De sollertia animalium

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 Pindar[*](Frag. 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

1. To excuse oneself when combat is offered
2. Has consigned valour to deep obscurity;

for we have much leisure[*](Perhaps 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 it[*](Either 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 Domitius[*](L. 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 Ptolemy[*](Aelian, 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.