dark only at the very tips of its paws; some men have called it the grey-haired kite. But the other appears with darkening colours, smaller than the former, but in strength not inferior. It hunts terribly, charging at the hares; and all the hairs over its limbs bristle upright. And often wolves have approached the bloody leopards for the bed, whence comes a strong-hearted race, the jackals; together they bear a double soiled bloom, the mother in the hide, and the father again in the face. Next let us sing the famous body of the tiger, than which cunning nature has given nothing more delightful for the eyes to behold among the great company of beasts. So far does the tiger surpass among beasts as the fair peacock among the birds of the air. You would think it altogether a mountain lioness, save only for the hide, with which it is ringed, dappled, gleaming intricate and shining with flowers. Such a fiery flash beneath the lids its eyes dart; and the body is of such a kind, strong, well-fleshed; such the long-shadowing tail; such the face about the mouth; such above the brow droops; such the gleaming teeth. It is swifter than the swiftest, pre-eminent among beasts; for it is like to Zephyr itself, its father, in running; yet not its father; who could believe these things, that beasts should be subdued by a wind as bridegroom? For that is an empty tale, that this tribe is all female and bedless of any male; for often you might see a many-flowered fair mate; yet easily you could not take it; for, leaving its young, it steadily flees, when it sees the hunters; but the mother, following her cubs and grieving in spirit, a great joy to hunters, comes straight to the nets. The boar, far pre-eminent among the warlike beasts, loves its couches in the inmost depths of the cliffs, and above all it loathes the much-echoing din of beasts. Restlessly it wanders, rushing upon the female, and, mad with love, it swells; upright on its neck bristle the hairs, like the crests of high-plumed helmets, and it lets fall foam upon the ground; and the fence of its teeth clatters white with hot panting; and there is more wrath about its loves than shame. But if the female, cowering, awaits it, it quenches all its wrath and lulls the beast's onset; but if, refusing, she flees the loving bed, at once, stirred by the hot fiery gadfly, either it accomplishes the union by force, mastering her by might, or it lays her dead in the dust, charging with its jaws. There is a report about the boar, that within its white tusk it secretly holds a fierce fiery heat. And a sign is clearly rooted for men; for when a great thronging crowd of hunters with bold hounds bring the beast to the ground, having mastered it close-pressed with long spears, then if anyone lifts a thin hair from its neck, while the beast still pants, and brings it near the tusk, at once the hair runs up curling, ablaze, into a ball. And on the hounds themselves, on their flanks on either side, where the fiery tusks of the boar's jaws drew near, scorched tracks are stretched through the hide. Of porcupines there is yet nothing in the shadowy wood more chilling to behold, nor any other more grievous; their size indeed is like the bloody wolves', small, smaller, of strong body; and all about the hide bristles round with rough, shaggy spines, such as the gleaming tribes of hedgehogs arm themselves with. But when the braver beasts pursue it, then it devises this: it bristles its swift spines and behind, over its back, with its swift-flying barbs it hurls straight a fierce dart; and both at once it steadily flees and, fleeing, fights. Often it has slain the jagged-toothed hound; thus you would say a man skilled in the bow was shooting arrows. Therefore, when the hunters behold it, they do not let loose the hounds, but contrive a trick, which I shall tell afterward, when I sing the slaying of beasts. The ichneumon is small, but, like the great beasts, wholly worthy to be sung, for its counsel and its strong valour beneath feeble limbs. For by its wiles it has slain a twofold race, the creeping serpents and the grievous crocodiles, those of the Nile, a murderous race; for whenever one of the baleful beasts sleeps, having spread its triple-rowed lips and a wide chasm and a boundless gleaming fence, then the ichneumon, weaving a crafty design, with sidelong eyes watches the boundless beast, until it is sure of deep sleep upon its senses; and at once, having rolled in the sands and the mud, swiftly it leaps, flying through the gateway of death with bold heart, and goes through the wide gullet. But the wretch awakes from its heavy sleep, and bearing such an unhoped-for evil in its flanks, everywhere raging and helpless it wanders about, now going to the ends of the deep river, now again rolling in the sands toward the shore, panting wildly, twisting about in its pains. But the other cares nothing, and delights in sweet food; near the liver above all it sits and feasts; and late at last, leaving the empty body, it leaps forth from the beast. Ichneumon, great marvel, mighty, of shifting counsel, how great a boldness your heart held! how much you undertook, fixing your body close beside death! And the venom-bearing asp too it has mastered by such counsels. It hid its whole body in the sands, watching the beast, save only its tail and its fiery eyes; for its tail is long and serpent-like, with the tips ending in clusters like a head, darkening in front, like the scales of beasts. And when it sees the smoky, hissing asp, arching itself against it, it challenges the bloody beast. The asp lifted up near it its venom-bearing head, and widened its breast, and bared a harsh tooth, fighting in vain with its baleful jaws. But then the warlike ichneumon does not linger in the sands, but leaping seized the bitter throat, and tears it with its jaws as it writhes on either side, and at once made it a corpse, spitting out in vain the piercing, dear venom of death, its raging wrath. Yes, and of shifting counsel against the field-dwelling beasts especially is the fox, very warlike in mind; and shrewd, it dwells in inmost lairs, having opened seven-gated homes and pierced chambers far from one another, lest the hunting men, lying in wait about the door, lead it off in their snares; grievous it is with its jaws, both to fight face to face with the braver beasts and with the hunting hounds. But when the chilling winter comes and it lacks food, and the vines appear bare of their clusters, then it weaves a bitter scheme for hunting, to take birds by guile and the young of hares. Tell me those things too, many-voiced, clear-singing Muse, the tribes mixed in nature from beasts, blended of two kinds, the dapple-backed leopard together with the shared camel. Father Zeus, how much you devised, how many forms you planted for us, how many you gave to mortals, how many to the swimming creatures of the sea! You who contrived this whole dappled form of camels, clothing with shameless leopard-hides a splendid, lovely, tame race for men. Its neck is long, its body spotted, its ears small, the head bare above, the feet long, the soles broad, the measures of the legs unequal, the feet not quite alike, but the front ones are the better, while the hinder are far smaller, and they crouch down alike. From the middle of the head a double horn springs straight up, not a horny horn; and beside the ears, in the middle of the temple, feeble horns rise up at the temples; its mouth, like a deer's, is small and tender, and slender within are set milk-white teeth on either side; its eyes flash a all-shining gleam. Its tail again is short, as in swift gazelles, with the tips behind darkening with hairs. Yes, and another twofold breed I saw with my own eyes, a great marvel, the camel coupled with the sparrow. This too, though it is numbered among the light birds and is feathered, my songs shall sing, because the varied law of our hunting has taken it. For neither did the deadly birdlime of fowlers master it, nor the reeds that tread the airy path, but horses and swift hounds and unseen bonds. Its size indeed is overweening, enough that above on its broadest back it bears a new-suckling boy; and its feet are tall-stretched, like sluggish camels', fitted with thick-set scales such as theirs, hard up to the double thigh; and aloft it lifts a small head, but a long, long-haired neck, dark; and it has much plumage; yet not above the air on the high-soaring paths do they journey, but nevertheless, being swift of foot to run, they bear a speed equal to the very birds. Nor again, like birds, is their bed up aloft, but, like the Bactrian tribe, they have backward-turned couches; it lays a boundless egg, as large as the bird is large, armoured round about with stony shells. Let us sing of hares, the rich autumn-fruit of the hunt. The body is small, shaggy, the ear longest, the head small above, the feet small, the legs unequal; they are clothed in unlike colours; some are dark and dusky on the black-clodded plain, others again yellow on the red-faced fields; and their great eyes flash a bright glance, with the corner armed in sleeplessness; for never indeed do they take sleep, slumbering upon their lids, fearing the might of beasts and the swift heart of men; by night they lie awake and are given to love; ceaselessly they long for love, and even while pregnant never do they refuse the much-rutting onset of the male, not even when they carry in the belly the much-sowing swift arrow; for above all this tribe, of all that the boundless earth has reared, is most prolific; for one outside the womb leaps forth as a finished embryo, another within it bears without hair, another it grows half-finished, another it holds an unjointed seed of an embryo to behold; and in order it bears, and never does the shameless female forget her lust; she does all that her heart bids, not refusing Cythera even in the very pangs of birth.