De sollertia animalium

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 utterance[*](For 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 Vespasian[*](Vespasian 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.