Res Gestae
Ammianus Marcellinus
Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English translation, Vols. I-III. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; W. Heinemann, 1935-1940 (printing).
Hippopotami also, or river-horses,[*](Cf. Hdt. ii. 71; Diod. Sic. i. 35, 8; Pliny, N.H. viii. 95.) are produced in those parts, animals sagacious beyond all unreasoning beasts, with cloven hooves like horses and short tails. Of their cunning it will suffice for the present to give two instances.
This monster makes its lair amid a thick growth of high and rough reeds and with watchful care looks about for a time of quiet; when free means are offered, it goes forth to feed upon the cornfields. And when it has finally begun to return, gorged with
Also, when by excessive greed it has made its belly bulge and grown sluggish, it rolls its thighs and legs on freshly cut reeds, in order that the blood flowing from its wounded feet may relieve its repletion; and it keeps the injured parts covered with mud until the raw places scab over.
This monstrous and once rare kind of beast the Roman people first saw when Scaurus was aedile, the father of that Scaurus in whose defence Cicero spoke[*](We have fragments of the oration Pro M. Aemilio Scauro, delivered in 54 B.C. The Scaurus who gave magnificent games when aedile was the same as the one defended by Cicero. His father, who was an aedile in 123 B.C. was poor at the time, and nothing is said of his games, while those of his son were famous. Pliny, N.H. viii. 96, says: eum (= hippopotamum) et quinque crocodiles Romae aedilitatis suae ludis M. Scaurus temporario euripo ostendit. It seems natural to apply this to the man defended by Cicero, and temporario euripo may have been a feature of the temporary theatre which he built on that occasion.) and bade the Sardinians also to conform with the authority of the whole world in their judgement of so noble a family; and for many ages after that more hippopotami were often brought to Rome. But now they can nowhere be found, since, as the inhabitants of those regions conjecture, they were forced from weariness of the multitude that hunted them to take refuge in the land of the Blemmyae.[*](A people of Aethiopia, near the cataracts of the Nile.)