Reader

INTRODUCTION There can be little doubt that Plutarch composed this pleasant work from commentarii (ὑπομνήματα) derived not merely from Aristotle (mentioned specifically in 965 d and quoted often), but also from various other compendia, the remains of which are to be seen in Aelian’s and Pliny’s natural histories and elsewhere.On the sources see Ziegler’s article Plutarchos in Pauly-Wissowa, col. 738, and, of the authorities he cites, particularly Wellmann’s papers in Hermes, xxvi, xxvii, and li, and Max Schuster, Untersuchungen zu Plutarchs De Sollertia Animalium (Diss. Munich, 1917). There is also an amusing work of Philo, surviving only in an Armenian version, which is most conveniently accessible in Aucher’s Latin translation in vol. 8 of the Bibliotheca Sacra edition (Schwickert, Leipzig, 1830): De Ratione quam habere etiam Bruta Animalia dicebat Alexander. In the first part of this work Alexander presents the arguments for animal intelligence, which Philo himself attempts to refute in a somewhat summary fashion at the end. The occasional parallels with Plutarch will be cited as Philo, with Aucher’s section and page numbers. Antigonus of Carystus, Historia Mirabilium, will be cited from O. Keller’s edition of the Naturalium Rerum Scriptores Graeci (Teubner, 1877) and Aelian’s De Natura Animalium from R. Hercher’s Teubner (not Didot) edition. In fact, if one reads Plutarch and Aelian and Pliny side by side, one may acquire the impression that they had before them substantially the same sources, and that these were numerous. Whereas Pliny and Aelian appear to adopt nearly everything their authorities may have offered (for they were writing factual commentaries), Plutarch, as always, selects. It is possible, in some cases, that Plutarch’s mss. (which are not good and also contain lacunae) may have been interpolated from Aelian’s; and the reverse is likewise possible. This is a very difficult matter, but the hope may be entertained that some main sources of Plutarch and Aelian, if not of Pliny, and the as yet unassessed evidence of Philo, may eventually be disentangled for substantial sections, though this is not the place to attempt such a feat. The title is not well chosen, since the victory is awarded to neither side. The real point of the dialogue seems to be, in its second as well as its first part, that all animals of whatever provenance are intelligent.Schuster thinks, rather, that Plutarch’s chief aim is to make clear a moral and juridical relationship between man and beasts. The occasionally bantering tone may serve to indicate that we have before us something of a school exercise from Plutarch’s own academy, with perhaps the first draft of the second part composed by pupils.See Schuster, pp. 57 ff. Aristotimus and Phaedimus were doubtless actual pupils of Plutarch. Note the carefully established details: the contest will take place at a fixed time (960 b, 963 b) before their fellow-pupils and a specially appointed judge (965 c-e). More or less elaborate preparation has been made by the contestants (960 b, 975 d).Plutarch lays special emphasis on preparation: Mor. 80 d, 652 b. Because of the occasion the school has been granted a holiday. In the first part (chapters 1-8), the author demonstrates through the authoritarian voice of his own father that the Stoics, in so far as they affirm the irrationality of animals, contradict their own tenets. The second part proves that animals of all kinds are rational (chapters 9-36); the last small section, while refusing to award first honours in the debate, appears to contain Plutarch’s exhortation to his pupils to continue the fight against the Stoics. For an excellent summary with sympathetic comments see E. R. Dodds, Greece and Rome, ii (1932/3), pp. 104-105. D’ AgostinoV. D’ Agostino, Archivo Italiano di Psicologia, xi (1933), pp. 21 ff., a useful summarizing article. and others have shown that there is little originality in Plutarch’s animal psychology, while not denying our author considerable vivacity in presentation. While it is true that whole sections, like 976 a-d, are drawn from the identical source that Aelian (De Natura Animalium, viii. 4-6) used, yet one has only to compare the use these authors have made of precisely the same material to recognize the great superiority of Plutarch. The principal sources have been disputedHirzel, Der Dialog, ii, p. 179, n. 1. All of Hirzel’s discussion is worth reading, though there are occasional slips, as when he affirms (p. 173, n. 2) that the story in 969 e f. goes back to Plutarch’s own experience. This is quite unlikely in view of Aelian’s version of the same story; nor has Aelian drawn from Plutarch as some, including Wyttenbach, have thought.: Chrysippus, Theophrastus, Hagnon, Alexander of Myndus,For the difficulty and danger involved in identifying the sources exactly see the lists of authorities furnished by Pliny in his first book. Alexander of Myndus, for example, does not appear at all as a source for books 8-11. Juba, Xenocrates have all been suggested, but there can be little doubt (as with De Tranquillitate See the introduction in the Loeb edition. and many other works) that a considerable variety of sources has been utilized. Now that Schläpfer Plutarch und die klassischen Dichter, Zürich, 1950, especially pp. 59-60. has demonstrated that Plutarch had himself read and meditated upon great sections of classical poetry, critics may perhaps be more willing to allow our author first-hand familiarity with a wider range of prose, and works of reference as well. It is by no means impossible that the work is incomplete in our mss.; there are, at least, several demonstrable lacunae and it is possible that it was considerably longer and may even have justified its title when it left Plutarch’s hands. As for the date of the dialogue, the terminus post quem is a.d. 70 (not 79, as it cannot be certainly inferred from 974 a that Vespasian was then dead); it is probably a work of Plutarch’s youth, preceding in any case the Lives and the Symposiacs. It may well date from Plutarch’s anti-Stoic period which produced the De Facie, the De Communibus Notitiis, and the other anti-Chrysippean polemics. It has much in common with the Gryllus and the fragments of De Esu Carnium and some correspondence with the Amatorius.But allowance must be made for exaggerated and partially false premises in Hartman, De Plutarcho, p. 567. A modified chronological scheme of Plutarch’s writings has lately been proposed by T. Sinko (Polish Acad. Cracow, 1947), but it is too complicated to be examined here. It may, in fact, have been written during nearly the same period as that in which the elder Pliny (whose preface is dated a.d. 77) was compiling his own Natural History. The citations in D’Arcy Thompson’s Oxford translation of Aristotle’s Historia Animalium The Loeb edition of A. L. Peck is still awaited at this date of writing. It should be noted that quotations from the ninth book, in particular, are liable to peculiar suspicion and may not proceed from the great naturalist himself. are somewhat inaccurate and inconsistent, being, as he says, compiled at various times and at long intervals during many years. Nevertheless the work is of great value and it may be hoped that the notes in this edition that rely on it (and these are many) have been adequately sifted. Also to be constantly and gratefully consulted are Thompson’s A Glossary of Greek Fishes (Oxford, 1947) and A Glossary of Greek Birds (2nd edition, Oxford, 1936). There will be many references to Thompson’s Aristotle; but if the creature in question is a bird or a fish, it is to be understood that supplementary and often corrective material is to be found in the Glossaries. There is, further, a tribute of admiration due to A. W. Mair’s L.C.L. edition of Oppian, with its exhaustive notes.Even the extremely hostile review in Phil. Woch. li (1931), pp. 1569 ff., exempts the notes from censure. Rackham (L.C.L. Pliny, vol. Ill, books viii-xi) is very interesting on the text, but has almost completely denied himself the privilege of citing parallel passages. The debunking of many of Plutarch’s stories, if such a task is necessary, has been pleasantly done in the leisurely course of Bergen Evans’ The Natural History of Nonsense (New York, 1946). It should be added, however, that modern scientific speculation is approaching somewhat closer to one of Plutarch’s main tenets, if one may judge from such a work as W. C. Allee’s Coöperation Among Animals (New York, 1951: a revision of his earlier The Social Life of Animals); and on the thesis of animal intelligence see Evans himself, p. 173, and the authorities cited there, note 1. Both the translation and the notes of this and the following essays have benefited immeasurably from an exhaustive criticism generously given them by Professor Alfred C. Andrews of the University of Miami, Florida. He has in fact supplied a number of valuable notes and also the Appendix, a classified zoological index. It must be understood, however, that any errors remaining are to be attributed solely to the editor.Since our text was formed and our translation and notes composed a year or more before the appearance of the new Teubner edition, almost no new references have been added which are not purely textual. The curious reader is referred to Hubert’s wealth of illustration to supplement our contributions. The dialogue is no. 147 in the catalogue of Lamprias. According to this document Plutarch wrote another work (no. 135) on the same subject: Do Beasts Possess Reason? But no. 127, Περὶ ζώλων ἀλόγων ποιητικός, is probably the same as our Gryllus, the following dialogue in this edition. Abbreviations used in citing Modern Authors Brands = J. P. J. M. Brands, Grieksche Diernamen, Purmerend, 1935. Cotte = J. Cotte, Poissons et animaux aquatiques au temps de Pline, Paris, 1945. Keller = Otto Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, Leipzig, 1909-1913. Mair = A. W. Mair, Oppian, Colluthus, Tryphiodorus, L.C.L., 1928. Saint-Denis = E. de Saint-Denis, Le Vocabulaire des animaux marius en latin classique, Paris, 1947. Schmid = Georg Schmid, Die Fische in Ovids Halieuticon, Philologus, Supplementband xi (1907-1910), pp. 253-350. Thompson, Aristotle = D’Arcy W. Thompson, The Works of Aristotle, vol. IV, Historia animalium, Oxford, 1910. Thompson, Birds = D’Arcy W. Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Birds, rev. ed., Oxford, 1936. Thompson, Fishes = D’Arcy W. Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Fishes, Oxford, 1947.

(The speakers in the dialogue are Autobulus,Plutarch’s father; on controversial points connected with this identification see Ziegler in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Plutarchos, 642 ff. Soclarus,A friend of the household who appears in several of the Symposiacs and in the Amatorius also; he is not improbably the L. Mestrius Soclarus of Inscr. Gr. ix. 1. 61. Optatus, Aristotimus, Phaedimus, and Heracleon.A speaker also in De Defectu Oraculorum (cf. Mor. 412 e). Of the other speakers in this dialogue, nothing definite is known except what may be inferred from the present work.) AUTOBULUS.. When Leonidas was asked what sort of a person he considered Tyrtaeus to be, he replied, A good poet to whet the souls of young men, cf. Mor 235 f, where it is an anonymous saying; but the Life of Cleomenes, ii (xxiii = 805 d) also attributes it to Leonidas. on the ground that by means of verses the poet inspired in young men keenness, accompanied by ardour and ambition whereby they sacrificed themselves freely in battle. And I am very much afraid, my friends, that the Praise of Hunting The authorship of this work has been endlessly disputed, but present opinion (pace Sinko, Eos, xv. pp. 113 ff. and Hubert, Woch. f. klass. Phil. xxviii, pp. 371 ff.) holds that it is Plutarch himself who wrote it (Schuster, op. cit. pp. 8 ff.). Bernardakis (vii, pp. 142-143) included this passage (959 b-d) as a fragment of the lost work. which was read aloud to us yesterday may so immoderately inflame our young men who like the sport that they will come to consider all other occupations as of minor, or of no, importance and concentrate on this. There canot be two passions more nearly resembling each other than hunting and philosophy (Huxley, Hume, p. 139), and see Shorey’s note on Plato, Republic, 432 b (L.C.L.); cf., however, Rep. 535 d, 549 a. See also Isocrates, Areopagiticus, 43 f.; Xenophon, Cynegetica, i. 18; xii. 1. ff.; Cyr. viii. 1. 34-36; Pollux, preface to book v; the proems of Grattius, Nemesianus, Arrian, etc. As a matter of fact, I myself caught the old fever all over again in spite of my years and longed, like Euripides’ Cf. Hippolytus, 218 f. It follows from the fuller quotation in Mor. 52 c that Plutarch’s text of Euripides inverted the order of these lines as given in our mss. of the tragedian. Phaedra, To halloo the hounds and chase the dappled deer; so moved was I by the discourse as it brought its solid and convincing arguments to bear. SOCLARUS.. Exactly so, Autobulus. That reader yesterday seems to have roused his rhetoric from its long disusePresumably an autobiographical detail. to gratify the young men and share their vernal mood.The word is found only here, but may well be right if Plutarch is in a poetical, as well as a playful, humour. I was particularly pleased with his introduction of gladiators and his argument that it is as good a reason as any to applaud hunting that after diverting to itself most of our natural or acquired pleasure in armed combats between human beings it affords an innocent spectacle of skill and intelligent courage pitted against witless force and violence. It agrees with that passage of EuripidesFrag. 27 from the Aeolus (so Stobaeus); Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. pp. 370 f.; cf. Mor. 98 e. The text is somewhat confused.: Slight is the strength of men; But through his mind’s resource He subdues the dread Tribes of the deep and races Bred on earth and in the air.

AUTOBULUS. Yet that is the very source, my dear Soclarus, from which they say insensibility spread among men and the sort of savagery that learned the taste of slaughter on its hunting trips Cf. Porphyry, De Abstinentia, iii. 20. and has grown accustomed to feel no repugnance for the wounds and gore of beasts, but. to take pleasure in their violent death. The next step is like what happened at AthensSee 998 b infra and cf. Müller, Hist. Graec. Frag. i. p. 269, Ephorus, frag. 125; it is not, however, accepted as from Ephorus by Jacoby (cf. Sallust, Catiline, li. 28-31). We must remember, during the following discussion, that zoology used to be the handmaid of ethics.: the first man put to death by the Thirty was a certain informer who was said to deserve it, and so was the second and the third; but after that they went on, step by step, until they were laving hands on honest men and eventually did not spare even the best of the citizens. Just so the first man Cf. 993 b infra. The Age of Cronus, when beasts were unharmed, is admirably described in Plato, Politicus, 270 c ff. to kill a bear or a wolf won praise; and perhaps some cow or pig was condemned as suitable to slay because it had tasted the sacred meal placed before it. That is, they put grain on the altar to make the animal volunteer, as it were, to die (Post); and the consent of the victim was secured by pouring water on it to make it shake its head. See Mor. 729 e and the article Opfer in RE, xviii. 612. So from that point, as they now went on to eat the flesh of deer and hare and antelope, men were introduced to the consumption of sheep and, in some places, of dogs and horses. The tame goose and the dove upon the hearth, as SophoclesNauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 314, frag. 782; Pearson, vol. III, p. 68, frag. 866. says, were dismembered and carved for food - not that hunger compelled men as it does weasels and cats, but for pleasure and as an appetizer. Cf. 991 d, 993 b, 995 c infra. Or as meat to go with their bread; for fowl is not ordinarily an appetizer. Thus the bruteFrom this point to the end of chapter 5 (963 f) the greater part of the text is excerpted by Porphyry, De Abstinentia, iii. 20-24 (pp. 211-220, ed. Nauck). This indirect transmission, with its not infrequent changes, omissions, and variations, gives valuable evidence; but obvious errors on either side have not been mentioned here. and the natural lust to kill in man were fortified and rendered inflexible to pity, while gentleness was, for the most part, deadened. It was in this way, on the contrary, that the Pythagoreans, Cf. 964 f, 993 a infra, and Mor. 86 d, 729 e. The practice is correctly stated; the alleged motive is not. The taboo on meat stemmed from belief in the transmigration of souls (Andrews). to inculcate humanity and compassion, made a practice of kindness to animals; for habituation has a strange power to lead men onward by a gradual familiarization of the feelings. Well, we have somehow fallen unawares into a discussion not unconnected with what we said yesterday nor yet with the argument that is presently to take place to-day. Yesterday, as you know, we proposed the thesis that all animals partake in one way or another of reason and understanding, and thereby offered our young hunters a field of competition not lacking in either instruction or pleasure: the question whether land or sea animals have superior intelligence. This argument, it seems, we shall to-day adjudicate if Aristotimus and Phaedimus stand by their challenges; for Aristotimus put himself at his comrades’ disposal to advocate the land as producer of animals with superior intelligence, while the other will be pleader for the sea. SOCLARUS.. They’ll stand by their word, Autobulus; they’ll be here any minute now. Early this morning I observed them both preparing for the fray. But, if you like, before the contest begins, let us review the discussion of whatever topics are germane to our conversation of yesterday, but were not then discussed, either because no occasion offered, or, since we were in our cups, were treated too lightly. I thought, in fact, that I caught the reverberation of a material objection from the Stoa Cf. von Arnim, S.V.F. ii, pp. 49 ff., 172 ff.; and Pohlenz, B.P.W. xxiii (1903), col. 966, on Chrysippus, frag. 182.: just as the immortal is opposed to the mortal and the imperishable to the perishable, and, of course, the incorporeal to the corporeal; just so, if there is rationality, the irrational must exist as its opposite and counterpart. This alone, among all these pairings, must not be left incomplete and mutilated.

AUTOBULUS. There seems to be a great deal more anti-Stoic polemic in the following speeches than von Arnim has admitted into his compilation. See especially the notes on 961 c ff. infra. But who ever, my dear Soclarus, maintained that, while rationality exists in the universe, there is nothing irrational ? For there is a plentiful abundance of the irrational in all things that are not endowed with a soul; we need no other sort of counterpart for the rational: everything that is soulless, since it has no reason or intelligence, is by definition in opposition to that which, together with a soul, possesses also reason and understanding. Yet suppose someone were to maintain that nature must not be left maimed, but that that part of nature which, is endowed with a soul should have its irrational as well as its rational aspect, someone else is bound to maintain that nature endowed with a soul must have both an imaginative and an unimaginative part, and both a sentient part and an insentient. They want nature, they say, to have these counteractive and contraposed positives and negatives of the same kind counterbalanced, as it were. But if it is ridiculous to require an antithesis of sentient and insentient within the class of living things, or an antithesis of imaginative and unimaginative, seeing that it is the nature of every creature with a soul to be sentient and imaginative from the hour of its birth, so he, also, is unreasonable who demands a division of the living into a rational and an irrational part - and that, too, when he is arguing with men who believe that nothing is endowed with sensation which does not also partake of intelligence and that there is no living thing which does not naturally possess both opinion and reason, just as it has sensation and appetite. For nature, which, theyAristotle and Theophrastus passim; cf. also Mor. 646 c, 698 b. rightly say, does everything with some purpose and to some end, did not create the sentient creature merely to be sentient when something happens to it. No, for there are in the world many things friendly to it, many also hostile; and it could not survive for a moment if it had not learned to give the one sort a wide berth while freely mixing with the other. It is, to be sure, sensation that enables each creature to recognize both kinds; but the acts of seizing or pursuing that ensue upon the perception of what is beneficial, as well as the eluding or fleeing of what is destructive or painful, could by no means occur in creatures naturally incapable of some sort of reasoning and judging, remembering and attending. Those beings, then, which you deprive of all expectation, memory, design, or preparation, and of all hopes, fears, desires, or griefs - they will have no use for eyes or ears either, even though they have them. Indeed, it would be better to be rid of all sensation and imagination that has nothing to make use of it, rather than to know toil and distress and pain while not possessing any means of averting them. There is, in fact, a work of Strato,Frag. 112, ed. Wehrli (Die Schule des Aristoteles, v, p. 34). the natural philosopher, which proves that it is impossible to have sensation at all without some action of the intelligence. Often, it is true, while we are busy reading, the letters may fall on our eyes, or words may fall on our ears, which escape our attention since our minds are intent on other things; but later the mind recovers, shifts its course, and follows up every detail that had been neglected; and this is the meaning of the sayingA frequently occurring quotation, attributed to Epicharmus in Mor. 336 b (Kaibel, Com. Graec. Frag. i, p. 137, frag. 249; Diels, Frag. der Vorsok. i, p. 200, frag. 12); see also Mor. 98 c and 975 b infra. The fullest interpretation is that of Schottlaender, Hermes, lxii, pp. 437 f.; and see also Wehrli’s note, pp. 72 f.: Mind has sight and Mind has hearing; Everything else is deaf and blind, indicating that the impact on eyes and ears brings no perception if the understanding is not present. For this reason also King Cleomenes, when a recital made at a banquet was applauded and he was asked if it did not seem excellent, replied that the others must judge, for his mind was in the Peloponnesus. So that, if we are so constituted that to have sensation we must have understanding, then it must follow that all creatures which have sensation can also understand. AUTOBULUS. But let us grant that sensation needs no help of intelligence to perform its own function; nevertheless, when the perception that has caused an animal to distinguish between what is friendly and what is hostile is gone, what is it that from this time on remembers the distinction, fears the painful, and wants the beneficial ? And, if what it wants is not there, what is there in animals that devises means of acquiring it and providing lairs and hiding-places - both traps for prey and places of refuge from attackers ? And yet those very authorsThe Stoics again; von Arnim, S.V.F. iii, p. 41, Chrysippus, frag. 173 of the Ethica. rasp our ears by repeatedly defining in their Introductions Or elementary treatises: titles used by Chrysippus (von Arnim, op. cit. ii, pp. 6 f.; iii, p. 196). purpose as an indication of intent to complete, design as an impulse before an impulse, preparation as an act before an act, and memory as an apprehension of a proposition in the past tense of which the present tense has been apprehended by perception. That is, by sensation we apprehend the proposition Socrates is snub-nosed, by memory the proposition Socrates was snub-nosed. The literature on this complicated subject has been collected and analysed in Class. Rev. lxvi (1952), pp. 146 f. For there is not one of these terms that does not belong to logic; and the acts are all present in all animals as, of course, are cognitions which, while inactive, they call notions, but when they are once put into action, concepts. And though they admit that emotions one and all are false judgements and seeming truths, Cf. von Arnim, op. cit. i, pp. 50 f; iii, pp. 92 ff.; see also Mor. 449 c. it is extraordinary that they obviously fail to note many things that animals do and many of their movements that show anger or fear or, so help me, envy or jealousy. They themselves punish dogs and horses that make mistakes, not idly but to discipline them; they are creating in them through pain a feeling of sorrow, which we call repentance. Now pleasure that is received through the ears is a means of enchantment, while that which comes through the eyes is a kind of magic: they use both kinds against animals. For deer and horses Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. xii. 44, 46; Antigonus, Hist. Mirab. 29. are bewitched by pipes and flutes, and crabsDolphins also are caught by music: Pliny, Nat. Hist. xi. 137. are involuntarily lured from their holes by lotus pipes e; it is also reported that shad will rise to the surface and approach when there is singing and clapping. Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi, 32; Athenaeus, 328 f, on the trichis, which is a kind of thrissa (cf. Athenaeus, 328 e); and see Mair on Oppian, Hal. i. 244 (L.C.L.). The horned owl, Cf. Mor. 52 b (where the L.C.L., probably wrongly, reads the ape); 705 a; Athenaeus, 390 f; Aelian, De Natura Animal. xv. 28; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 68; Aristotle, Historia Animal. viii. 13 (597 b 22 ff.) and the other references of Hubert at Mor. 705 a and Gulick on Athenaeus, 629 f. Contrast Aelian, De Natura Animal. i, 39, on doves. Porphyry omits this sentence. again, can be caught by the magic of movement, as he strives to twist his shoulders in delighted rhythm to the movements of men dancing before him. As for those who foolishly affirm that animals do not feel pleasure or anger or fear or make preparations or remember, but that the bee as it were A favourite expression of Aristotle’s; but it is the Stoics who are being reproved here (cf. von Arnim, S.V.F. ii, p. 240, Chrysippus, frag. 887). This seems to be the only appearance of the word in Plutarch, unless Pohlenz is right in conjecturing it at Mor. 600 f, or Rasmus at 1054 c in other Stoic quotations. remembers and the swallow as it were prepares her nest and the lion as it were grows angry and the deer as it were is frightened-I don’t know what they will do about those who say that beasts do not see or hear, butas it were hear and see; that they have no cry but as it were; nor do they live at all but as it were. For these last statements (or so I believe) are no more contrary to plain evidence than those that they have made.

SOCLARUS. Well, Autobulus, you may count me also as one who believes your statements; yet on comparing the ways of beasts with human customs and lives, with human actions and manner of living, I find not only many other defects in animals, but this especially: they do not explicitly aim at virtue,On animals possessing aretê see Aelian’s preface to the first book of De Natura Animal.; cf. also Mor. 986 f infra; al. for which purpose reason itself exists; nor do they make any progress in virtue or have any bent for it; so that I fail to see how Nature can have given them even elementary reason, seeing that they cannot achieve its end. AUTOBULUS. But neither does this, Soclarus, seem absurd to those very opponents of ours; for while they postulate that love of one’s offspringSee Mor. 495 c and the whole fragment, De Amore Prolis (493 a - 497 e). is the very foundation of our social life and administration of justice, and observe that animals possess such love in a very marked degree, yet they assert and hold that animals have no part in justice. Now mules Cf. Aristotle, De Generatione Animal. ii, 7 (746 b 15 ff.), ii. 8 (747 a 23 ff.); for Aristotle’s criticism of Empedocles’ theory see H. Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of the Presocratics, p. 143, n. 573. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 173, mentions some cases of the fertility of mules, see also Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 36; ii. 49; Herodotus, iii. 151 ff. are not deficient in organs; they have, in fact, genitals and wombs and are able to use them with pleasure, yet cannot attain the end of generation. Consider another approach: is it not ridiculous to keep affirming that men like Socrates and Plato Cf. Cicero, De Finibus, iv. 21. are involved in vice no less vicious than that of any slave you please, that they are just as foolish and intemperate and unjust, and at the same time to stigmatize the alloyed and imprecise virtue of animals as absence of reason rather than as its imperfection or weakness ? And this, though they acknowledge that vice is a fault of reason and that all animals are infected with vice: many, in fact, we observe to be guilty of cowardice and intemperance, injustice and malice. He, then, who holds that what is not fitted by nature to receive the perfection of reason does not even receive any reason at all is, in the first place, no better than one who asserts that apes are not naturally ugly or tortoises naturally slow for the reason that they are not capable of possessing beauty or speed. In the second place, he fails to observe the distinction which is right before his eyes: mere reason is implanted by nature, but real and perfect reason Cf. Diogenes Laertius, vii. 54. is the product of care and education. And this is why every living creature has the faculty of reasoning; but if what they seek is true reason and wisdom, not even man may be said to possess it. Cf. Cicero, De Natura Deorum, ii. 13. 34. For as one capacity for seeing or flying differs from another (hawks and cicadas do not see alike, nor do eagles and partridges fly alike), so also not every reasoning creature has in the same way a mental dexterity or acumen that has attained perfection. For just as there are many examples in animals of social instincts and bravery and ingenuity in ways and means and in domestic arrangements, so, on the other hand, there are many examples of the opposite: injustice, cowardliness, stupidity. Cf. 992 d infra. And the very factor which brought about our young men’s contest to-day provides confirmation. It is on an assumption of difference that the two sides assert, one that land animals, the other that sea animals, are naturally more advanced toward virtue. This is clear also if you contrast hippopotamuses Cf. Herodotus, ii. 71; Aristotle, Historia Animal. ii. 7 (502 a 9-15), though the latter passage may be interpolated. Porphyry reads contrast river-horses with land-horses. with storks Cf. Aristotle, op. cit. ix. 13 (615 b 23 ff.); Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 23; Philo, 61 (p. 129).: the latter support their fathers, while the former kill themAnd eat them: Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 19. in order to consort with their mothers. The same is true if you compare doves Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. vi. 4 (562 b 17); Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 45. with partridges Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 8 (613 b 27 ff.); Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 16, and Cf. iv. 1. 16; of peacocks in Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 161.; for the partridge cock steals the eggs and destroys them since the female will not consort with him while she is sitting, whereas male doves assume a part in the care of the nest, taking turns at keeping the eggs warm and being themselves the first to feed the fledglings; and if the female happens to be away for too long a time, the male strikes her with his beak and drives her back to her eggs or squabs. And while AntipaterVon Arnim, S.V.F. iii, p. 251, Antipater of Tarsus, frag. 47. We know from Plutarch’s Aetia Physica, 38 that Antipater wrote a book on animals. On the other hand, Dyroff (Blätter f. d. bay. Gymn. xxiii, 1897, p. 403) argued for Antipater of Tyre; he believed, in fact, that the present work was mainly directed against this Antipater. Schuster, op. cit. p. 77, has shown this to be unlikely. was reproaching asses and sheep for their neglect of cleanliness, I don’t know how he happened to overlook lynxes and swallows Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 7 (612 b 30 f.); Plutarch, Mor. 727 d-e; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 92; Philo, 22 (p. 111).; for lynxes dispose of their excrement by concealing and doing away with it, while swallows teach their nestlings to turn tail and void themselves outward. AUTOBULUS. Why, moreover, do we not say that one tree is less intelligent than another, as a sheep is by comparison with a dog; or one vegetable more cowardly than another, as a stag is by comparison with a lion ? Is the reason not that, just as it is impossible to call one immovable object slower than another, or one dumb thing more mute than another, so among all the creatures to whom Nature has not given the faculty of understanding, we cannot say that one is more cowardly or more slothful or more intemperate ? Whereas it, is the presence of understanding, of one kind in one animal, of another kind in another, and in varying degree, that has produced the observable differences.

SOCLARUS. Yet it is astonishing how greatly man surpasses the animals in his capacity for learning and in sagacity and in the requirements of justice and social life. AUTOBULUS. There are in fact, my friend, many animals wliich surpass all men, not only in bulk and swiftness, but also in keen sight and sharp hearing Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Fato, 27; Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 10; x. 191.; but for all that man is not blind or crippled or earless. We can run, if less swiftly than deer; and see, if less keenly than hawks; nor has Nature deprived us of strength and bulk even though, by comparison with, the elephant and the camel, we amount to nothing in these matters.Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 145, reports a singular deduction from this theme; see also Seneca, De Beneficiis, ii. 29. 1. In the same way, then, let us not say of beasts that they are completely lacking in intellect and understanding and do not possess reason even though their understanding is less acute and their intellect inferior to ours; what we should say is that their intellect, is feeble and turbid, like a dim and clouded eye. And if I did not expect that our young men, learned and studious as they are, would very shortly present us here, one with a large collection of examples drawn from the land, the other with his from the sea, I should not have denied myself the pleasure of giving you countless examples of the docility and native capacity of beasts - of which fair RomeSee, for example, 968 c, e infra. has provided us a reservoir from which to draw in pails and buckets, as it were, from the imperial spectacles. Let us leave this subject, therefore, fresh and untouched for them to exercise their art upon in discourse. AUTOBULUS. There is, however, one small matter which I should like to discuss with you quietly. It is my opinion that each part and faculty has its own particular weakness or defect or ailment which appears in nothing else, as blindness in the eye, lameness in the leg, stuttering in the tongue. There can be no blindness in an organ which was not created to see, or lameness in a part which was not designed for walking; nor would you ever describe an animal without a tongue as stuttering, or one voiceless by nature as inarticulate. And in the same way you would not call delirious or witless or mad anything that was not endowed by Nature with reason or intelligence or understanding; for it is impossible to ail where you have no faculty of which the ailment is a deficiency or loss or some other kind of impairment. Yet certainly you have encountered mad dogs, and I have also known of mad horses; and there are some who say that cattle and foxes also go mad.So too, perhaps, wolves in Theocritus, iv. 11. But dogs will do, since no one questions the fact in their case, which provides evidence that the creature possesses reason and a by no means despicable intellectual faculty. What is called rabies and madness is an ailment of that faculty when it becomes disturbed and disordered. For we observe no derangement either of the dogs’ sight or of their hearing; yet, just as when a human being suffers from melancholy or insanity, anyone is absurd who does not admit that it is the organ that thinks and reasons and remembers which has been displaced or damaged (we habitually say, in fact, of madmen that they are not themselves, but have fallen out of their wits), just so, whoever believes that rabid dogs have any other ailment than an affliction of their natural organ of judgement and reason and memory so that, when this has become infected with disorder and insanity, they no longer recognize beloved faces and shun their natural haunts - such a man, I say, either must be disregarding the evidence or, if he does take note of the conclusion to which it leads, must be quarrelling with the truth.The Stoics again; Cf. Galen, De Hippocratis et Platonis Placitis, v. 1 (p. 431 Kühn).

SOCLARUS.

Your inference seems quite justified. For the Stoics

1

and Peripatetics strenuously argue on the other side, to the effect that justice could not then come into existence, but would remain completely without form or substance, if all the beasts partake of reason. For

2

either we are necessarily unjust if we do not spare them; or, if we do not take them for food, life becomes impracticable or impossible; in a sense we shall be living the life of beasts once we give up the use of beasts.

3

I omit the numberless hosts of Nomads and Troglodytes who know no other food but flesh. As for us who believe our lives to be civilized and humane, it is hard to say what pursuit on land or sea, what aerial art,

4

what refinement of living, is left to us if we are to learn to deal innocently and considerately with all creatures, as we are bound to if they possess reason and are of one stock with us. So we have no help or

cure for this dilemma which either deprives us of life itself or of justice, unless we do preserve that ancient limitation and law by which, according to Hesiod,

5

he who distinguished the natural kinds and gave each class its special domain:

To fish and beasts and winged birds allowed

Licence to eat each other, for no right

Exists among them; right, he gave to men

for dealing with each other. Those who know nothing of right action toward us can receive no wrong from us either.

6

For those who have rejected this argument have left no path, either broad or narrow, by which justice may slip in.

AUTOBULUS. This, my friend, has been spoken from the heart. Cf. Euripides, frag. 412 (Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 486); quoted more completely in Mor. 63 a. We certainly must not allow philosophers, as though they were women in difficult labour, to put about their necks a charm for speedy delivery so that they may bring justice to birth for us easily and without hard labour. For they themselves do not concede to Epicurus,Usener, Epicurea, p. 351; see Bailey on Lucretius, ii. 216 ff.; Mor. 1015 b-c. for the sake of the highest considerations, a thing so small and trifling as the slightest deviation of a single atom-which would permit the stars and living creatures to slip in by chance and would preserve from destruction the principle of free will. But, seeing that they bid him demonstrate whatever is not obvious or take as his starting-point something that is obvious, how are they in any position to make this statement about animalsThat they are irrational. a basis of their own account of justice, when it is neither generally accepted nor otherwise demonstrated by them?For this difficult and corrupt passage the admirable exposition and reconstruction of F. H. Sandbach (Class. Quart. xxxv, p. 114) has been followed. For justice has another way to establish itself, a way which is neither so treacherous nor so precipitous, nor is it a route lined with the wreckage of obvious truths. It is the road which, under the guidance of Plato, Laws, 782 c. my son and your companion,Plutarch himself; cf. Mor. 734 e. Soclarus, points out to those who have no love of wrangling, but are willing to be led and to learn. For certain it is that EmpedoclesDiels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok. i, p. 366, frag. B 135; and see Aristotle, Rhetoric, i, 13. 2 (1373 b 14). and HeraclitusDiels-Kranz, op. cit. i, p. 169, frag. B 80; Bywater, frag. 62. accept as true the charge that man is not altogether innocent of injustice when he treats animals as he does; often and often do they lament and exclaim against Nature, declaring that she is Necessity and War, that she contains nothing unmixed and free from tarnish, that her progress is marked by many unjust inflictions. As an instance, say. even birth itself springs from injustice, since it is a union of mortal with immortal, and the offspring is nourished unnaturally on members torn from the parent. These strictures, however, seem to be unpalatably strong and bitter; for there is an alternative, an inoffensive formula which does not, on the one hand, deprive beasts of reason, yet does, on the other, preserve the justice of those who make fit use of them. When the wise men of old had introduced this, gluttony joined luxury to cancel and annul it; Pythagoras, Cf. 959 f supra; Mor. 729 e; frag. xxxiv. 145 (vol. VII, p. 169 Bernardakis). however, reintroduced it, teaching us how to profit without injustice. There is no injustice, surely, in punishing and slaying animals that are anti-social and merely injurious, while taming those that are gentle and friendly to man and making them our helpers in the tasks for which they are severally fitted by nature Cf., e.g., Plato, Republic, 352 e.: Offspring of horse and ass and seed of bulls which Aeschylus’From the Prometheus Unbound, frag. 194 (Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 65; quoted again in Mor. 98 c. Prometheus says that he bestowed on us To serve us and relieve our labours; and thus we make use of dogs as sentinels and keep herds of goats and sheep that are milked and shorn. There are significant undercurrents here. Of the animals domesticated by man. Plutarch first mentions only the horse, the ass, and the ox, nothing their employment as servants of man, not as sources of food. Next come dogs, then goats and sheep. The key factor is that in the early period the cow, the sheep, and the goat were too valuable as sources of milk and wool to be recklessly slaughtered for the sake of their meat. The pig was the only large domestic animal useful almost solely as a source of meat (Andrews). For living is not abolished nor life terminated when a man has no more platters of fish or pate de foie gras or mincemeat of beef or kids’ flesh for his banquets Plutarch’s choice of examples of table luxury is apt. The enthusiasm of many Greek epicures for fish scandalized conservative philosophers. Pate de foie gras ranked high as a delicacy, more especially in the Roman period; the mincemeat mentioned is surely the Roman isicia, dishes with finely minced beef or pork as the usual basis, many recipes for which appear in Apicius (Andrews). - or when he no longer, idling in the theatre or hunting for sport, compels some beasts against their will to stand their ground and fight, while he destroys others which have not the instinct to fight back even in their own defence. For I think sport should be joyful and between playmates who are merry on both sides, not the sort of which BionBion and Xenocrates were almost alone among the Greeks in expressing pity for animals. spoke when he remarked that boys throw stones at frogs for fun, but the frogs don’t die for fun, but in sober earnest.See Hartman, De Plutarcho, p. 571; [Aristotle], Eud. Eth. vii. 10. 21 (1243 a 20). Just so, in hunting and fishing, men amuse themselves with the suffering and death of animals, even tearing some of them piteously from their cubs and nestlings. The fact is that it is not those who make use of animals who do them wrong, but those who use them harmfully and heedlessly and in cruel ways.

SOCLARUS. Restrain yourself, Autobulus, and turn off the flow of these accusations. Cf. Mor. 940 f supra. Possibly a reference to the water-clock used in the courts. I see a good many gentlemen approaching who are all hunters; you will hardly convert them and you needn’t hurt their feelings. AUTOBULUS. Thanks for the warning. Eubiotus, however, I know quite well and my cousin Ariston, and Aeacides and Aristotimus here, the sons of Dionysius of Delphi, and Nicander, the son of Euthydamus, all of them expert, as Homer Odyssey, viii. 159. expresses it, in the chase by land - and for this reason they will be on Aristotimus’ side. So too yonder comes Phaedimus with the islanders and coast-dwellers about him, Heracleon from Megara and the Euboean Philostratus, Whose hearts are on deeds of the sea. Cf. Homer, Iliad, ii. 614; Odyssey, v. 67. And here is my contemporary Optatus: like Diomedes, it is Hard to tell the side on which he ranges,Homer, Iliad, v. 85. for with many a trophy from the sea, many likewise from the chase on the mountain, he has glorified Verses of an unknown poet, as recognized by Hubert. the goddessArtemis; on the combined cults see Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, ii, pp. 425 ff. who is at once the Huntress and Dictynna. It is evident that he is coming to join us with no intention of attaching himself to either side. Or am I wrong, my dear Optatus, in supposing that you will be an impartial and neutral umpire between the young men ? OPTATUS. It is just as you suppose, Autobulus. Solon’s Life of Solon, xx. 1 (89 a-b); Mor. 550 c, 823 f; Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, viii. 5. A fairly well attested law, but the name of Solon is used as the collective term for the legislative activity of the past (Linforth, Solon the Athenian, p. 283). The penalty was disfranchisement. Lysias, xxxi. shows that this law was unknown in his time. law, which used to punish those who adhered to neither side in a factious outbreak, has long since fallen into disuse. AUTOBULUS. Come over here, then, and take your place beside us so that, if we need evidence, we shall not have to disturb the tomes of Aristotle,The zoological works, such as the Natural History and the Generation of Animals, which once extended to fifty volumes (Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 44). but may follow you as expert and return a true verdict on the arguments. SOCLARUS. Well then, my young friends, have you reached any agreement on procedure ? PHAEDIMUS. We have, Soclarus, though it occasioned considerable controversy; but at length, as EuripidesNauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 678, frag. 989; cf. Mor. 644 d. has it, The lot, the child of chance, made arbiter, admits into court the case of the land animals before that of creatures from the sea. SOCLARUS. The time has come, then, Aristotimus, for you to speak and us to hear.

ARISTOTIMUS. The court is open for the litigantsHere follows a long lacuna not indicated in the mss., the contents of which cannot even be conjectured. And there are some fish that waste their milt by pursuing the female while she is laying her eggs.The milt is, of course, for the fertilization of the eggs, as Aristotimus should have learned from Aristotle (e.g., Historia Animal. vi. 13, 567 b 3 ff.) There is also a type of mullet called the grayfishOn this type Cf. also Aristotle, Historia Animal. viii. 2 (591 a 23) and in Athenaeus, vii. 307 a, where variants of the name occur. The same name was applied to a type of shark as well as to a type of mullet, an apt application in both instances (Andrews). which feeds on its own slimeSee Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 643 (Cf. iii. 432 ff.). Pliny (Nat. Hist. ix. 128, 131) tells the same story of the purplefish.; and the octopus sits through the winter devouring himself, In fireless home and domicile forlorn,Hesiod, Works and Days, 524; Cf. 978 f infra and the note; Mor. 1059 e; Aelian, De Natura Animal. i. 27, xiv. 26. See also Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. viii. 2 (591 a 5); Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 244; Lucilius, frag. 925 Warmington (L.C.L.). so lazy or insensible or gluttonous, or guilty of all of these charges, is he. So this also is the reason, again, why Plato Laws, 823 d-e. in his Laws enjoined, or rather prayed, that his young men might not be seized by a love for sea hunting. For there is no exercise in bravery or training in skill or anything that contributes to strength or fleetness or agility when men endure toil in contests with bass or conger or parrot-fish; whereas, in the chase on land, brave animals give play to the courageous and danger-loving qualities of those matched against them, crafty animals sharpen the wits and cunning of their attackers, while swift ones train the strength and perseverance of their pursuers. These are the qualities which have made hunting a noble sport, whereas there is nothing glorious about fishing. No, and there’s not a god, my friend, who has allowed himself to be called conger-killer, as Apollo is wolf-slayer, For Apollo’s connexion with wolves see Aelian, De Natura Animal. x. 26; al. or surmullet-slayer, as ArtemisOn Artemis, The Lady of Wild Beasts (Iliad, xxi. 470), see Mnemosyne, 4th series, iv (1951), pp. 230 ff. is deer-slaying. This accusation is answered in 983 e-f infra. And what is surprising in this when it’s a more glorious thing for a man to have caught a boar or a stag or, so help me, a gazelle or a hare than to have bought one ? As for your tunnySee 980 a infra. and your mackerel and your boriito ! They’re more honourable to buy than to catch oneself. For their lack of spirit or of any kind of resource or cunning has made the sport dishonourable, unfashionable, and illiberal.

ARISTOTIMUS. In general, then, the evidence by which the philosophers demonstrate that beasts have their share of reason is their possession of purpose Cf. 961 c supra. and preparation and memory and emotions and care for their youngSee the essay De Amore Prolis, Mor. 493 a ff. passim. and gratitude for benefits and hostility to what has hurt them; to which may be added their ability to find what they need and their manifestations of good qualities, such as couragePlato, at least, held that, philosophically speaking, no beast is brave; Laches, 196 d; Republic, 430 b. and sociability and continence and magnanimity. Let us ask ourselves if marine creatures exhibit any of these traits, or perhaps some suggestion of them, that is extremely faint and difficult to discern (the observer only coming at long last to the opinion that it may be descried); whereas in the case of terrestrial and earth-born animals it is easy to find remarkably plain and unanswerable proofs of every one of the points I have mentioned. In the first place, then, behold the purposeful demonstrations and preparations of bullsSee Mair on Oppian, Cyn. ii. 57. stirring up dust when intent on battle, and wild boars whetting their tusks.Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 1; Philo, 51 (p. 125); Homer, Iliad, xiii. 474 f. Since elephants’ tusks are blunted by wear when, by digging or chopping, they fell the trees that feed them, they use only one tusk for this purpose and keep the other always pointed and sharp for defence. Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 8; viii. 71 of the rhinoceros; Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 56; Antigonus, Hist. Mirab. 102. Lions Cf. Mor. 520 f; Aelian, De Natura Animal. ix. 30. always walk with paws clenched and claws retracted so that these may not be dulled by wear at the point or leave a plain trail for trackers; for it is not easy to find any trace of a lion’s claw; on the contrary, any sign of a track that is found is so slight and obscure that hunters lose the trail and go astray. You have heard, I am sure, how the ichneumonSee Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 6 (612 a 16 ff.), where, however, the animal’s opponent is the asp. (So also Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 22; v. 48; vi. 38.) But cf. 980 e infra; Aelian, De Natura Animal. viii. 25; x. 47; Nicander, Theriaca, 201. girds itself for battle as thoroughly as any soldier putting on his armour, such a quantity of mud does it don and plaster about its body when it plans to attack the crocodile. Moreover, we see house-martins Cf. Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 7 (612 b 21 ff.); Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 92; Philo, 22 (p. 110); Yale Class. Studies, xii. 139, on Anth. Pal. x. 4. 6. preparing for procreation: how well they lay the solid twigs at the bottom to serve as a foundation, then mould the lighter bits about them; and if they perceive that the nest needs a lump of mud to glue it together, they skim over a pond or lake, touching the water with only the tips of their feathers to make them moist, yet not heavy with dampness; then they scoop up dust and so smear over and bind together any parts that begin to sag or loosen. As for the shape of their work, it has no angles nor many sides, but is as smooth and circular as they can make it; such a shape is, in fact, both stable and capacious and provides no hold on the outside for scheming animals. θηρία may be serpents here, or any wild beast, perhaps, such as members of the cat family that relish a diet of birds. There is more than one reasonFor a collection of the loci communes dealing with swallow, bee, ant, spider, etc., see Dickerman in Trans. Am. Philol. Assoc. xlii (1911), pp. 123 ff. for admiring spiders’Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 39 (623 a 7 ff.); Aelian, De Natura Animal. i. 21; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xi. 79-84; Philo, 17 (p. 107); Philostratus, Imagines, ii. 28. webs, the common model for both women’s looms and fowlers’Commonly taken as fishermen, but this seems unlikely here. nets; for there is the fineness of the thread and the evenness of the weaving, which has no disconnected threads and nothing like a warp, but is wrought with the even continuity of a thin membrane and a tenacity that comes from a viscous substance inconspicuously worked in. Then too, there is the blending of the colours that gives it an airy, misty look, the better to let it go undetected; and most notable of all is the art itself, like a charioteer’s or a helmsman’s, with which the spinner handles her artifice. When a possible victim is entangled, she perceives it, and uses her wits, like a skilled handler of nets, to close the trap suddenly and make it tight. Since this is daily under our eyes and observation, my account is confirmed. Otherwise it would seem a mere fiction, as I formerly regarded the tale of the Libyan crows Cf. Anth. Pal. ix. 272; Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii. 48; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 125; Avianus, fable 27. which, when they are thirsty, throw stones into a pot to fill it and raise the water until it is within their reach; but later when I saw a dog on board ship, since the sailors were away, putting pebbles into a half empty jar of oil, I was amazed at its knowing that lighter substances are forced upward when the heavier settle to the bottom. Similar tales are told of Cretan bees and of geese in Cilicia. Cf. Mor. 510 a-b, which adds the detail that the geese’s flight is by night. Contrast Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii, 1, Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 60, of cranes. When the bees are going to round some windy promontory, they ballast themselves with little stonesAelian, De Natura Animal. v. 13; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xi. 24, and Ernout, ad loc.; Dio Chrysostom, xliv, 7. Cf. 979 b infra, of the sea hedgehog; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 69. so as not to be carried out to sea; while the geese, in fear of eagles, take a large stone in their beaks whenever they cross Mt. Taurus, as it were reining in and bridling their gaggling loquacity that they may pass over in silence unobserved. It is well known, too, how cranes Cf. 979 b infra; Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 13; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 63, of geese; Mair on Oppian, Hal. i. 624; Lucan, v. 713 ff. behave when they fly. Whenever there is a high wind and rough weather they do not fly, as on fine days, in line abreast or in a crescent-shaped curve; but they form at once a compact triangle with the point cleaving the gale that streams past, so that there is no break in the formation. When they have descended to the ground, the sentinels that stand watch at night support themselves on one foot and with the other grasp a stone and hold it firmly Cf. 979 d infra; Aelian, loc. cit.; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 59.; the tension of grasping this keeps them awake for a long time; but when they do relax, the stone escapes and quickly rouses the culprit. Cf. the anecdote of Alexander in Ammianus Marcellinus, xvi. 5. 4; of Aristotle in Diogenes Laertius, v. 16. So that I am not at all surprised that Heracles tucked his bow under his arm: Embracing it with mighty arm he sleeps, Keeping his right hand gripped about the club.Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 919, Adespoton 416. Nor, again, am I surprised at the man who first guessed how to open an oysterThat is, by dropping it in hot water. when I read of the ingenuity of herons. For they swallow a closed mussel and endure the discomfort until they know that it has been softened and relaxed by their internal heat; then they disgorge it wide open and unfolded and extract the meat. Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 20; another procedure is described in v. 35. See also Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 115, of the shoveller duck; Philo, 31 (p. 116); Antigonus, Hist. Mirab. 41; al.

It is impossible to relate in full detail all the methods of production and storage practised by ants, but it would be careless to omit them entirely. Nature has, in fact, nowhere else so small a mirror of greater and nobler enterprises. Just as you may see greater things reflected in a drop of clear water, so among ants there exists the delineation of every virtue. Love and affection are found,Homer, Iliad, xiv. 216. namely their social life. You may see, too, the reflection of courage in their persistence in hard labour. Cf. Plato, Laches, 192 b ff.; we have here the four Platonic virtues, with Love added. There are many seeds of temperance and many of prudence and justice. Now Cleanthes,Von Arnim, S.V.F. i, p. 116, frag. 515; cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 50. even though he declared that animals are not endowed with reason, says that he witnessed the following spectacle: some ants came to a strange anthill carrying a dead ant. Other ants then emerged from the hill and seemed, as it were, to hold converse with the first party and then went back again. This happened two or three times until at last they brought up a grub to serve as the dead ant’s ransom, whereupon the first party picked up the grub, handed over the corpse, and departed. A matter obvious to everyone is the consideration ants show when they meet: those that bear no load always give way to those who have one and let them pass. Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii. 25. Obvious also is the manner in which they gnaw through and dismember things that are difficult to carry or to convey past an obstacle, in order that they may make easy loads for several. And Aratus Phaenomena, 956; Cf. Vergil, Georgics, i. 379 f.; Theophrastus, De Signis, 22. takes it to be a sign of rainy weather when they spread out their eggs and cool them in the open: When from their hollow nest the ants in haste Bring up their eggs; and some do not write eggs here, but provisions, Not oia, but eia: What the ants really carry out in Aratus and Vergil is their pupas, but these are commonly called eggs to this day (Platt, Class. Quart. v. p. 255). The two readings in this passage seem to show that Plutarch had at hand an edition with a commentary; Cf. also 976 f infra, on the interpretation of Archilochus, and Mor. 22 b. in the sense of stored grain which, when they notice that it is growing mildewed and fear that it may decay and spoil, they bring up to the surface. But what goes beyond any other conception of their intelligence is their anticipation of the germination of wheat. You know, of course, that wheat does not remain permanently dry and stable, but expands and lactifies in the process of germination. In order, then, to keep it from running to seed and losing its value as food, and to keep it permanently edible, the ants eat out the germ from which springs the new shoot of wheat. Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xi. 109, and Ernout ad loc. I do not approve of those who, to make a complete study of anthills, inspect them, as it were, anatomically. But, be that as it may, they report that the passage leading downward from the opening is not at all straight or easy for any other creature to traverse; it passes through turns and twistsThe intricate galleries of anthills were used for purposes of literary comparisons by the ancients: see the fragment of Pherecrates in Mor. 1142 a and Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae, 100 (on Timotheüs and Agathon respectively). with branching tunnels and connecting galleries and terminates in three hollow cavities. One of these is their common dwelling-place, another serves as storeroom for provisions, while in the third they deposit the dying.Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 43 divides into men’s apartments, women’s apartments, and storerooms; see also Philo, 42 (p. 120), and Boulenger, Animal Mysteries, pp. 128 ff. for a modern account. On the social life of ants (and animals) as contrasted with that of humans see Dio Chrysostom, xl. 32, 40 f.; xlviii. 16.

I don’t suppose that you will think it out of order if I introduce elephants directly on top of ants in order that we may concurrently scrutinize the nature of understanding in both the smallest and the largest of creatures, for it is neither suppressed in the latter nor deficient in the former. Let others, then, be astonished that elephants learn, or are taught, to exhibit in the theatre all the many postures and variations of movement that they do, Cf. Mor. 98 e. these being so varied and so complicated to memorize and retain that they are not at all easy even for human artists. For my part, I find the beast’s understanding better manifested in his own spontaneous and uninstructed feelings and movements, in a pure, as it were, and undiluted state. Well, not very long ago at Rome, Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 6, which shows that Plutarch is drawing on literature, not personal observation; Cf. also Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii. 11, for the elaborateness of the manoeuvres; Philostratus, Vita Apoll. ii. 13; Philo, 54 (p. 126); see also 992 b infra. where a large number of elephants were being trained to assume dangerous stances and wheel about in complicated patterns, one of them, who was the slowest to learn and was always being scolded and often punished, was seen at night, alone by himself in the moonlight, voluntarily rehearsing his lessons and practising them. Formerly in Syria, HagnonOf Tarsus, pupil of Carneades. tells us, an elephant was brought up in its master’s house and every day the keeper, when he received a measure of barley, would filch away and appropriate half of it; but on one occasion, when the master was present and watching, the keeper poured out the whole measure. The elephant gave a look, raised its trunk, and made two piles of the barley, setting aside half of it and thus revealing as eloquently as could be the dishonesty of its keeper. And another elephant, whose keeper used to mix stones and dirt in its barley ration, when the keeper’s meat was cooking, scooped up some ashes and threw them into the pot. Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 52. And another in Rome, being tormented by little boys who pricked its proboscis with their writing styluses, grabbed one of them and raised him into the air as if to dash him to death; but when the spectators cried out, it gently set the child down on the ground again and passed along, thinking it sufficient punishment for one so young to have been frightened. Concerning wild elephants who are self-governing they tell many wonderful tales, particularly the one about the fording of riversPliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 11, gives a different account; still different is Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 15, and cf. Philostratus, Vita Apoll. ii. 15.: the youngest and smallest volunteers his services to go first into the stream. The others wait on the bank and observe the result, for if his back remains above water, those that are larger than he will have a wide margin of safety to give them confidence.

At this point in my discourse, I imagine that I shall do well not to omit the case of the fox, since it is so similar. Now the story-booksThe authorities on Deucalion’s Flood are assembled by Frazer on Apollodorus, i. 7. 2 (L.C.L.), and more completely in his Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, i, pp. 146 ff. Plutarch is the only Greek author to add the Semitic dove story, though Lucian (De Dea Syria, 12 ff.) was to add to the other major contaminations. tell us that when Deucalion released a dove from the ark, as long as she returned, it was a certain sign that the storm was still raging; but as soon as she flew away, it was a harbinger of fair weather. So even to this day the Thracians, Cf. 949 d supra and the note. whenever they propose crossing a frozen river, make use of a fox as an indicator of the solidity of the ice. The fox moves ahead slowly and lays her ear to the ice; if she perceives by the sound that the stream is running close underneath, judging that the frozen part has no great depth, but is only thin and insecure, she stands stock still and, if she is permitted, returns to the shore; but if she is reassured by the absence of noise, she crosses over. And let us not declare that this is a nicety of perception unaided by reason; it is, rather, a syllogistic conclusion developed from the evidence of perception: What makes noise must be in motion; what is in motion is not frozen; what is not frozen is liquid; what is liquid gives way. So logiciansSpecifically Chrysippus (Cf. von Arnim, S.V.F. ii, pp. 726 f.). Cf. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, i. 69 (the whole passage i. 62-72 is worth reading); Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 59; Philo, 45 (p. 122). assert that a dog, at a point where many paths split off, makes use of a multiple disjunctiveFor the form of the syllogism see Diogenes Laertius, vii. 81. argument and reasons with himself: Either the wild beast has taken this path, or this, or this. But surely it has not taken this, or this. Then it must have gone by the remaining road. Perception here affords nothing but the minor premiss, while the force of reason gives the major premisses and adds the conclusion to the premisses. A dog, however, does not need such a testimonial, which is both false and fraudulent; for it is perception itself, by means of track and spoor, Cf. Shorey on Plato, Republic, 427 e (L.C.L., vol. I, p. 347, note e). which indicates the way the creature fled; it does not bother with disjunctive and copulative propositions. The dog’s true capacity may be discerned from many other acts and reactions and the performance of duties, which are neither to be smelled out nor seen by the eye, but can be carried out or perceived only by the use of intelligence and reason.For the philosophic dog see Plato, op. cit. 376 b; the scholia of Olympiodorus add that Socrates’ famous oath by the dog was symbolic of the creature’s rational nature. See also Sinclair, Class. Rev. xlii (1948), p. 61; the parallel passages are collected by J. E. B. Mayor, Class. Rev. xii (1898), pp. 93 ff. I should only make myself ridiculous if I described the dog’s self-control and obedience and sagacity on hunting parties to you who see and handle these matters every day. There was a Roman named CalvusSee Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 10. slain in the Civil Wars, but no one was able to cut off his head until they encircled and stabbed to death the dog who guarded his master and defended him. And King Pyrrhus Cf. Aelian, loc. cit.; Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 142. on a journey chanced upon a dog guarding the body of a murdered man; in answer to his questions he was told that the dog had remained there without eating for three days and refused to leave. Pyrrhus gave orders for the corpse to be buried and the dog cared for and brought along in his train. A few days later there was an inspection of the soldiers, who marched in front of the king seated on his throne, while the dog lay quietly by his side. But when it saw its master’s murderers filing past, it rushed at them with furious barking and, as it voiced its accusation, turned to look at the king so that not only he, but everyone present, became suspicious of the men. They were at once arrested and when put to the question, with the help of some bits of external evidence as well, they confessed the murder and were punished. The same thing is said to have been done by the poet Hesiod’s Cf. 984 d infra. A different account, omitting the dog, will be found in Mor. 162 c-f (where see Wyttenbach’s note); Cf. also Pollux, Onomasticon, v. 42 and Gabathüler on Anth. Pal. vii. 55 (Hellenistische Epigramme auf Dichter, p. 31). dog, which convicted the sons of Ganyctor the Naupactian, by whom Hesiod had been murdered. But a matter which carne to the attention of our fathers when they were studying at Athens is even plainer than anything so far mentioned. A certain fellow slipped into the temple of Asclepius,The same story in Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 13, indicates a literary source. See now E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, p. 114 and n. 65. took such gold and silver offerings as were not bulky, and made his escape, thinking that he had not been detected. But the watchdog, whose name was Capparus, when none of the sacristans responded to its barking, pursued the escaping temple-thief. First the man threw stones at it, but could not drive it away. When day dawned, the dog did not approach close, but followed the man, always keeping him in sight, and refused the food he offered. When he stopped to rest, the dog passed the night on guard; when he struck out again, the dog got up and kept following, fawning on the other people it met on the road and barking at the man and sticking to his heels. When those who were investigating the robbery learned this from men who had encountered the pair and were told the colour and size of the dog, they pursued all the more vigorously and overtook the man and brought him back from Crommyon. On the return the dog led the procession, capering and exultant, as though it claimed for itself the credit for pursuing and capturing the temple-thief. The people actually voted it a public ration of food and entrusted the charge of this to the priests in perpetuity, thereby imitating the ancient Athenian kindness to the mule. For when Pericles was building the HecatompedonBetter known as the Parthenon; cf. Mor. 349 d, Life of Pericles, xiii. 7 (159 e). on the Acropolis, stones were naturally brought by numerous teams of draught-animals every day. Now one of the mules who had assisted gallantly in the work, but had now been discharged because of old age, used to go down every day to the Ceramicus and meet the beasts which brought the stones, turning back with them and trotting along by their side, as though to encourage and cheer them on. So the people of Athens, admiring its enterprise, gave orders for it to be maintained at the public expense, voting it free meals, as though to an athlete who had succumbed to old age. Cf. Life of Cato Maior, v. 3 (339 a-b). Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 49, agrees in the main with Plutarch’s account; Aristotle, Historia Animal. vi. 24 (577 b 34), says merely that a public decree was passed forbidding bakers to drive the creature away from their trays. He adds that the mule was 80 years old and is followed by Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 175.

There is probably a lacuna before this chapter. Therefore those who deny that there is any kind of justice owed to animals Cf. 999 b infra; 964 b supra. by us must be conceded to be right so far as marine and deep-sea creatures Cf. additional sources cited by Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 43. are concerned; for these are completely lacking in amiability, apathetic, and devoid of all sweetness of disposition. And well did Homer Iliad, xvi. 34. say The gray-green sea bore you, with reference to a man regarded as uncivilized and unsociable, implying that the sea produces nothing friendly or gentle. But a man who would use such speech in regard to land animals is himself cruel and brutal. Or perhaps you will not admit that there was a bond of justice between Lysimachus Mor. 821 a; the companion and successor of Alexander (c. 360-281 b.c.). Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 143; Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 25; and ii. 40 (cf. vi. 29), of eagles. It may be conjectured that ii. 40 was derived from an original in which ἀετῶν was confused with κυνῶν, as infra. and the Hyrcanian dog which alone stood guard by his corpse and, when his body was cremated, rushed into the flames and hurled itself upon him.Similar stories in Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 40. The same is reported to have been done by the eagle Dog and eagle are again confused; but the hovering is here decisive. (Cf. also Wilamowitz, Hermes, lxiii, p. 380.) The dog reappears in Pollux, v. 42 (where it is King Pyrrhus), an eagle in a similar tale in Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 18, while Pyrrhus is the name of a dog in Pliny, viii. 144. which was kept by Pyrrhus, not the king, but a certain private citizen; when he died, it kept vigil by his body; at the funeral it hovered about the bier and finally folded its wings, settled on the pyre and was consumed with its master’s body, The elephant of King Porus, Life of Alexander, lx. 13 (699 b-c), with Ziegler’s references ad loc. when he was wounded in the battle against Alexander, gently and solicitously pulled out with its trunk many Each one of the spears in the Life of Alexander. of the javelins sticking in its master. Though it was in a sad state itself, it did not give up until it perceived that the king had lost much blood and was slipping off; then, fearing that he would fall, it gently kneeled and afforded its master a painless glide.Other stories of humane elephants in Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 46; al. Bucephalas Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 154; Gellius, Noctes Atticae, v. 2; and see the parallels collected by Sternbach, Wiener Studien, xvi, pp. 17 f. The story is omitted by Plutarch in the Life of Alexander. unsaddled would permit his groom to mount him; but when he was all decked out in his royal accoutrements and collars, he would let no one approach except Alexander himself. If any others tried to come near, he would charge at them loudly neighing and rear and trample any of them who were not quick enough to rush far away and escape.

I am not unaware that you will think that my examples are rather a hodge-podge; but it is not easy to find naturally clever animals doing anything which illustrates merely one of their virtues. Their probity, rather, is revealed in their love of offspring and their cleverness in their nobility; then, too, their craftiness and intelligence is inseparable from their ardour and courage. Those, nevertheless, who are intent on classifying and defining each separate occasion will find that dogs give the impression of a mind that is at once civil and superior when they turn away from those who sit on the ground - which is presumably referred to in the linesHomer, Odyssey, xiv. 30 f.; cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 146; Antigonus, Hist. Mirab. 24; Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii. 3. 6 (1380 a 24). The dogs barked and rushed up, but wise Odysseus Cunningly crouched; the staff slipped from his hand; for dogs cease attacking those who have thrown themselves down and taken on an attitude that resembles humility. Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 48, of the lion. They relate further that the champion of the Indian dogs, one greatly admired by Alexander,There are nearly as many emendations of this phrase as there have been scholars interested in Plutarch’s text. Van Herwerden’s version, as having the liveliest sense, has been preferred. It is by no means certain, however, though supported by Aelian, De Natura Animal. viii. 1; Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 149; cf. also Pollux, v. 43-44 and the parallels cited by Bethe ad loc. See also Aelian, iv. 19 and Diodorus, xvii. 94. when a stag was let loose and a boar and a bear, lay quiet and still and disregarded them; but when a lion appeared, it sprang up at once to prepare for the fray, showing clearly that it chose to match itself with the lionPliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 149 f., adds the elephant as a worthy match. and scorned all the others. Hounds that hunt hares, if they themselves kill them, enjoy pulling them to piecesSo break up; Xenophon, Cynegetica, vii. 9. and eagerly lap up the blood; but if, as frequently happens, a hare in desperation exhausts all its breath in a final sprint and expires, the hounds, when they come upon it dead, will not touch it at all, but stand there wagging their tails, as much as to say that they do not strive for food, but for victory and the honour of winning.

There are many examples of cunning, but I shall dismiss foxes and wolves Cf. Pindar, Pythians, ii. 84; Oppian, Cynegetica, iii. 266. and the tricks of crane and daw (for they are obvious), and shall take for my witness Thales,Omitted in Diels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok., not without reason. Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 42. the most ancient of the Wise Men,See the Septem Sapientium Convivium (Mor. 146 b ff.). not the least of whose claims to admiration, they say, was his getting the better of a mule by a trick. For one of the mules that were used to carry salt, on entering a river, accidentally stumbled and, since the salt melted away, it was free of its burden when it got up. It recognized the cause of this and bore it in mind. The result was that every time it crossed the river, it would deliberately lower itself and wet the bags, crouching and bending first to one side, then to the other. When Thales heard of this, he gave orders to fill the bags with wool and sponges instead of salt and to drive the mule laden in this manner. So when it played its customary trick and soaked its burden with water, it came to know that its cunning was unprofitable and thereafter was so attentive and cautious in crossing the river that the water never touched the slightest portion of its burden even by accident. Partridges Cf. 992 b infra; Mor. 494 e and the references there; add Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 103; Philo, 35 (p. 117) (probably referring to partridges, though the Latin version reads palumbae); Antigonus, Hist. Mirab. 39; Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 16; xi. 38; Aristotle, Historia Animal. 613 b 31. exhibit another piece of cunning, combined with affection for their young. They teach their fledglings, who are not yet able to fly, to lie on their backs when they are pursued and to keep above them as a screen some piece of turf or rubbish. The mothers meanwhile lure the hunters in another direction and divert attention to themselves, fluttering along at their feet and rising only briefly until, by making it seem that they are on the point of being captured, they draw them far away from their young. When hares Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. xiii. 11; vi. 47. return for repose, they put to sleep their leverets in quite different places, often as much as a hundred feet apart, so that, if man or dog comes near, they shall not all be simultaneously in danger. The hares themselves run to and fro and leave tracks in many places, but last of all with a great leap they leave their traces far behind, and so to bed. The she-bear, just prior to the state called hibernation, Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 3; Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 126 f.; Mair on Oppian, Cyn. iii. 173 (L.C.L.). before she becomes quite torpid and heavy and finds it difficult to move, cleans out her Iair and, when about to enter, approaches it as lightly and inconspicuously as possible, treading on tiptoe, then turns around and backs into the den.These precautions seem to have been successful (though Cf. the implications of Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 128), since Aristotle (Historia Animal. viii. 17, 600 b 6 f.) says that either no one (or very few) has ever caught a pregnant bear. Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 95 and Amm. Marc. xxii. 15. 22, of the hippopotamus entering a field backwards. Hinds are inclined to bear their young beside a public road where carnivorous animals do not comeAristotle (Historia Animal. ix. 5, 611 a 17) notes that highways were shunned by wild animals because they feared men. Cf. also Antigonus, Hist. Mirab. 35 and Mair on Oppian, Cyn. ii. 207 (L.C.L.).; and stags, when they observe that they have grown heavy by reason of their fat and surplus flesh, vanish and preserve themselves by hiding when they do not trust to their heels. Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 113; [Aristotle], De Mir. Ausc. 5; Historia Animal. 611 a 23. The way in which hedgehogs defend and guard themselves has occasioned the proverbSee Shorey on Plato, Republic, 423 e (L.C.L.); Leutsch and Schneidewin, Paroemiographi Graeci, i, p. 147, Zenobius, v. 68; attributed by Zenobius to Archilochus (Diehl, Anthologia Lyrica, i, p. 241, frag. 103; Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus, ii, p. 174, frag. 118) and to Homer. Zenobius also quotes five lines from Ion, of which the last two are Plutarch’s next quotation.: The fox knows many tricks, but the hedgehog one big one; for when the fox approaches, as IonNauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 739; frag. 38, verses 4 f. (see the preceding note). says, it, Curling its spiny body in a coil, Lies still, impregnable to touch or bite. But the provision that the hedgehog makes for its young is even more ingenious. When autumn comes, it creeps under the vines and with its paws shakes down to the ground grapes from the bunches and, having rolled about in them, gets up with them attached to its quills. Once when I was a child I saw one, like a creeping or walking bunch of grapes!The mss. add an unnecessary explanation: so covered with fruit was it as it walked. Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 133; Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 10; Anth. Pal. vi. 169. Then it goes down into its hole and delivers the load to its young for them to enjoy and draw rations from. Their lair has two openings, one facing the south, the other the north; when they perceive that the wind will change, like good skippers who shift sail, they block up the entrance which lies to the wind and open the other. Cf. 979 a infra; Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 6 (612 b 4 ff.); Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 133; Cf. viii. 138, of squirrels. On animals who predict the weather see Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. 361-364. And a man in CyzicusAristotle (loc. cit.) says Byzantium (and see infra, 979 b). observing this acquired a reputation for being able to predict unaided which way the wind would blow.

Elephants, as JubaMüller, Frag. Hist. Graec. iii, p. 474; Jacoby, Frag. der griech. Hist. iii, pp. 146 f., frag. 51 a, 53; Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 24; Aelian, De Natura Animal. viii. 15; vi. 61; and see the criticism in 977 d-e infra. On the mutual assistance of elephants see Philostratus, Vita Apoll. ii. 16. declares, exhibit a social capacity joined with intelligence. Hunters dig pits for them, covering them with slender twigs and light rubbish; when, accordingly, any elephant of a number travelling together falls in, the others bring wood and stones and throw them in to fili up the excavation so that their comrade can easily get out. He also relates that, without any instruction, elephants pray to the gods, purifying themselves in the sea Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 1 f.; Dio Cassius, xxxix. 38. 5. and, when the sunThe moon in Aelian, De Natura Animal. iv. 10, but the sun in vii. 44; of tigers in Philostratus, Vita Apoll. ii. 28. rises, worshipping it by raising their trunks, as if they were hands of supplication. For this reason they are the animal most loved of the gods, as Ptolemy PhilopatorAelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 44: Ptolemy IV (c. 244-205 b.c.), who reigned 221-205. The decisive defeat of Antiochus III was at Raphia in 217. For the gods loving elephants see Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 2; al. has testified; for when he had vanquished Antiochus and wished to honour the gods in a really striking way, among many other offerings to commemorate his victory in battle, he sacrificed four elephants. Thereafter, since he had dreams by night in which the deity angrily threatened him because of that strange sacrifice, he employed many rites of appeasement and set up as a votive offering four bronze elephants to match those he had slaughtered. Social usages are to be found no less among lions. For young lions take along with them to the hunt the old and slow; when the latter are tired out, they rest and wait, while the young lions hunt on. When they have taken anything, they summon the others by a roaring like the bleat of a calf; the old ones hear it at once and come to partake in common of the prey. Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. ix. 1.

The loves of some animals are wild and furious, while others have a refinement which is not far from human and an intercourse conducted with much grace. Such was the elephant which at Alexandria played the rival to Aristophanes Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. i. 38 (Cf. vii. 43); Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 13. the grammarian. They were, in fact, in love with the same flower-girl; nor was the elephant’s love the less manifest: as he passed by the market, he always brought her fruit and stood beside her for a long time and would insert his trunk, like a hand, Cf. Mair on Oppian, Cyn. ii. 524 for additional authorities. within her garments and gently caress her fair breasts. The serpent that fell in love with an Aetolian womanTold somewhat differently, and of a Jewish woman, in Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 17. used to visit her at night and slip under some part of her body next the skin and coil about her without doing her any harm at all, either intentional or accidental; but always at daybreak it was decent enough to glide away. And this it did constantly until the kinsmen of the woman removed her to a house at some distance. The serpent did not come to her for three or four nights; but all the time, we may suppose, it was going about in search of her and missing its goal. At last, when it had somehow found her with difficulty, it embraced her, not with that former gentleness it had used, but rather more roughly, its coils binding her hands to her body, and with the end of its tail it lashed the calves of her legs, displaying a light and tender anger that had in it more indulgence than punishment. As for the goose in Aegium that loved a boy and the ram that set his heart on GlauceAlso a goose in Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 51. Both stories are in Aelian, De Natura Animal. v. 29 (cf. i. 6; viii. 11); for Glauce see also Gow’s note on Theocritus, iv. 31. the harp-player, since these are famous tales and I rather imagine you have had enough of such to spoil your appetite for more,More in Aelian, De Natura Animal. xii. 37; al. I omit them.

As for starlings Cf. Gellius, Noctes Atticae, xiii. 21. 25; Alciphron, Epp. iii. 30. 1; Philostratus, Vita Apoll. i. 7; vi. 36; al. and crows and parrots which learn to talk and afford their teachers so malleable and imitative a vocal current to train and discipline, they seem to me to be champions and advocates of the other animals in their ability to learn, instructing us in some measure that they too are endowed both with rational utteranceFor the λόγος προφορικός see, e.g., Mor. 777 b-c. and with articulate voice; for which reason it is quite ridiculous to admit a comparison of them with creatures who have not enough voice even to howl or groan. Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. iv. 9 (535 b 14 ff.). And what music, what grace do we not find in the natural, untaught warbling of birds ! To this the most eloquent and musical of our poets bear witness e.g., Bacchylides, iii. 97; Anth. Pal. vii. 414. when they compare their sweetest songs and poems to the singing of swans and nightingales. Now since there is more reason in teaching than in learning, we must yield assent to Aristotle Historia Animal. iv. 19 (535 b 17); cf. ix. 1 (608 a 18); Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 40. when he says that animals do teach: a nightingale, in fact, has been observed instructing her young how to sing. A further proof that supports him is the fact that birds which have been taken young from the nest and bred apart from their mothers sing the worse for it Cf. 992 b-c infra.; for the birds that are bred with their mothers are taught and learn, not for pay or glory, but for the joy of rivalling each other in song and because they cherish the beautiful in their utterance rather than the useful. On this subject I have a story to tell you which I heard myself from many Greeks and Romans who were eye-witnesses. A certain barber at Rome had his shop directly opposite the precinct which they call the Market of the Greeks. Graecostadium (see Platner and Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Rome, s.v.) or Forum Graecorum. He bred up a wonderful prodigy of a jay Cf. Porphyry, De Abstinentia, iii. 2 (p. 191. 8, ed. Nauck); Gow on Theocritus, v. 136; Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 13 (615 b 19 f.). See also the talking birds in Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 118-134. with a huge range of tones and expressions, which could reproduce the phrases of human speech and the cries of beasts and the sound of instruments - under no compulsion, but making it a rule and a point of honour to let nothing go unrepeated or unimitated. Now it happened that a certain rich man was buried from that quarter to the blast of many trumpets and, as is customary, there was a halt in front of the barber-shop while the trumpeters, who were applauded and encored, played for a long time. From that day on the jay was speechless and mute, not letting out even a peep to request the necessities of life; so those who habitually passed the place and had formerly wondered at her voice, were now even more astonished at her silence. Some suspected that she had been poisoned by rival bird-trainers, but most conjectured that the trumpets had blasted her hearing and that her voice had been simultaneously extinguished. Now neither of these guesses was correct: it was self-discipline, it would seem, and her talent for mimicry that had sought an inner retreat as she refitted and prepared her voice like a musical instrument. For suddenly her mimicry returned and there blazed forth none of those old familiar imitations, but only the music of the trumpets,This is also the accomplishment of a homonymous bird in Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 19. reproduced with its exact sequences and every change of pitch and rhythm and tone. I conclude, as I said before,See 973 a supra. that self-instruction implies more reason in animals than does readiness to learn from others. Still, I believe that I should not pass over one example at least of a dog’s learning, Cf. the bears that acted a farce in Script. Hist. Aug., Vita Car. xix. 2. of which I myself was a spectator at Rome. The dog appeared in a pantomime with a dramatic plot and many characters and conformed in its acting at all points with the acts and reactions required by the text. In particular, they experimented on it with a drug that was really soporific, but supposed in the story to be deadly. The dog took the bread that was supposedly drugged, swallowed it, and a little later appeared to shiver and stagger and nod until it finally sprawled out and lay there like a corpse, letting itself be dragged and hauled about, as the plot of the play prescribed. But when it recognized from the words and action that the time had come, at first it began to stir slightly, as though recovering from a profound sleep, and lifted its head and looked about. Then to the amazement of the spectators it got up and proceeded to the right person and fawned on him with joy and pleasure so that everyone, and even Caesar himself (for the aged VespasianVespasian became emperor in a.d. 69 when he was 60 years old and died ten years later, so that this incident can be dated only within the decade. was present in the Theatre of Marcellus), was much moved.

On this chapter see T. Weidlich, Die Sympathie in Altertum, p. 42. Yet perhaps it is ridiculous for us to make a parade of animals distinguished for learning when DemocritusDiels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok. ii, p. 173, frag. 154; Cf. Bailey on Lucretius, v. 1379 (vol. iii, p. 1540 of his edition); Aelian, De Natura Animal. xii. 16. declares that we have been their pupils in matters of fundamental importance: of the spider in weaving and mending, of the swallow in homebuilding, of the sweet-voiced swan and nightingale Cf. 973 a supra. in our imitation of their song. Further, of the three divisions of medicine,As given here, cure by (1) drugs, (2) diet, (3) surgery. There are five divisions in Diogenes Laertius, iii. 85; al. we can discern in animals a generous portion of each; for it is not cure by drugs alone of wrhich they make use. After devouring a serpent tortoises Cf. Mor. 918 c, 991 e; Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 12 and Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 6 (612 a 24); of wounded partridges and storks and doves in Aelian, op. cit. v. 46 (Aristotle, op. cit. 612 a 32). take a dessert of marjoram, and weaselsAristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 6 (612 a 28). of rue. DogsSee Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 6 (612 a 6); add Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, i. 71. purge themselves when bilious by a certain kind of grass. The snakePliny, Nat. Hist. xx. 254. Other details of snake diet in Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 4. sharpens and restores its fading sight with fennel. When the she-bear comes forth from her lair,As in 971 d-e supra. the first thing she eats is wild arumProbably the Adam-and-Eve (Arum maculatum L.), since the Italian arum (Arum italicum Mill.) was cultivated. See Aristotle, Historia Animal. viii. 17 (600 b 11); ix. 6 (611 b 34); Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 129; Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 3. Oribasius (Coll. Med. iii. 24. 5) characterizes wild arum as an aperient.; for its acridity opens her gut which has become constricted. At other times, when she suffers from nausea,When she has swallowed the fruit of the mandrake, according to Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 101. she resorts to anthills and sits, holding out her tongue all running and juicy with sweet liquor until it is covered with ants; these she swallowsAristotle, Historia Animal. viii. 4 (594 b 9); Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 3; Sextus Empiricus, op. cit. i. 57. and is alleviated. The Egyptians Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii. 35; vii. 45; Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 97; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, ii. 50. declare that they have observed and imitated the ibis’ clyster-like purging of herself with brine; and the priests make use of water from which an ibis has drunk to purify themselves; for if the water is tainted or unhealthy in any way, the ibis will not approach it. Then, too, some beasts cure themselves by a short fast, like wolves Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. iv. 15; see the hippopotamus in Amm. Marc. xx. 15. 23. and lions who, when they are surfeited with flesh, lie still for a while, basking in the sun. And they say a tigress, if a kid is given her, will keep fasting for two days without eating; on the third, she grows hungry and asks for some other food. She will even pull her cage to pieces, but will not touch the kid which she has now come to regard as a fellow-boarder and room mate.Of a leopard in Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 2. This account seems to indicate a lacuna in our text explaining why the tigress did not eat the kid in the first place: because she had already had enough to eat. Yet again, they relate that elephants employ surgery: they do, in fact, bring aid to the woundedFor an example see the anecdote of Porus in 970 d supra, 977 b infra; Juba, frag. 52 (Jacoby); Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 45. by easily and harmlessly drawing out spears and javelins and arrows without any laceration of the flesh. And Cretan goats, Cf. 991 f infra; Philo, 38 (p. 119); Vergil, Aen. xii. 415; Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 6 (612 a 3); Pease, Melanges Marouzeau, 1948, p. 472. when they eat dittany,Cretan dittany (Origanum dictamnus L.); Pliny, Nat. Hist. xx. 156. easily expel arrows from their bodies and so have presented an easy lesson for women with child to take to heart, that the herb has an abortive property Cf. Pease, op. cit. p. 471.; for there is nothing except dittany that the goats, when they are wounded, rush to search for.

These matters, though wonderful, are less surprising than are those creatures which have cognition of number and can count, Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. iv. 53. as do the cattle near Susa. At that place they irrigate the royal park with water raised in buckets by wheels, and the number of bucketfuls is prescribed. For each cow raises one hundred bucketfuls each day, and more you could not get from her, even if you wanted to use force. In fact, they often try to add to the number to see; but the cow balks and will not continue when once she has delivered her quota, so accurately does she compute and remember the sum, as CtesiasFrag. 53 b, ed. Gilmore (p. 196); Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 1. of Cnidus has related. The Libyans laugh at the Egyptians for telling a fabulous tale about the oryx,See Mair on Oppian, Cyn. ii. 446. that it lets out a cryA sneeze, according to Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 107; Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 8. at that very day and hour when the star rises that they call Sothis, Cf. Mor. 359 d, 376 a. which we call the Dog Star or Sirius. At any rate, when this star rises flush with the sun, practically all the goats turn about and look toward the east; and this is the most certain sign of its return and agrees most exactly with the tables of mathematical calculation.They watched for the first sight of Sirius before daybreak about June 20; the date shifted in the Egyptian calendar.

But that my discourse may add its finishing touch and terminate, let me

make the move from the sacred line

1

and say a few words about the divine inspiration and the mantic power of animals.

It is, in fact, no small or ignoble division of divination, but a great and very ancient one, which takes its name from birds

2

; for their quickness of apprehension and their habit of responding to any manifestation, so easily are they diverted, serves as an instrument for the god, who directs their movements, their calls or cries, and their formations which are sometimes contrary, sometimes favouring, as winds are; so that he uses some birds to cut short, others to speed enterprises and inceptions to the destined end. It is for this reason that Euripides

3

calls birds in general

heralds of the gods

; and, in particular, Socrates

4

says that he considers himself a

fellow-slave of the swans.

So again, among monarchs Pyrrhus

5

liked to be called an Eagle and Antiochus

6

a Hawk. But when we deride, or rail at, stupid and ignorant people we call them

fish.

Really, we can produce cases by the thousand of signs and portents manifested to us by the gods through creatures of land and air, but not one such can the advocate for aquatic creatures name.

7

No, they are all

deaf and blind Cf. the fragment of Epicharmus cited above in 961 a.

so far as foreseeing anything goes, and so have been cast aside into the godless and titanic

9

region, as into a Limbo of the Unblessed, where the rational and intelligent part of the soul has been extinguished. Having, however, only a last remnant

of sensation that is clogged with mud and deluged with water, they seem to be at their last gasp rather than alive.

HERACLEON. Raise your brows, dear Phaedimus, and rouse yourself to defend us the sea folk, the island-dwellers ! This bout of argument has become no child’s play, but a hard-fought contest, a debate which lacks only the actual bar and platform.That is, it is so realistic that one might imagine oneself in the lawcourts or the public assembly. PHAEDIMUS. Not so, Heracleon, but an ambush laid with malice aforethought has been disclosed. While we are still tipsy and soused from yesterday’s bout, this gentleman, as you see, has attacked us with premeditation, cold sober. Yet there can be no begging off. Devotee of PindarFrag. 272, ed. Turyn (228 Schroeder, 215 Bowra); cf. Mor. 783 b; Leutsch and Schneidewin, Paroemiographi Graeci, i, p. 44; Plato, Cratylus, 421 d. though I am, I do not want to be addressed with the quotation To excuse oneself when combat is offered Has consigned valour to deep obscurity; for we have much leisurePerhaps merely a passing allusion to some such passage as Plato, Phaedrus, 258 e rather than, as Bernardakis thought, a quotation from an unknown tragic poet (Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 869, Adesp. 138).; and it is not our discourse that will be idle, but our dogs and horses, our nets and seines of all kinds, for a truce is granted for to-day because of our argument to every creature both on land and sea. Yet do not fear: I shall use itEither our leisure or the truce, i.e. the holiday Plutarch has given his pupils (see the Introduction to this essay). with moderation, introducing no opinions of philosophers or Egyptian fables or unattested tales of Indians or Libyans. But those facts that may be observed everywhere and have as witnesses the men who exploit the sea and acquire their credit from direct observation, of these I shall present a few. Yet there is nothing to impede illustrations drawn from land animals: the land is wide open for investigation by the senses. The sea, on the other hand, grants us but a few dubious glimpses. She draws a veil over the birth and growth, the attacks and reciprocal defences, of most of her denizens. Among these there are no few feats of intelligence and memory and community spirit that remain unknown to us and so obstruct our argument. Then too, land animals Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 1. by reason of their close relationship and their cohabitation have to some extent been imbued with human manners; they have the advantage of their breeding and teaching and imitation, which sweetens all their bitterness and sullenness, like fresh water mixed with brine, while their lack of understanding and dullness are roused to life by human contacts. Whereas the life of sea creatures, being set apart by mighty bounds from intercourse with men and having nothing adventitious or acquired from human usage, is peculiar to itself, indigenous, and uncontaminated by foreign ways, not by distinction of Nature, but of location. For their Nature is such as to welcome and retain such instruction as reaches them. This it is that renders many eels tractable, like those that are called sacred in Arethusa Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. viii. 4.; and in many places there are fish which will respond to their own names, Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 193: Aelian, De Natura Animal. xii. 30. as the story goes of Crassus’Not in the Life of Crassus, but derived from the same source as Aelian, De Natura Animal. viii. 4; cf. the remarks in the Life of Solon, vii. 4 (82 a). The story is also recounted in Mor. 89 a, 811 a; Macrobius, Sat. iii. 15. 4; Porphyry, De Abstinentia, iii. 5. Hortensius, too, wept bitterly at the death of his pet moray (Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 172). moray, upon the death of which he wept. And once when DomitiusL. Domitius Ahenobarbus, consul in 54 b.c., a bitter political opponent of Crassus and the Triumvirate. said to him, Isn’t it true that you wept when a moray died ? he answered, Isn’t it true that you buried three wives and didn’t weep ? The priests’ crocodiles Cf. Aelian, loc. cit. not only recognize the voice of those who summon them and allow themselves to be handled, but open their mouths to let their teeth be cleaned by hand and wiped with towels. Recently our excellent Philinus came back from a trip to Egypt and told us that he had seen in Antaeopolis an old woman sleeping on a low bed beside a crocodile, which was stretched out beside her in a perfectly decorous way. They have long been telling the tale that when King PtolemyAelian, loc. cit., does not know which Ptolemy is meant; Cf. the story of Apis and Germanicus in Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 185; Amm. Marc. xxii. 14. 8. summoned the sacred crocodile and it would not heed him or obey in spite of his entreaties and requests, it seemed to the priests an omen of his death, which came about not long after; whence it appears that the race of water creatures is not wholly unendowed with your precious gift of divination. Cf. 975 b supra; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 55. Indeed, I have heard that near Sura,Aelian, De Natura Animal. viii. 5; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxii. 17. a village in Lycia between Phellus and Myra, men sit and watch the gyrations and flights and pursuits of fish and divine from them by a professional and rational system, as others do with birds.

But let these examples suffice to show that sea animals are not entirely unrelated to us or cut off from human fellowship. Of their uncontaminated and native intelligence their caution is strong evidence. For nothing that swims and does not merely stick or cling to rocks is easily taken or captured without trouble by man as are asses by wolves, bees by bee-eaters,A bird: Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 13 (615 b 25); Aelian, De Natura Animal. v. 11; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 99. cicadas by swallows, and snakes by deer, which easily attract them.Aelian, De Natura Animal. viii. 6; v. 48. This, in fact, is why deer are called elaphoi, not from their swiftness, Elaphrotes. but from their power of attracting snakes. Helxis opheos, a fantastic etymology. Neither derivation is correct, elaphos being related to the Lithuanian elnis, deer. For the references see Mair on Oppian, Cyn. ii. 234. So too the ram draws the wolf by stamping and they say that very many creatures, and particularly apes, are attracted to the panther by their pleasure in its scent.See Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 6 (612 a 13); add Aelian, De Natura Animal. viii. 6; v. 40. But in practically all sea-creatures any sensation is suspect and evokes an intelligently inspired defensive reaction against attack, so that fishing has been rendered no simple or trivial task, but needs all manner of implements and clever and deceitful tricks to use against the fish. This is perfectly clear from ready examples: no one wants to have an angler s rod too thick, though it needs elasticity to withstand the thrashing of such fish as are caught; men select, rather, a slender rod so that it may not cast a broad shadow and arouse suspicion. Cf. Gow on Theocritus, xxi. 10. In the next place, they do not thicken the line with many plies when they attach the loop and do not make it rough; for this, too, betrays the lure to the fish. They also contrive that the hairs which form the leader shall be as white as possible; for in this way they are less conspicuous in the sea because of the similarity of colour. The remark of the PoetHomer, Iliad, xxiv. 80-82.: Like lead sheIris going to visit Thetis. sank into the great sea depths, Like lead infixed in hora of rustic ox Which brings destruction to the ravenous fish - some misunderstand this and imagine that the ancients used ox-hair for their lines, alleging that keras It means, of course, horn as above in Homer, Iliad, xxiv. 81. means hair and for this reason keirasthai means to have one’s hair cut and koura is a haircut Or lock of hair. and the keroplastes Horn-fashioner, so called from the horn-like bunching together of the hair: see the scholia on Iliad, xxiv. 81. in ArchilochusEdmonds, Elegy and Iambus, ii, p. 126, frag. 57; Diehl, Anth. Lyrica, i, p. 228, frag. 59. See the note on 967 f supra. is one who is fond of trimming and beautifying the hair. But this is not so: they use horse-hair which they take from males, for mares by wetting the hair with their urine make it weak. Cf. Mor. 915 f - 916 a. AristarchusNot Aristotle, as the mss. read. See Platt, Class. Quart. v. 255. declares that there is nothing erudite or subtle in these lines; the fact is that a small piece of horn was attached to the line in front of the hook, since the fish, when they are confronted by anything else, chew the line in two. The section of horn was put around the line. It was therefore a tube. It was in front of the hook as one held it in his hand and attached it to the line. It was therefore at the hook end of the leader. Its hardness prevented the line from being severed. Its neutral coloration prevented the fish from being frightened off. Note that Oppian (Hal. iii. 147) comments on the use of a hook with an abnormally long shank for the same purpose (Andrews). They use rounded hooksA prototype of the Sobey hook. to catch mullets and bonitos, whose mouths are smallSee Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 37 (621 a 19); Mair on Oppian, Hal. iii. 144.; for they are wary of a broader hook. Often, indeed, the mullet suspects even a rounded hook and swims around it, flipping the bait with its tail and snatching up bits it has dislodged; or if it cannot do this, it closes its mouth and purses it up and with the tips of its lips nibbles away at the bait. Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 145; Oppian, Hal. iii. 524 ff. The sea-bass is braver than your elephant Cf. 974 d supra.: it is not from another, but from himself without assistance, that he extracts the barb when he is caught by the hook; he swings his head from side to side to widen the wound, enduring the pain of tearing his flesh until he can throw off the hook. Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. i. 40, of the tunny; Ovid, Hal. 39 f. and Oppian, Hal. iii. 128 ff., of the bass. The fox-sharkPlutarch seems here to have confused this fish with the so-called scolopendra (of which he writes correctly in Mor. 567 b; see also Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 424). Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 37 (621 a 11); Aelian, De Natura Animal. ix. 12; Varia Hist. i. 5; Mair on Oppian, Hal. iii. 144; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 145. There are fish (but not sharks) which can disgorge their stomachs and swallow them again. Note that hasty reading of Aristotle l.c. could easily cause this misstatement (Andrews). does not often approach the hook and shuns the lure; but if he is caught, he immediately turns himself inside out, for by reason of the elasticity and flexibility of his body he can naturally shift and twist it about, so that when he is inside out, the hook falls away.

Now the examples I have given indicate intelligence and an ingenious, subtle use of it for opportune profit; but there are others that display, in combination with understanding, a social sense and mutual affection, as is the case with the barbierThe anthias of the above passage is probably the Mediterranean barbier, Serranus anthias C.V., although elsewhere it is sometimes obviously a much larger fish of uncertain identity. On the identification Cf. Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. vi. 17 (570 b 19); Glossary of Greek Fishes, s.v.; Mair, introd. to his ed. of Oppian, pp. liii-lxi; Marx, RE, i. 2375-2377; ii. 2415; Schmid, Philologus, Suppb. xi, 1907-1910, p. 273; Brands, Grieksche Diernamen, pp. 147 f.; Cotte, Possions et animaux aquatiques au temps de Pline, pp. 69-73; Saint-Denis, Le Vocabulaire des animaux marins en latin classique, pp. 5-7. Cf. also 981 e infra. and the parrot-fish. For if one parrot-fish swallows the hook, the others present swarm upon the line and nibble it away; and the same fish, when any of their kind have fallen into the net, give them their tails from outside; when they eagerly fix their teeth in these, the others pull on them and bring them through in tow.On this story cf. also Aelian, De Natura Animal. i. 4; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxii. 11; Ovid, Hal. 9 ff.; Oppian, Hal. iv. 40 ff. Note also Aelian, De Natura Animal. v. 22, on mice. And barbiers are even more strenuous in rescuing their fellows: getting under the line with their backs, they erect their sharp spines and try to saw the line through and cut if off with the rough edge. Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 182; xxxii. 13; Ovid, Hal. 45 ff.; Oppian, Hal. iii. 321 ff. Yet we know of no land animal that has the courage to assist another in danger - not bear or boar or lioness or panther. True it is that in the arena those of the same kind draw close together and huddle in a circle; yet they have neither knowledge nor desire to help each other. Instead, each one flees to get as far as possible from a wounded or dying fellow. That tale of the elephants Cf. 972 b supra; Jacoby, Frag. der griech. Hist. iii, p. 146, frag. 51 b. On the community spirit of elephants see also Aelian, De Natura Animal. v. 49; vi. 61; vii. 15; al. carrying brushwood to the pits and giving their fallen comrade a ramp to mount is monstrous and far-fetched and dictates, as it were, that we are to believe it on a king’s prescription - that is, on the writs of Juba.Juba was king of Mauretania (25 b.c. - c. a.d. 23). Suppose it to be true: it merely proves that many sea creatures are in no way inferior in community spirit and intelligence to the wisest of the land animals. As for their sociability, I shall soon make a special plea on that topic.

Now fishermen, observing that most fish evade the striking of the hook by such countermoves as wrestlers use, resorted, like the Persians, Cf. Herodotus, vi. 31; iii. 149; Plato, Laws 698 d; Fraenkel on Aesch. Agam. 358. On kinds of nets see Mair, L.C.L. Oppian, pp. xl ff. to force and used the dragnet, since for those caught in it there could be no escape with the help of reason or cleverness. For mullet and rainbow-wrasse Coris iulis Gth. Cf. Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 3 (610 b 7); A Glossary of Greek Fishes, p. 91; Schmid, op. cit. p. 292; Brands, op. cit. p. 157; Cotte, op. cit. pp. 59-60; Saint-Denis, op. cit. p. 52. are caught by casting-nets and round nets, as are also the breamIn particular, probably Pagellus mormyrus C.V. On the identification cf. Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. vi. 7 (570 b 20); Glossary, p. 161; Cotte, op. cit. pp. 105-107; Saint-Denis, op. cit. pp. 65-66. and the sargueIn particular, probably Sargus culgaris Geoff. On the identification Cf. Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. v. 9 (543 a 7); Glossary, pp. 227-228; Cotte, op. cit. pp. 105-107; Saint-Denis, op. cit. pp. 99, 107-108; Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, ii, p. 370; Gossen-Steier, RE, Second Series, ii. 365. and the gobyA term mostly for the black goby, Gobius niger L., the most common Mediterranean species. On the identification Cf. Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. viii. 14 (598 a 12); Glossary, pp. 137-139; Gossen, RE, Second Series, ii. 794-796. and the sea-bass. The so-called net fish, that is surmulletThe red or plain surmullet, Mullus barbatus L., and the striped or common surmullet, Mullus surmuletus L. On this fish cf. Cotte, op. cit. pp. 98-101; Keller, op. cit. ii, pp. 364 f.; Prechac, Revue d. Et. Lat. xiv (1936), pp. 102-105; xvii (1939), p. 279; Saint-Denis, op. cit. pp. 68 f.; Schmid, op. cit. pp. 310-312; Steier, RE, xvi. 496-503; Thompson, Glossary, pp. 264-268; Andrews, Class. Weekly, xlii (1949), pp. 186-188. and gilthead Chrysophrys aurata C.V., called gilthead from the golden band that runs from eye to eye. On this fish cf. Wellmann, RE, iii. 2517-2518; Keller, op. cit. ii, pp. 369 ff.; RE, vii. 1578; Schmid, op. cit. pp. 297-298; Thompson, Glossary, pp. 292-294; Cotte, op. cit. pp. 73-74; Saint-Denis, op. cit. pp. 80-81. and sculpin, Scorpaena scrofa, L. and S. porcus L. On this fish Cf. Cotte, op. cit. pp. 111-113; Saint-Denis, op. cit. pp. 103-104; Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. v. 9 (543 a 7); Glossary, pp. 245 f. are caught in seines by trawling: accordingly it was quite correct for Homer Iliad, v. 487; Cf. Platt, Class. Quart. v, p. 255; Fraenkel, Aesch. Agam. ii, p. 190. to call this kind of net a catch-all. Codfish,Principally the hake and rockling, Phycis sp. and Motella sp. Not to be confused with γαλεός, a general term for sharks and dogfishes. Cf. Andrews, Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, xxxix (1949), pp. 1-16. like bass, Cf. Oppian, Hal. iii. 121 ff. have devices even against these. For when the bass perceives that the trawl is approaching, it forces the mud apart and hammers a hollow in the bottom. When it has made room enough to allow the net to overrun it, it thrusts itself in and waits until the danger is past. Now when the dolphin is caught and perceives itself to be trapped in the net, it bides its time, not at all disturbed but well pleased, for it feasts without stint on the fish that have been gathered with no trouble to itself. But as soon as it comes near the shore, it bites its way through the net and makes its escape. Yet if it should not get away in time, on the first occasion it suffers no harm: the fishermen merely sew rushes to its crest and let it go. But if it is taken a second time, they recognize it from the seam and punish it with a beating. This, however, rarely occurs: most dolphins are grateful for their pardon in the first instance and take care to do no harm in the future.On the alliance of dolphins and fisherman see Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii. 8; xi. 12; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 29 ff. Further, among the many examples of wariness, precaution, or evasion, we must not pass over that of the cuttlefish Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 37 (621 b 28); Athenaeus, 323 d-e; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 84; Horace, Sat. i. 4. 100; Aelian, De Natura Animal. i. 34; Mair on Oppian, Hal. iii. 156.: it has the so-called mytis Aristotle, Historia Animal. iv. 1 (524 b 15); De Part. Animal. iv. 5 (679 a 1). beside the neck Under the mouth, says Aristotle. full of black liquid, which they call ink. Tholos, mud, turbidity. When it is come upon, it discharges the liquid to the purpose that the sea shall be inked out and create darkness around it while it slips through and eludes the fisherman’s gaze. In this it imitates Homer’sFor example, Iliad, v. 345. gods who often in a dark cloud snatch up and smuggle away those whom they are pleased to save. But enough of this.

As for cleverness in attacking and catching prey, we may perceive subtle examples of it in many different species. The starfish,[Aristotle], Historia Animal. v. 15 (548 a 7 f.), an interpolated passage; nor can we be certain that it was known to Plutarch. See also Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 181. for example, knowing that everything with which it comes in contact dissolves and liquefies, offers its body and is indifferent to the contact of those that overtake or meet it. You know, of course, the property of the torpedoOr electric ray or crampfish: for the ancient references see Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. ic. 37 (620 b 12-23); Glossary, pp. 169-172; Aelian, De Natura Animal. i. 36; ix. 14; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 143; Mair, L.C.L. Oppian, p. lxix, and on Hal. ii. 56; iii. 149; Philo, 30 (p. 115); Antigonus, Hist. Mirab. 48; Boulenger, World Natural History, pp. 189 f.: not only does it paralyse all those who touch it, but even through the net creates a heavy numbness in the hands of the trawlers. And some who have experimented further with it report that if it is washed ashore alive and you pour water on it from above, you may perceive the numbness mounting to the hand and dulling your sense of touch by way of the water which, so it seems, suffers a change and is first infected. Cf. the upward infection of the basilisk, Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 78. Having, therefore, an innate sense of this power, it never makes a frontal attack or endangers itself; rather, it swims in a circle around its prey and discharges its shocks as if they were darts, thus poisoning first the water, then through the water the creature which can neither defend itself nor escape, being held fast as if by chains and frozen stiff. The so-called fishermanThe fishing-frog, Lophius piscatorius L.: Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 37 (620 b 12); Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 144; Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 86; Strömberg, Gr. Fischnamen, pp. 122 f. is known to many; he gets his name from his actions. Aristotle Historia Animal. ix. 37 (622 a 1); cf. iv. 1 (524 a 3), iv. 6 (531 b 6); Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 83 ff.; Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 122. says that the cuttlefish also makes use of this stratagem: he lets down, like a fishing line, a tentacle from his neck which is naturally designed to extend to a great length when it is released, or to be drawn to him when it is pulled in. So when he espies a little fish, he gives it the feeler to bite and then by degrees imperceptibly draws it back toward himself until the prey attached to the arm is within reach of his mouth. As for the octopus’ change of colour, Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 37 (622 a 8); Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 233. Athenaeus, 316 f, 317 f, 513 d; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 87; Antigonus, Hist. Mirab. 25, 50; Aelian, Varia Hist. i. 1; and Wellmann, Hermes, li, p. 40. PindarFrag. 43 Schroeder, 208 Turyn, 235 Bowra (p. 516, ed. Sandys L.C.L.); cf. Mor. 916 c and Turyn’s references. has made it celebrated in the words To all the cities to which you resort Bring a mind like the changing skin of the seabeast; and Theognis215-216; cf. Mor. 96 f, 916 c. There are many textual variants, but none alters the sense. likewise: Be minded like the octopus’ hue: The colour of its rock will meet the view.Or Keep a mind as multicoloured as the octopus, With the rock whereon it sits homologous (Andrews). The chameleon,See Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. ii. 11 (503 b 2); Ogle on De Part. Animal. iv. 11 (692 a 22 ff.). See also Aelian, De Natura Animal, iv. 33; and cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 122 for the chameleon’s exclusive diet of air; nec alio quam aeris alimento. to be sure, is metachromatic, but not from any design or desire to conceal itself; it changes colour uselessly from fear, being naturally timid and cowardly. And this is consistent with the abundance of air in it, as TheophrastusFrag. 189 Wimmer (p. 225); Aristotle says merely, The change takes place when it is inflated by air. says; for nearly the whole body of the creature is occupied by its lungs,Which confirms Karsch’s emendation of Aristotle, Historia Animal. ii. 11 (503 b 21); for Theophrastus and Plutarch must have had lungs and not membranes in their text of Aristotle. which shows it to be full of air and for this reason easily moved to change colour. But this same action on the part of the octopus is not an emotional response, but a deliberate change, since it uses this device to escape what it fears and to capture what it feeds on: by this deceit it can both seize the latter, which does not try to escape, and avoid the former, which proceeds on its way. Now the story that it eats its own tentaclesSee 965 e supra and the note; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 87; Mor. 1059 e, 1098 e, Comm. in Hes. fr. 53 (Bernardakis, vol. VII, p. 77). is a lie, but it is true that it fears the moray and the conger. It is, in fact, maltreated by them; for it cannot do them harm, since they slip from its grasp. On the other hand, when the crawfishThe langouste as distinguished from the homard; see Aelian, De Natura Animal. i. 32; ix. 25; x. 38; Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. viii. 2 (590 b 16); Glossary, pp. 102 ff.; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 185; Antigonus, Hist. Mirab. 92. has once got them in its grasp, it wins the victory easily, for smoothness is no aid against roughness; yet when the octopus has once thrust its tentacles inside the crawfish, the latter succumbs. And so Nature has created this cycleThe octopus is worsted by the moray and the conger, which in turn are defeated by the crawfish, which (to complete the cycle) becomes the octopus’ prey. The whole engagement is graphically portrayed in Oppian, Hal. ii. 253-418. For Nature’s battle see, e.g., Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 79. and succession of mutual pursuit and flight as a field for the exercise and competitive practice of adroitness and intelligence.

We have, to be sure, heard Aristotimus Cf. 972 a supra. Valentine Rose, curiously enough, emended to Aristotle (see Historia Animal. ix. 6, 612 b 4) and included this passage in Frag. 342. See further Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 226. telling us about the hedgehog’s foreknowledge of the winds; and our friend also admired the V-shaped flight of cranes. Cf. 967 b supra. I can produce no hedgehog of Cyzicus or Byzantium,Perhaps he is learnedly confuting Aristotimus (972 a supra) by drawing on Aristotle. but instead the whole body of sea-hedgehogs, i.e. the sea-urchin, regarded by the ancients as a sort of marine counterpart of the hedgehog because of the similar spines. which, when they perceive that storm and surf are coming, ballast themselves with little stones Cf. 967 b supra, of bees. in order that they may not be capsized by reason of their lightness or be swept away by the swell, but may remain fixed in position through the weight of their little rocks. Again, the cranes’ change of flight against the wind Cf. 967 b supra. is not merely the action of one species: all fish generally have the same notion and always swim against wave and current, taking care that a blast from the rear does not fold back their scales and expose and roughen their bodies. For this reason they always present the prow of their bodies to the waves, for in that way head first they cleave the sea, which depresses their gills and, flowing smoothly over the surface, keeps down, instead of ruffling up, the bristling skin. Now this, as I have said, is common to all fish except the sturgeon,Probably usually the common sturgeon, Acipenser sturio: see Thompson, Glossary, pp. 62 f.; Aelian, De Natura Animal. viii. 28, speaks of it as a rare and sacred fish; see 981 d infra. Cf. Milton’s Ellops drear (P.L. x. 525). which, they say, swims with wind and tide and does not fear the harrowing of its scales since the overlaps are not in the direction of the tail.

The tunny Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. ix. 42; Aristotle, Historia Animal. viii. 13 (598 b 25 f.). is so sensitive to equinox and solstice that it teaches even men themselves without the need of astronomical tables; for wherever it may be when the winter solstice overtakes it, in that same place it stands and stays until the equinox. As for that clever device of the crane,See 967 c supra. the grasping of the stone by night so that if it falls, she may awake from sleep - how much cleverer, my friend, is the artifice of the dolphin, for whom it is illicit to stand still or to cease from motion.Reiske may have been right in suspecting a trimeter of unknown origin in these words. For its nature is to be ever active Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. xi. 22. The dolphin even nurses its young while in motion; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xi. 235; and cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. ii. 13 (504 b 21 ff.).: the termination of its life and its movement is one and the same. When it needs sleep, it rises to the surface of the sea and allows itself to sink deeper and deeper on its back, lulled to rest by the swinging motion of the ground swellAs it were, the cradle of the deep. until it touches the bottom. Thus roused, it goes whizzing up, and when it reaches the surface, again goes slack, devising for itself a kind of rest combined with motion.But see Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 210, where it is reported that dolphins are actually heard snoring. And they say that tunnies do the same thing for the same reason. Having just a moment ago given you an account of the tunny’s mathematical foreknowledge of the reversal of the sun, of which Aristotle Historia Animal. viii. 13 (598 b 25). is a witness, I beg you to hear the tale of their arithmetical learning. But first, I swear, I must mention their knowledge of optics, of which AeschylusNauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 96, frag. 308; Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. ix. 42. seems not to have been ignorant, for these are his words: Squinting the left eye like a tunny fish. They seem, indeed, to have poor sight in one eye. And it is for this reason that when they enter the Black Sea, they hug one bank on the right, and the otherSee Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. viii. 13 (598 b 19 ff.); Glossary, p. 84; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 50. They follow the opposite shore when returning, thus keeping the same eye towards the land. when they are going out, it being very prudent and sagacious of them always to entrust the protection of themselves to the better eye. Now since they apparently need arithmetic to preserve their consociation and affection for each other, they have attained such perfection of learning that, since they take great pleasure in feeding and schooling together, Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 2 (610 b 1 f.); Aelian, De Natura Animal. xv. 3, 5. they always form the school into a cube, making it an altogether solid figure with a surface of six equal plane sides; then they swim on their way preserving their formation, a square that faces both ways. Certainly a hooerA watcher posted on a tall mast to warn fishermen of the approach of a shoal and to give a count. See Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. iv. 10 (537 a 19); Glossary, p. 87; Gow on Theocritus, iii. 26; Mair on Oppian, Hal. iii. 638. Accounts of the ancient tunny fishery are given by Thompson, Glossary, pp. 84-88; Pace, Atti R. Ac. Archeologia Napoli, N.S. xii (1931/2), pp. 326 ff.; and Rhode, Jahrb. f. class. Phil., Suppb. xviii (1900), pp. 1-78. An account of the ancient and the modern tunny fishery is given by Parona, R. Comitato Talasso-grafico Italiano, Memoria, no. 68, 1919. watching for tunnies who counts the exact number on the surface at once makes known the total number of the shoal, since he knows that the depth is equal one to one with the breadth and the length.

Schooling together has also given the bonitos their name of amia Similarly, Athenaeus (vii. 278 a; Cf. 324 d) quotes Aristotle as defining amia as not solitary, i.e. running in schools. Actually the term is probably foreign, perhaps of Egyptian origin (Cf. Thompson, Glossary, p. 13). and I think this is true of year-old tunnies as well.Plutarch takes pelamys to be compound of pelein to be and hama with, with references to their running in schools. It was also anciently presumed to be a compound of pelos mud and myein be shut in or enclosed, because of its habit of hiding in the mud (Cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. 599 b 18; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 47). Most scholars now regard it as a loan from the Mediterranean substratum, although Thompson (Glossary, p. 198) suggests that it may be of Asiatic origin, since it was used especially of the tunny in the Black Sea. As for the other kinds which are observed to live in shoals in mutual society, it is impossible to state their number. Let us rather, therefore, proceed to examine those that have a special partnership, that is, symbiosis. One of these is the pinna-guard,See Thompson, Glossary, p. 202. over which ChrysippusVon Arnim, S.V.F. ii, p. 208, frag. 729 b (Athenaeus, 89 d). Cf. also fragments 729, 729 a, and 730. On the place of the pinna in Chrysippus’ theology see A. S. Pease, Harv. Theol. Rev. xxxiv (1941), p. 177. spilled a very great deal of ink; indeed it has a reserved seat in every single book of his, whether ethical or physical. Cf. Mor. 1035 b, 1038 b. Chrysippus has obviously not investigated the sponge-guardA little crab that lives in the hollow chambers of a sponge. See Thompson, loc. cit. ; otherwise he could hardly have left it out. Now the pinna-guard is a crab-like creature, so they say, who lives with the pinnaOn this bivalve shellfish see Thompson, Glossary, p. 200; Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 186. and sits in front of the shell guarding the entrance. It allows the pinna to remain wide open and agape until one of the little fish that are their prey gets within; then the guard nips the flesh of the pinna and slips inside; the shell is closed and together they feast on the imprisoned prey. The sponge is governed by a little creature not resembling a crab, but much like a spider.Nevertheless, it is a crab, Typton spongicola. Now the sponge Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. viii. 16; Aristotle, Historia Animal. v. 16 (548 a 28 ff.); Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 148; Antigonus, 83; Mair on Oppian, Hal. v. 656; Thompson, Glossary, pp. 249-250. is no lifeless, insensitive, bloodless thing; though it clings to the rocks, Cf. W. Jaeger, Nemesios con Emesa, p. 116, n. 1. as many other animals do, it has a peculiar movement outward and inward which needs, as it were, admonition and supervision. In any case it is loose in texture and its pores are relaxed because of its sloth and dullness; but when anything edible enters, the guard gives the signal, and it closes up and consumes the prey. Even more, if a man approaches or touches it, informed by the scratching of the guard, it shudders, as it were, and so closes itself up by stiffening and contracting that it is not an easy, but a very difficult, matter for the hunters to undercut it. The purplefishSee Aristotle, Historia Animal. v. 15 (546 b 19 ff.) quoted in Athenaeus, 88 d - 89 a; De Gen. Animal. iii. 11 (761 b 32 ff.); Thompson, Glossary, pp. 209-218. lives in colonies which build up a comb together, like bees. In this the species is said to propagate; they catch at edible bits of oystergreen and seaweed that stick to shells, and furnish each other with a sort of periodic rotating banquet, as they feed one after another in series.

And why should anyone be surprised at the community life of these when the most unsociable and brutal of all creatures bred in river, lake, or sea, the crocodile, shows himself marvellously proficient at partnership and goodwill in his dealings with the Egyptian plover?See Herodotus, ii. 68; Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 6 (612 a 20); Glossary of Greek Birds, p. 287. Some authorities such as Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 90 and Oppian, Cyn. iii. 415 ff., state that the ichneumon attacks the crocodile while its mouth is open for the plover’s operations. Cf. Boulenger, Animal Mysteries, p. 104, for a modern factual account (see also his World Natural History, p. 146). The plover is a bird of the swamps and river banks and it guards the crocodile, not supplying its own food, but as a boarder making a meal of the crocodile’s scraps. Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. iii. 11; xii. 15; [Aristotle], Mir. Ausc. 7. Now when it perceives that, during the crocodile’s sleep, the ichneumon Cf. 966 d supra. is planning to attack it, smearing itself with mud like an athlete dusting himself for the fray, the bird awakes the crocodile by crying and pecking at it. And the crocodile becomes so gentle with it that it will open its mouth and let it in and is pleased that the bird quietly pecks out, with its bill, bits of flesh which are caught in the teeth and cleans them up. When it is now satisfied and wants to close its mouth, it tilts its snout upward as an indication of its desire and does not let it down until the plover, at once perceiving the intention, flies out. The so-called guide The name and the activity are appropriate to the pilot-fish (Cf. Oppian, Hal. v. 62 ff.; Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii. 13), but the description fits rather one of the globe-fishes, such as Diodon hystrix (cf. Thompson, Glossary, p. 75). See also Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 186; xi. 165, who calls it the sea mouse. Actually the pilot is just a sponger and accompanies the shoals with the sole object of picking up such crumbs as may fall from their table. Boulenger, Animal Mysteries, p. 105. is a small fish, in size and shape like a goby; but by reason of the roughness of its scales it is said to resemble a ruffled bird. It always accompanies one of the great whales, swimming in front of it and directing its course so that it may not go aground in shallows or be cut off in some lagoon or strait from which exit may be difficult. The whale follows it, as a ship obeys the helm, changing course with great docility. And whatever else, creature or boat or stone, it embraces in its gaping jaws is at once destroyed and goes to its ruin completely engulfed; but that little fish it knows and receives inside its mouth as in a haven. While the fish sleeps within, the whale remains motionless and lies by; but when it comes out again, the beast accompanies it and does not depart from it day or night; or, if it does, it gets lost and wanders at random. Many, indeed, have been cast up on the land and perished, being, as it were, without a pilot. Cf. the whole passage in Oppian, Hal. v. 70-349 on the destruction of whales. We, in fact, were witnesses of such a mishap near Anticyra not long ago; and they relate that some time ago, when a whale came aground not far from BoulisFor the unknown Bouna or Bounae of the mss. C. O. Müller (Orchomenos², p. 482) proposed Boulis, a town to the east of Anticyra on the Phocian Gulf. and rotted, a plague ensued. Is it, then, justifiable to compare with these associations and companionships those friendships which AristotleFrag. 354, ed. V. Rose. says exist between foxes and snakes because of their common hostility to the eagle; or those between bustards and horses Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii. 28 and Mair on Oppian, Cyn. ii. 406. because the former like to approach and pick over the dung ? As for me, I perceive even in ants or bees no such concern for each other. It is true that every one of them promotes the common task, yet none of them has any interest in or regard for his fellow individually.

PHAEDIMUS.

And we shall observe this difference even more clearly when we turn our attention to the oldest and most important of social institutions and duties, those concerned with generation and procreation. Now in the first place those fish that inhabit a sea that borders on lagoons or receives rivers resort to these when they are ready to deposit then; eggs, seeking the tranquillity and smoothness of fresh water, since calm is a good midwife. Besides, lagoons and rivers are devoid of sea monsters,

1

so that the eggs and fry may survive. This is the reason why the Black Sea is most favoured for spawning by very many fish. It breeds no large sea beasts at all except an infrequent seal and a small dolphin

2

; besides, the influx of rivers - and those which empty into the Black Sea are numerous and very large - creates a gentle blend conducive to the production of offspring. The most wonderful tale is told about the

anthias

,

3

which Homer

4

calls

Sacred Fish.

5

Yet some think that

sacred

means

important,

just as we call the important bone

os sacrum

6

and epilepsy, an important disease, the sacred disease.

7

Others interpret it in the ordinary sense as meaning

dedicated

or

consecrated.

Eratosthenes

8

seems to refer to the gilthead

9

when he says

Swift courser golden-browed, the sacred fish.

Many say that this is the sturgeon,

10

which is rare and hard to catch, though it is often seen off the coast of Pamphylia. If any ever do succeed in catching it, they put on wreaths themselves and wreathe their boats; and, as they sail past, they are welcomed and honoured with shouts and applause. But most authorities hold that it is the

anthias

that is and is called

sacred,

for wherever this fish appears there are no sea monsters. Sponge-fishers

11

may dive in confidence and fish may spawn without fear, as though they had a guarantor of their immunity. The reason for this is a puzzle: whether the monsters avoid the

anthias

as elephants do a pig

12

and lions a cock,

13

or whether there are indications of places free from monsters, which the fish comes to know and frequents, being an intelligent creature with a good memory.

PHAEDIMUS. Then again the care of the young is shared by both parents: the males do not eat their own young, but stand by the spawn to guard the eggs, as Aristotle Historia Animal. ix. 37 (621 a 21 ff.); cf. Herodotus, ii. 93. relates. Some follow the female and sprinkle the eggs gradually with milt, for otherwise the spawn will not grow, but remains imperfect and undeveloped. In particular the wrasseThe phycis is almost certainly one of the wrasses, probably in particular Crenilabrus pavo C.V. See Mair, L.C.L. Oppian, p. liii; Thompson, Glossary, pp. 276-278; Andrews, Journal of The Washington Academy of Sciences, xxxix (1949), pp. 12-14. makes a sort of nest of seaweed, envelops the spawn in it, and shelters it from the waves. The affection of the dogfish Cf. Mor. 494 c; 730 e; Thompson on Aristotle, Historia Animal. vi. 10 (565 a 22 ff., b 2 ff.); Glossary, pp. 39-42; Mair on Oppian, Hal. i. 734. for its young is not inferior in warmth and kindliness to that of any of the tamest animals; for they lay the egg, then sustain and carry the newlyhatehed young, not without, but within themselves, as if from a second birth. When the young grow larger, the parents let them out and teach them to swim close by; then again they collect them through their mouths and allow their bodies to be used as dwelling-places, affording at once room and board and sanctuary until the young become strong enough to shift for themselves. Aristotle (Historia Animal. 565 b 24) reports that some dogfish brought forth their young by the mouth and took them therein again. Athenaeus (vii. 294 e) says that the dogfish took the young just hatched into its mouth and emitted them again. Plutarch has a somewhat garbled version of this presumed process, blended with data on the parental care of dolphins (cf. Plin. N.H. ix. 21) (Andrews). Wonderful also is the care of the tortoise for the birth and preservation of her young. To bear them she comes out of the sea to the shore near at hand; but since she is unable to incubate the eggs or to remain on dry land for long, she deposits them on the strand and heaps over them the smoothest and softest part of the sand. When she has buried and concealed them securely, Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 37; contrast the forgetful lizard (x. 187). some say that she scratches and scribbles the place with her feet, making it easy for her to recognize; others affirm that it is because she has been turned on her back by the male that she leaves peculiar marks and impressions about the place. But what is more remarkable than this, she waits for the fortieth day Cf. Aelian, Varia Hist. i. 6. (for that is the number required to develop and hatch out the eggs) and then approaches. And each tortoise recognizes her own treasure and opens it more joyously and eagerly than a man does a deposit of gold.

The accounts given of the crocodile are similar in other respects, but the animal’s ability to estimate the right place goes beyond man’s power to guess or calculate the cause. Hence they affirm that this creature’s foreknowledge is divine and not rational. For neither to a greater or a less distance, but just so far as the Nile will spread that season and cover the land in flood, just so far does she go to deposit her eggs, with such accuracy that any farmer finding the eggs may know himself and predict to others how far the river will advance.See Aelian, De Natura Animal. v. 52; and compare B. Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense, p. 33. And her purpose in being so exact is to prevent either herself or her eggs getting wet when she sits on them. When they are hatched, the one which, upon emerging, does not immediately seize in its mouth anything that comes along, fly or midge or worm or straw or plant, the mother tears to pieces and bites to death Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. ix. 3; contrast Pliny, Nat. Hist.x. 10; Antigonus, 46, of the sea eagle; Lucan, ix. 902 ff., of the eagle. See also Julian, Epistle 59 (383 c); 78 (418 d) with Wright’s note (L.C.L. vol. iii, p. 259, n. 2).; but those that are bold and active she loves and tends, thus bestowing her affection by judgement, as the wisest of men think right, not by emotion.Apparently with reference to Theophrastus, frag. 74 (cf. Mor. 482 b). Furthermore, seals Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. ix. 9; Oppian, Hal. i. 686 ff.; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 41. too bear their young on dry land and little by little induce their offspring to try the sea, then quickly take them out again. This they do often at intervals until the young are conditioned in this way to feel confidence and enjoy life in the sea. Frogs in their coupling use a call, the so-called ololygon,See Gow on Theocritus, vii. 139; Boulenger, Animal Mysteries, pp. 67 f. a cry of wooing and mating. When the male has thus attracted the female, they wait for the night together, for they cannot consort in the water and during the day they are afraid to do so on land; but when the darkness falls, they come out and embrace with impunity. On other occasions when their cry is shrill, it is because they expect rain. Cf. Mor. 912 c-d; Aratus, Phaenomena, 946 ff.; Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 19; ix. 13. And this is among the surest of signs.

But, dear Poseidon! What an absurd and ridiculous error I have almost fallen into: while I am spending my time on seals and frogs, I have neglected and omitted the wisest of sea creatures, the most beloved of the gods!As it is to Thetis: Virgil, Georgics, i. 399. For what nightingales are to be compared with the halcyonSee Thompson, Glossary of Greek Birds, s.v.; Kraak, Mnemosyne (3rd series), vii. 142; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 89 ff.; Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 17; Gow on Theocritus, vii. 57; and the pleasant work Halcyon found in mss. of Lucian and Plato. for its love of sweet sound, or what swallows for its love of offspring, or what doves for its love of its mate, or what bees for its skill in construction ? What creature’s procreation and birth pangs has the godPoseidon. so honoured ? For Leto’s parturition,For the birth of Apollo and Artemis. so they say, only one islandDelos, the wandering island. was made firm to receive her; but when the halcyon lays her eggs, about the time of the winter solstice, the godPoseidon. brings the whole sea to rest, without a wave, without a swell. And this is the reason why there is no other creature that men love more. Thanks to her they sail the sea without a fear in the dead of winter for seven days and seven nights.The Halcyon Days (Suidas, s.v.); Aristotle, Historia Animal. v. 8 (542 b 6 ff.); Aelian, De Natura Animal. i. 36; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. 231; al. For the moment, journey by sea is safer for them than by land. If it is proper to speak briefly of her several virtues, she is so devoted to her mate that she keeps him company, not for a single season, but throughout the year. Yet it is not through wantonness that she admits him to her company, for she never consorts at all with any other male; it is through friendship and affection, as with any lawful wife. When by reason of old age the male becomes too weak and sluggish to keep up with her, she takes the burden on herself, carries him and feeds him, never forsaking, never abandoning him; but mounting him on her own shoulders, she conveys him everywhere she goes and looks after him, abiding with him until the end. Cf. Alcman’s famous lines: frag. 26 Edmonds (Lyra Graeca, i, p. 72, L.C.L.), frag. 94 Diehl (Anth. Lyrica, ii, p. 34); Antigonus, Hist. Mirab. 23; al. As for love of her offspring and care for their preservation, as soon as she perceives herself to be pregnant, she applies herself to building the nest, Cf. Mor. 494 a-b; Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 13 (616 a 19 ff.); Aelian, De Natura Animal. ix. 17. not making pats of mud or cementing it on walls and roofs like the house-martin Cf. 966 d-e supra.; nor does she use the activity of many different members of her body, as when the bee employs its whole frame to enter and open the wax, with all six feet pressing at the same time to fashion the whole mass into hexagonal cells, But the halcyon, having but one simple instrument, one piece of equipment, one tool - her bill and nothing else, co-operating with her industry and ingenuity - what she contrives and constructs would be hard to believe without ocular evidence, seeing the object that she moulds - or rather the ship that she builds. Of many possible forms, this alone cannot be capsizedAristotle (loc. cit.), on the contrary, seems to say (though his text is corrupt; see Thompson ad loc.): The opening is small, just enough for a tiny entrance, so that even if the nest is upset, the sea does not enter. or even wet its cargo. She collects the spines of garfish Belone was usually a term for the garfish and the needlefish, neither of which has spines of any size. Thompson (Glossary, pp. 31-32) rightly regards the meaning of belone here as indeterminable. Cf. also Mor. 494 a, which is almost certainly mistranslated in the L.C.L. edition. and binds and weaves them together, some straight, others transverse, as if she were thrusting woven threads through the warp, adding such bends and knots of one with another that a compact, rounded unit is formed, slightly prolate in shape, like a fisherman’s weel. When it is finished, she brings and deposits it beside the surging waves, where the sea beats gently upon it and instructs her how to mend and strengthen whatever is not yet good and tight, as she observes it loosened by the blows. She so tautens and secures the joints that it is difficult even for stones or iron to break or pierce it. The proportions and shape of the hollow interior are as admirable as anything about it; for it is so constructed as to admit herself only, while the entrance remains wholly hidden and invisible to others - with the result that not even a drop of water can get in. Now I presume that all of you have seen this nest; as for me, since I have often seen and touched it, it comes to my mind to chant the words Once such a thing in Delos near Apollo’s shrineHomer, Odyssey, vi. 162. That there was some religious mystery associated with the so-called nest is indicated by the close of Plutarch’s description. (Thompson on Aristotle, loc. cit.) I saw, the Altar of Horn, celebrated as one of the Seven Wonders of the World Cf. Strabo, xiv. 2. 5. because it needs no glue or any other binding, but is joined and fastened together, made entirely of horns taken from the right side of the head.Curiously enough, the Life of Theseus, xxi. 2 (9 e) says the left side. Now may the godApollo. From this point on the text of the rest of this chapter is very bad and full of lacunae. The restorations adopted here are somewhat less than certain. be propitious to me while I sing of the Sea SirenThis is not fulfilled and so is presumably an indication of another lacuna toward the end of Phaedimus’ speech, the location of which we cannot even guess. - and indeed, being both a musician and an islander, he should laugh good-naturedly at my opponents’ scoffing questions. Why should he not be called a conger-slayer or Artemis be termed a surmullet-slayer? Cf. 966 a supra. Since he well knows that Aphrodite, born of the sea, regards practically all sea creatures as sacred and related to herself and relishes the slaughter of none of them. In Leptis,Andrews suspects a confusion here and at Mor. 730 d with Lepidotonpolis on the Nile, not far below Thebes, apparently a focal point of a taboo on eating the bynni, allegedly due to its consumption of the private parts of Osiris when they were thrown into the river (cf. Mor. 358 b). you know, the priests of Poseidon refrain entirely from any sea food, and those initiated into the mysteries at Eleusis hold the surmullet in veneration, while the priestess of Hera at Argos abstains from this fish to pay it honour. For surmullets are particularly good at killing and eating the sea-hare, which is lethal to man. Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii. 45; ix. 51; xvi. 19; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 155; Philostratus, Vita Apoll. vi. 32. It is for this reason that surmullets possess this immunity, as being friendly and life-saving creatures.

Furthermore, many of the Greeks have temples and altars to Artemis DictynnaAs though Artemis of the Net; see Callimachus, Hymn iii. 198. and Apollo Delphinios; and that place which the god had chosen for himself the poetHomer, Hymn to Apollo, iii. 393 ff. (as restored by van Herwerden). For Delphinian Apollo see lines 495 f. says was settled by Cretans under the guidance of a dolphin. It was not, however, the god who changed his shape and swam in front of the expedition, as tellers of tales relate; instead, he sent a dolphin to guide the men and bring them to Cirrha.The port of Delphi. They also relate that Soteles and Dionysius, the men sent by Ptolemy Soter Cf. Mor. 361 f; Tacitus, Histories, iv. 83-84. to Sinope to bring back Serapis, were driven against their will by a violent wind out of their course beyond Malea, with the Peloponnesus on their right. When they were lost and discouraged, a dolphin appeared by the prow and, as it were, invited them to follow and led them into such parts as had safe roadsteads with but a gentle swell until, by conducting and escorting the vessel in this manner, it brought them to Cirrha. Whence it carne about that when they had offered thanksgiving for their safe landing, they carne to see that of the two statues they should take away the one of Pluto, but should merely take an impress of that of Persephone and leave it behind.That is, in Sinope. Well might the god be fond of the music-loving character of the dolphin, Cf. Mor. 162 f; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xi. 137. to which PindarPage 597, ed. Sandys (L.C.L.); frag. 125, line 69-71 ed. Bowra (O.C.T.); frag. 222. 14-17, ed. Turyn. The quotation is found also in Mor. 704 f - 705 a. The lines were partially recovered in Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iii. 408 b (1903); for the critical difficulties see Turyn’s edition. likens himself, saying that he is roused Like a dolphin of the sea Who on the waveless deep of ocean Is moved by the lovely sound of flutes. Yet it is even more likely that its affection for menPliny, Nat. Hist. x. 24. For Dionysus and the pirate-dolphins see the seventh Homeric Hymn and Frazer on Apollodorus, iii. 5. 3 (L.C.L., vol. i, p. 332). renders it dear to the gods; for it is the only creature who loves man for his own sake. The hunting of dolphins is immoral: Oppian, Hal. v. 416 (see the whole passage). Of the land animals, some avoid man altogether, others, the tamest kind, pay court for utilitarian reasons only to those who feed them, as do dogs and horses and elephants to their familiars. Martins take to houses to get what they need, darkness and a minimum of security, but avoid and fear man as a dangerous wild beast. Cf. Mor. 728 a; but see Aelian, De Natura Animal. i. 52; Arrian, Anabasis, i. 25. 8. To the dolphin alone, beyond all others, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage. Though it has no need at all of any man, yet it is a genial friend to all and has helped many. The story of ArionHerodotus, i. 24; Mair on Oppian, Hal. v. 448. In Mor. 161 a ff. the story is told by an eye-witness at the banquet of the Seven Wise Men. is familiar to everyone and widely known; and you, my friend, opportunely put us in mind of the tale of Hesiod, Cf. 969 e supra. But you failed to reach the end of the tale.Homer, Iliad, ix. 56. When you told of the dog, you should not have left out the dolphins, for the information of the dog that barked and rushed with a snarl on the murderers would have been meaningless if the dolphins had not taken up the corpse as it was floating on the sea near the NemeonThe shrine of Zeus at Oeneon in Locris. and zealously passed it from group to group until they put it ashore at Rhium and so made it clear that the man had been stabbed. MyrsilusMüller, Frag. Hist. Graec. iv, p. 459; Jacoby, Frag. d. griech. Hist. ii, frag. 12; cf. Mor. 163 b-d; Athenaeus, 466 c gives as his authority Anticleides. of Lesbos tells the tale of Enalus the Aeolian who was in love with that daughter of Smintheus who, in accordance with the oracle of Amphitrite, was cast into the sea by the Penthilidae, whereupon Enalus himself leaped into the sea and was brought out safe on Lesbos by a dolphin. And the goodwill and friendship of the dolphin for the lad of IasusAelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 15 (cf. viii. 11), tells the story in great detail and with several differences; Cf. also the younger Pliny’s famous letter (ix. 33) on the dolphin of Hippo and the vaguer accounts in Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii. 6; Antigonus, 55; Philo, 67 (p. 132). Gulick on Athenaeus, 606 c-d collects the authorities; see also the dolphin stories in Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 25 ff. and Mair on Oppian, Hal. v. 458; Thompson, Glossary, pp. 54 f. Iasus is a city in Ionian Caris on the gulf of the same name. was thought by reason of its greatness to be true love. For it used to swim and play with him during the day, allowing itself to be touched; and when the boy mounted upon its back, it was not reluctant, but used to carry him with pleasure wherever he directed it to go, while all the inhabitants of Iasus flocked to the shore each time this happened. Once a violent storm of rain and hail occurred and the boy slipped off and was drowned. The dolphin took the body and threw both it and itself together on the land and would not leave until it too had died, thinking it right to share a death for which it imagined that it shared the responsibility. And in memory of this calamity the inhabitants of Iasus have minted their coins with the figure of a boy riding a dolphin.The story has a happier ending in one version found in Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 27: the dolphin dies, but Alexander the Great makes the boy head of the priesthood of Poseidon in Babylon. From this the wild tales about CoeranusAelian, De Natura Animal. viii. 3; Athenaeus, 606 e-f cites from Phylarchus, Book XII (Jacoby, Frag. d. griech. Hist. i, p. 340). There are many other examples of dolphins rescuing people, such as the fragment of Euphorion in Page, Greek Literary Papyri, i, p. 497 (L.C.L.). gained credence. He was a Parian by birth who, at Byzantium, bought a draught of dolphins which had been caught in a net and were in danger of slaughter, and set them all free. A little later he was on a sea voyage in a penteconter, so they say, with fifty pirates aboard; in the strait between Naxos and Paros the ship capsized and all the others were lost, while Coeranus, they relate, because a dolphin sped beneath him and buoyed him up, was put ashore at Sicinus,An island south of Paros. near a cave which is pointed out to this day and bears the name of Coeraneum. Cf. Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus, ii, p. 321 (L.C.L.). It is on this man that Archilochus is said to have written the line Out of fifty, kindly Poseidon left only Coeranus.Edmonds, op. cit. ii, p. 164; Diehl, Anth. Lyrica, i, p. 243. frag. 117. When later he died, his relatives were burning the body near the sea when a large shoal of dolphins appeared off shore as though they were making it plain that they had come for the funeral, and they waited until it was completed.On the grief of dolphins see Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 25, 33. That the shield of Odysseus had a dolphin emblazoned on it, StesichorusEdmonds, Lyra Graeca, ii, p. 66, frag. 71. also has related; and the Zacynthians perpetuate the reason for it, as CritheusNothing whatever is known about this author, whose name may be given incorrectly in our mss. testifies. For when Telemachus was a small boy, so they say, he fell into the deep inshore water and was saved by dolphins who came to his aid and swam with him to the beach; and that was the reason why his father had a dolphin engraved on his ring and emblazoned on his shield, making this requital to the animal. Yet since I began by saying that I would not tell you any tall tales and since, without observing what I was up to, I have now, besides the dolphins, run aground on both Odysseus and Coeranus to a point beyond belief, I lay this penalty upon myself: to conclude here and now.

ARISTOTIMUS.Perhaps rather Heracleon (975 c) or Optatus (965 d). So, gentlemen of the jury, you may now cast your votes. SOCLARUS. As for us, we have for some time held the view of SophoclesNauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 314, frag. 783; Pearson, iii, p. 69, frag. 867.: It is a marvel how of rival sides The strife of tongues welds both so close together. For by combining what you have said against each other, you will together put up a good fight against thoseThe Stoics, as always in this essay. who would deprive animals of reason and understanding.To some critics the ending is suspicious because of its brevity and vagueness; they regard it as added by an ancient editor who could not find the original termination. But the sudden turn at the end may merely indicate that the whole debate is in reality a single argument to prove the thesis that animals do have some degree of rationality (see also the Introduction to this dialogue).

APPENDIX: CLASSIFIED ZOOLOGICAL INDEX A word of caution is needed: Plutarch emphatically was no naturalist. The zoological material is a hodge-podge of misinformation dredged up from various zoological sources, seasoned here and there with personal contributions, which are not necessarily correct. In the original sources, terms for specific types of animals were probably used with considerable precision. It is my impression that Plutarch often had only a vague idea of the meaning of such terms. For example, he consistently uses the specific term for a rock dove, but probably had in mind any type of domestic dove. Similarly, dorcas was used in Greece commonly as a term for the roedeer, but in Asia Minor for the common gazelle. In the original sources the word probably denoted specifically one or the other, depending on where the man lived; but Plutarch may well have used the term vaguely for any type of small deer, including gazelles and antelopes. Alfred C. Andrews 1. Mammals Αἴλουρος: wild cat of Egypt (Felis ocreata Gm.) and of Europe (F. silvestris Schreb.) and domestic form (F. domestica Briss.). Αἴξ: domestic goat, Capra hircus L. Ἀλώπηξ: fox, esp. Vulpes vulgaris Flem. Ἄρκτος: bear, more esp. the European brown bear, Ursus arctos L. Βοῦς: domestic ox, Bos taurus L. Γαλέη (γαλῆ): the weasel (Putorius vulgaris Cuv.), and such similar animals as the marten (Martes sp.) and the polecat or foumart (Mustela putorius L.). Δασύρους: hare (see Λαγωός). Δελφίς: dolphin, esp. Delphinus delphis L. Δορκάς: in Greece, usually a term for the roedeer, Capreolus capreolus L.; in Asia Minor, usually a term for the common gazelle, Gazella dorcas L. *Ἔλαφος: in Greece, usually a term for the red-deer, Cervus elaphus L.; in Ionia, usually a term for the fallow-deer, C. dama L. ᾽Ελέφας: elephant, Elephas indicus L. and Ε. africanus Blumenb. Ἔριφος: usually a kid (see Αἴξ); sometimes a very young lamb (see Ὄϊς). ᾽Εχῖνος (χερσαῖος): common hedgehog, Erinaceus europaeus L. Ἡμίονος: mule, usually by mare and he-ass, sometimes by stallion and she-ass; in Syria, a term for the wild ass (Asinus onager Sm.) or the dschigetai (A. hemionus Sm.). Ἵππος: horse, Caballus caballus L. Ἵππος ποτάμιος: hippopotamus, Hippopotamus amphibius L. Ἰχνεύμων: ichneumon, Herpestes ichneumon L. Κάμηλος: the Bactrian camel, Camelus bactrianus L., and the Arabian camel or dromedary, C. dromedarius L. Κάπρος: wild boar, mostly Sus scrofa ferus Rütimeyer. Κῆτος: in Plutarch usually whale, as in 980 F. See also Κῆτος under FISHES. Κριός: ram (see Ὀϊς). Κύων: dog, Canis familiaris L. Λαγωός: hare, esp. the common European hare (Lepus europaeus Pall.), to a lesser degree the variable hare (L. timidus L.). Λέων: lion, Felis leo L. Λύνξ: lynx, Lynx lynx L.; caracal, Lynx caracal Güld. Λύκος: wolf, Canis lupus L. Ὄϊς: domestic sheep, Ovis aries L. Ὄνος: domestic ass, Asinus domesticus Sm. Ὀρεύς: mule (see Ἡμίονος). Ὄρυξ: chiefly the scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx leucoryx Pall.) and the straight-horned oryx (O. beisa Rüppel). Πάρδαλις: panther or leopard, Felis pardus antiquorum Smith. Πρόβατον: sheep (see Ὄϊς). Σύς: pig, Sus scrofa domesticus Rütimeyer. Ταῦρος: bull (see Βοῦς). Τίγρις: tiger, Felis tigris L. Φώην: seal, including the common seal (Phoca vitulina L.) and the monk seal (P. monachus Herm.). 2. Birds Ἀετός: eagle, esp. Aquila sp. Ἀηδών: nightingale, chiefly Luscinia megarhyncha Brehm. Ἀλεκτρυών: domestic cock, Gallus domesticus Briss. Ἀλκυών: kingfisher, Alcedo ispida L. Γέρανος: common crane, Grus grus L. Ἐρωδιός: heron, including the common heron (Ardea cinerea L.), the greater European egret (Herodias alba Gray), the lesser European egret (Garzetta garzetta L.), and the bittern (Botaurus stellaris L.). Ἶβις: ibis, including the sacred white ibis (Ibis aethiopica Ill.) and the black ibis (Plegades falcinellus Kaup.). Ἱεραξ: smaller hawks and falcons generically. Ἰκτῖνος: kite, including the common kite (Milvus ictinus Sav.) and the black kite (Μ. ater Gm.). Κίττα: jay, Garrulus glandarius L.; sometimes the magpie, Pica caudata L. Κολοιός: jackdaw, Corvus monedula L. Κόραξ: raven, Corvus corax L. Κορώνη: crow (Corvus corone L.) and hooded crow (C. cornix L.). Κύκνος: swan, Cygnus olor Gra. and C. musicus Bkst. Μέροψ: bee-eater, Merops apiaster L. Πελαργός: stork, esp. Ciconia alba L. Πέρδιξ: partridge, esp. the Greek partridge, Alectoris graeca Kaup; in Italy also the red-legged partridge, A. rufa Kaup. Περιστερά: rock-dove, Columba livia L.; domestic rock-dove, C. livia domestica L. Τροχίλος: Egyptian plover, Pluvianus aegyptius Viell.; elsewhere also the common European wren, Troglodytes troglodytes L. Χελιδών: swallow, including the chimney swallow (Chelidon rustica L.) and the house-martin (Chelidon urbica Boie). Χήν: as a wild type, the gray or graylag goose (Anser cinereus Meyer) and the bean goose (Anser segetum Bonn.), often the domestic type of the gray goose. Ψάρ: starling, Sturnus vulgaris L. Ψιττακός: parrot, perhaps esp. Psittacus alexandri L. and P. torquatus Gm. Ὠτίς: bustard, Otis tarda L. Ὦτος: a horned or eared owl, not more specifically identifiable. 3. REPTILES AND AMPHIBIA Βάτραχος: frog, Rana sp. and allied genera. Κροκόδειλος: Nile crocodile, Crocodilus niloticus Laur. Ὄφις: serpent generically. Χαμαιλέων: the African chameleon, Chameleo vulgaris Latr. Χελώνη (χερσαία): tortoise, Testudo graeca L. and Τ. marginata Schoepff.; (θαλαττία): sea-turtle, Thalassochelys corticata Rondel. 4. FISHES Ἁλιεύς: fishing-frog, Lophius piscatorius L. Ἀλώπηξ: fox-shark, Alopecias vulpes Bp. Ἀμία: bonito, more esp. the pelamid or belted bonito, Sarda sarda Cuv., to a lesser degree the bonito or striped-bellied tunny, Katsuwonus pelamis Kish. Ἀνθίας: in 977 c probably the Mediterranean barbier, Serranus anthias C. V.; sometimes spoken of as a much larger fish, then of uncertain identity. Βελόνη: usually the pipefish (Syngnathus rubescens Risso and S. acus L.) and the garfish (Belone imperialis Vincig. and Strongylura acus Lacép.); in 983 C indeterminable. Γαλεός: generic term for sharks and dogfishes, more esp. Scyllium canicula Cuv., S. catulus Cuv., and Mustelus vulgaris Müll. Γαλῆ: principally the hake and rockling, Phycis sp. and Motella sp. Γόγγρος: conger-eel, Conger vulgaris Cuv. Ἔλλοψ: probably mostly the common sturgeon, Acipenser sturio L. Ἡγεμών: usually the pilot-fish, Naucrates ductor Cuv.; in 980 F apparently also one of the globe-fishes, such as Diodon hystrix L. Θρίσσα: probably the shad, Alosa vulgaris C. V., or the sardinelle, Sardinella aurita C. V. Θύννος: tunny, mostly the common tunny, Thunnus thynnus L. Ἱερός: sacred, an epithet applied to several fish, more especially the Ἀμθίας, the gilthead, the sturgeon, the dolphin, and the pilotfish. Ἰουλίς: rainbow-wrasse, Coris iulis Gth. Κεστρεύς: the gray mullet in general, sometimes the common gray mullet, Mugil capito Cuv., in particular. Κῆτος: sometimes a large sea monster (as in 981 D), in other authors sometimes a huge fish (such as a large tunny), but more commonly, and usually in Plutarch, a whale. Κολίας: coly-mackerel, Pneumatophorus colias Gm. Κωβιός: goby, chiefly the black goby, Gobius niger L. Λάβραξ: sea-bass, Labrax lupus Cuv. Μορμύρος: type of sea bream, the mormyrus, Pagellus mormyrus C. V. Μύραινα: moray or murry, Muraena helena L. Νάρκη: torpedo or electric ray, esp. Torpedo marmorata Risso, less commonly Τ. narce Nardo and Τ. hebetans Löwe. Περαίας: a type of gray mullet (Mugil sp.). Πηλαμύς: year-old tunny (see Θύννος). Σαργός: sargue, esp. Sargus vulgaris Geoff. Σκάρος: parrot-fish, Scarus cretensis C. V. Σκορίος: sculpin, Scorpaena scrofa L. and S. porcus L. Τρίγλα: the red or plain surmullet, Mullus barbatus L., and the striped or common surmullet, Μ. surmuletus L. Φυκίς: a wrasse, probably specifically Crenilabrus pavo C. V. Χρυσωρός: gilthead, Chrysophrys aurata C. V. 5. MOLLUSCS Κόγχη: mussels in general, including oysters. Λαγωός (θαλάττιος): sea-hare, Aplysia depilans L. Ὄστρεον: sometimes a generic term for mussels; more commonly a specific term for the common European oyster, Ostrea edulis L.; occasionally a term for other species of oyster, such as O. lamellosa Brocchi and O. cristata Lam. Πίννη: pinna, especially Pinna nobilis L.; but also P. rudis L., P. rotundata L., and P. pectinata L. Πολύπους: octopus, Octopus vulgaris Lam. Πορφύρα: purplefish, Murex trunculus L., Μ. brandaris L., and Thais haemastoma Lam. Σηπία: cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis L. 6. CRUSTACEA Κάραβος: rock lobster, Palinurus vulgaris Latr. Καρκίνος: crab, Decapoda brachyura Lam. Πάγουρος: probably the common edible crab, Cancer pagurus L. Πιννοτήρης: pinna-guard, Pinnoteres veterum L. Σπογγοτήρης: sponge-guard, Typton spongicola Costa. 7. INSECTS AND SPIDERS Ἀράχνης: spider (class Arachnoidea, order Araneida). Μέλιττα: bee generically, but mostly domestic honeybee, Apis mellifera L. Μύρμηξ: ant generically (family Formicidae). Τέττιξ: cicada, esp. Cicada plebeia Scop, and C. orni L. 8. ECHINODERMS Ἀστήρ: starfish generically, Asterias sp. Ἐχῖνος (θαλάττιος): sea-urchin, especially Echinus esculentus Lam. and Strongylocentrotus lividus Brdt. 9. PORIFERA Σπόγγος: sponge, chiefly Euspongia officinalis Bronn. and Hippospongia equina Schmidt.