Translated by H.Rackham (1952), with some minor alterations. Click on the L symbols to go to the Latin text of each chapter.
{73.} L [189] The liver is on the right hand side ; it contains what is called the head of the internal organs, which varies a great deal. Marcus Marcellus, near the time of his death, when he was killed by Hannibal, found the liver missing among the organs, but on the following day a double liver was discovered. The liver was also missing with Gaius Marius when he offered sacrifice at Utica, and also with the Emperor Gaius on January 1 at the commencement of his consulship in the year of his murder { 41 A.D. }, and with his successor Claudius in the month in which he was poisoned. [190] When the deified Augustus was sacrificing at Spoletum on the first day he was in power the livers of six victims were found with the bottom of their tissue folded back inward, and this was interpreted to mean that he would double his power within a year. It is also of gloomy omen when the head of the liver is accidentally cut - except at a period of trouble and alarm, when it removes anxieties. Hares with two livers are found in the district of Briletum and Tharne and in the Chersonese by the Propontis, and surprising to say, when the animals are moved to another place one of the two livers disappears.
{74.} L [191] The liver also contains the gall-bladder, but not all animals possess one. At Chalcis in Euboea the cattle have none, while at Naxos they have a very large double one, so that both facts seem portentous to a stranger. Horses, mules, asses, stags, wild goats, boars, camels and dolphins have not got one ; some mice have. Among human beings few lack one ; those who do are exceptionally strong in health and long-lived. [192] Some think that the horse has a gall-bladder not indeed in the liver but in the belly, and that the stag has one in the tail or in the bowels, and that consequently they have such a bitter flavour that dogs will not touch them. But as a matter of fact it is only excrement, and because of this the substance of this part also contains the worst portion of the blood. Unquestionably only sanguineous animals possess a liver. The liver receives the blood from the heart with which it is connected, and passes it into the veins.
{75.} L [193] But with a human being black gall contains the cause of insanity, and when it is all excreted death follows. Hence the reproach made against a man's character under the term 'bile' : so powerful a poison is contained in this part when it spreads to the mind. Moreover when it is diffused allover the body it takes away the colour even of the eyes, and indeed, when excreted, even from bronze vessels, which turn black when touched by it - so that nobody need be surprised that snakes' gall is poison. (Animals in the Pontus that eat wormwood are free from bile.) [194] Again the gall-bladder is connected with the kidneys and only on one side with the intestine in ravens, quails and pheasants, and in some only with the intestine, as in pigeons, the hawk, lampreys ; and with a few birds it is in the liver. With snakes it is proportionally extremely copious, and so with fishes. [195] But with birds it usually fills the whole intestine, as with the hawk and kite ; moreover it is also in the liver, as in the case of all the large marine animals. Indeed in the case of seals it is in high repute for many purposes as well. From bulls' gall a golden colour is extracted. The augurs have consecrated the gall to Neptune and the power of the watery element, and the deified Augustus found a double gall-bladder on the day on which he won the battle of Actium.
{76.} L [196] It is said that the filaments in the tiny livers of mice correspond with the number of the days of the moon in the month, and are found to correspond with its degree of light ; and also that they grow larger with winter. Rabbits are often found in Baetica with a double set of internal organs. One of the two filaments of toads is not touched by ants, because of their poison, as is believed. The liver is extremely capable of enduring age, and has been proved by instances of sieges to last a hundred years.
{77.} L [197] Snakes and lizards have long internal organs. There is a record that when a person at Volaterrae named Caecina was performing a sacrifice, some snakes darted out from the internal organs of the victim - a joyful portent ; and indeed it would seem nothing incredible to those considering that on the day on which King Pyrrhus died the heads of his victims when cut off crawled about licking up their own blood. In man the chief internal organs are separated from the lower part of the viscera by a membrane which is called the praecordia (diaphragm), because it is stretched prae {"in front of"} the cor {"heart"} : the Greek word for it is phrenes. [198] Indeed provident Nature has enclosed all the principal internal organs with special membranes serving as sheaths ; but in the case of this membrane a special cause also was the proximity of the bowels, to prevent the food from pressing down on the vital principle. To this membrane unquestionably is due the subtlety of the intellect ; it consequently has no flesh, but is of a spare sinewy substance. In it also is the chief seat of merriment, a fact that is gathered chiefly from tickling the arm-pits to which it rises, as nowhere else is the human skin thinner, and consequently the pleasure of scratching is closest there. On this account there have been cases in battle and in gladiatorial shows of death caused by piercing the diaphragm that has been accompanied by laughter.
{78.} L [199] In creatures possessing a stomach the abdomen is below it ; it is single in the other species but double in the ruminants. Species without blood have no stomach, because in some, for instance the cuttle-fish and the polypus, the intestine beginning at the mouth bends back to the same point. In man the abdomen is connected with the bottom of the stomach, like the dog's. These are the only animals in which it is narrower at the lower part, and consequently they are the only ones that vomit, because when the abdomen is full this narrowness prevents the food from passing, which cannot happen to those in which the roomy laxity of the abdomen passes the food on to the lower parts.
{79.} L [200] From this abdomen start in the sheep and in man the smaller intestines through which the food passes, and in the other species the entrails, from which the roomier intestines pass to the belly, and in the case of man in extremely winding coils. On this account species in which the distance from the belly is longer are greedier for food ; moreover those with a very fat abdomen are less clever. Birds also in some cases have two receptacles, one down which food just eaten passes to the throat, the other into which they pass the food from the throat when digested - e.g. hens, ring-doves, pigeons and partridges. [201] Almost all the other species in most cases have not got this, but make use of a more widely opened gullet, for instance jays, ravens and crows. Some species treat the food in neither manner, but have the abdomen very near ; these are species that have specially long and narrow necks, for instance the sultana-hen. The abdomen of whole-hoofed animals is rough and hard. In that of some land animals the roughness is denticulated, and in that of others it has a latticed bite. Species that are without teeth in both jaws and that do not ruminate digest their food here and pass it down from here into the belly. [202] This in all species is attached at its middle to the navel; in man at its lower part it resembles the belly of a pig; the Greeks call it the colon ; it is the seat of a great cause of pain. In dogs it is extremely narrow, and for this reason they can only relieve it with a violent effort and not without severe pain. The most ravenous animals are those in whom the food passes directly from the abdomen right down the gut ; this is the case with lynxes, and among birds cormorants. [203] The elephant has four abdomens, but its other parts resemble those of pigs ; its lungs are four times as large as those of an ox. Birds have a fleshy and hard abdomen. In the abdomen of swallow chicks there are found white or red coloured pebbles, called swallow-stones ; there are accounts of these in the treatises on magic. Also in the second abdomen of heifers is found a round ball of blackish tufa that weighs nothing; this is thought to be a sovereign remedy for difficulty in child-birth if it has never been allowed to touch the ground.
{80.} L [204] The abdomen and bowels except in the the oviparous species are wrapped in a fat thin caul. To this is attached the spleen on the left side opposite the liver, with which it occasionally changes place, but this constitutes a portent. Some think that oviparous species contain a spleen, and also snakes a rather small one ; this undoubtedly appears to be so in the case of the tortoise, the crocodile, lizards and frogs. It is certain that the goat's-head bird has not got a spleen, nor have the bloodless species. [205] Sometimes it causes a peculiar impediment in running, owing to which runners who have trouble have an operation to reduce it. Also cases are reported of animals living after it has been removed by an incision. There are some who think that this operation deprives a man of the power of laughing, and that inability to control one's laughter is caused by enlargement of the spleen. It is said that in a district in Asia called Scepsis the cattle have extremely small spleens, and that remedies for the spleen have been imported from there.
{81.} L [206] All viviparous quadrupeds have kidneys, but among oviparous ones only the tortoise, which has all the other internal organs also, but, as with man, its kidneys resemble those of the ox, and look like a cluster of several kidneys. But at Briletum and Tharne stags have four kidneys while the species possessing feathers and scales have none. For the rest, they are attached to the top of the loins. In all cases the right kidney is higher, and not so fat, and drier; but with both the fat is discharged out of the middle, except in the seal. Animals accumulate fat most in the kidneys, sheep indeed with fatal results, because the fat solidifies round them. Occasionally stones are found in the kidneys.
{82.} L [207] Nature has surrounded the heart and the vital parts with the chest, a bony structure, but has made it stop at the abdomen which had to be allowed room to increase in size ; no animal has bones round the abdomen. Man alone has a broad chest ; with all the other animals it is keel-shaped, more so with birds, and among them most of all with the aquatic species. Man has eight ribs, pigs ten, horned animals thirteen and serpents thirty.
{83.} L [208] Below the belly in front is the bladder, which occurs in none of the oviparous kinds except the tortoise, in none devoid of lungs filled with blood, and in none without feet. Between the bladder and the belly are the tubes called the groin, stretching to the private parts. The bladder of the wolf contains a stone named syrites ; but in some human beings there continually form terribly painful stones and bristly fibres. The bladder consists of a membrane that when wounded does not form a solid scar ; it is not the same as the one that enfolds the brain or the heart, as there are several kinds of membrane,
{84.} L [209] Women have all the same organs, and in addition, joined to the bladder, a small sac, called from its shape the uterus or womb ; another name for it is 'the parts,' and in the rest of the animals it is called the matrix. This in the viper and the viviparous species is double ; in the oviparous ones it is attached to the diaphragm ; and in women it has two recesses on either side of the flanks, and it causes death whenever it is displaced and interferes with the breathing. [210] It is said that cows when pregnant only carry in the right cavity of the womb, even when carrying twins. Sow's paunch is a better dish after a miscarriage than after a successful delivery ; in the former case it is called 'miscarryings' and in the latter 'farrowings.' That of a sow farrowing for the first time is best, and the contrary with those exhausted with breeding. After farrowing the paunch is a bad colour and lacking in fat, unless the sow was killed the same day ; [211] nor is that of young sows thought much of, except from those farrowing for the first time, and the paunch of old sows is preferable provided they are not quite worn out, and not killed on the actual day of farrowing or the day before or the day after. The paunch next best to miscarryings is that of a sow slaughtered the day after farrowing ; also its paps are the best, provided it has not yet suckled the litter ; the paps of a sow that has had a miscarriage are the worst. In old days people called it sow's abdomen before it got hard, as they used not to slaughter sows when they were with young.
{85.} L [212] Horned animals with teeth in one jaw and those that have pastern-bones in the feet put on fat in the form of suet, but in those with cloven hooves or feet divided into toes, and without horns, it forms grease. This is of a solid substance and when it has cooled off can be broken up, and it is always where the flesh ends ; whereas fat is between the flesh and the skin, and is moist and fluid. Some animals, for instance the hare and the partridge, do not grow fat. All fat animals are more liable to barrenness, in the case of both males and females ; also excessively fat ones get old more quickly. [213] All animals have some fat in the eyes. In all cases the greasy fat has no sensation, because it does not possess arteries or veins ; and in most animals also fatness of condition causes insensitiveness, and it is recorded that because of this pigs have been gnawed by mice while still alive. It is also on record that the son of the ex-consul Lucius Apronius had his fat removed by an operation and relieved his body of unmanageable weight.
{86.} L [214] Marrow also appears to consist of the same substance, being of a red colour in youth and turning white in old age. It is only found in hollow bones, and there is none in the legs of oxen or dogs, in consequence of which when they are fractured the bone does not join again, this being caused by the flow of marrow from a fracture. But the marrow is fat in the animals that contain lard, suety in those with horns, sinewy and only present in the spine in those without bones, like the fish kind ; and bears have none, and the hon a rather small amount in a few of the bones of the thighs, and forelegs, while the other bones are so hard that fire can be struck from them as from a flint. {87.} L [215] Also the animals that do not get fat have hard bones; those of asses are resonant enough to use as flutes. Dolphins being viviparous have bones and not spines, but snakes have spines. Soft aquatic species have no bones, but rings of flesh bound round the body, for instance the two kinds of cuttle-fish. Insects also are said to be equally devoid of bones. The gristly aquatic species have marrow in the spine, and seals have gristle, not bones. [216] Similarly with all that have ears and nostrils that just project these are soft and flexible, nature thus insuring them against fracture. When gristle is burst it does not join up, and when bones are amputated they do not grow again, except the bone between the hoof and the hock in beasts of burden. Human beings grow taller to the age of twenty-one and from then onward fill out ; but more particularly at the period of puberty they are noticed to get free from a sort of impediment to their growth, and especially so in sickness.
{88.} L [217] The sinews starting from the heart, and in the ox actually wrapped round the heart, have a similar nature and explanation, being in all animals attached to the slippery bones and binding together the links of the bodily frame called joints, in some cases by coming between them, in others by surrounding them and in others by passing from one to another, being at one point rounded and at another flattened as the conformation of the joint requires in each case. [218] The sinews also do not join again if cut, and, what is surprising, though extremely painful if wounded cause no pain at all if cut through. Some animals, for instance fishes, have no sinews, as they are held together by their arteries ; although the soft species of the fish genus lack arteries as well. Where there are sinews, the inner ones contract the limbs and the ones on the surface reverse the movement.
{89.} L [219] Between the sinews lie the arteries, which are the passages for the breath, and on these float the veins, which are the channels for the blood. The pulse of the arteries being particularly evident at the extremity of the limbs is usually a sign of diseases ; with remarkable scientific skill it has been reduced by that high priest of medicine, Herophilus, to definite rhythms and metrical rules throughout the periods of life - steady or hurried or slow. This sign has been neglected because of its excessive subtlety, but yet really it supplies a rule for the guidance of life by observation of the pulse-beat, rapid or languid. [220] The arteries have no sensation, for they even are without blood, nor do they all contain the breath of life ; and when they are cut only the part of the body concerned is paralysed. Birds have not got either veins or arteries, nor yet have snakes, tortoises and lizards, and they have only a very small amount of blood.
The veins spread underneath the whole skin, finally ending in very thin threads, and they narrow down into such an extremely minute size that the blood cannot pass through them nor can anything else but the moisture passing out from the blood in innumerable small drops which is called sweat. The junction and meeting point of the veins is at the navel.
{90.} L [221] Creatures whose blood is copious and thick are hot-tempered. The blood of males is darker than that of females, and that of youth than that of old age ; and it is thicker in the lower part of the body. The blood also contains a large proportion of vitality, and when shed it draws the breath with it ; but it has no sense of touch. The animals with denser blood are braver, those with thinner blood wiser, and those with very little blood, or none at all, more timid. [222] The blood of bulls coagulates and hardens most quickly (and consequently is noxious to drink) ; that of boars next quickly, but that of stags and goats and antelopes does not thicken at all. Asses have the thickest blood and man the thinnest. Species with more than four feet have no blood. Fat animals have a smaller supply of blood, because it is used up in the fat. [223] In the human race alone a flux of blood occurs in the males, in some cases at one of the nostrils, in others at both, with some people through the lower organs, with many through the mouth ; it may occur at a fixed period, as recently with a man of praetorian rank named Macrinus Viscus, and every year with the City Prefect Volusius Saturninus, who actually lived to be over 90. This alone of the bodily affections experiences an occasional increase, inasmuch as sacrificial victims bleed more copiously if they have previously drunk.
{91.} L [224] Those animals which we have specified as going into hiding at fixed seasons have not any blood at those periods except quite scanty drops in the neighbourhood of the heart, by a marvellous contrivance of nature, just as in man she causes the blood-supply to alter at the smallest impulses, the blood not only being suffused with less matter by sleep but at each separate state of mind, by shame, anger, and fear, there being various ways of turning pale, and also of blushing - as the blush of anger is different from that of modesty. [225] For it is certain that in fear the blood retreats and is nowhere to be found, and that many creatures do not shed blood when stabbed, which happens only to a human being. For those which we have spoken of { 8.122 } as changing their colour really assume the colour of some other object by a sort of reflexion ; only man actually changes colour in himself. All diseases and death reduce the amount of blood.
{92.} L [226] There are persons who think that subtlety of mind is not due to thinness of the blood, but that animals are more or less brutish owing to their skin and bodily coverings, as for instance molluscs and tortoises ; and that the hides of oxen and bristles of pigs obstruct the thinness of the air when being inhaled, and it is not transmitted pure and liquid ; so also in man, when his skin being thicker or more callous shuts it out - just as if crocodiles did not possess both a hard hide and cunning. {93.} L [227] The skin of the hippopotamus is so thick that it is used for the points of spears, and yet its mind possesses a certain medical ability. The hides of elephants also supply impenetrable bucklers (though nevertheless they are credited with the most outstanding mental subtlety of all quadrupeds) ; and consequently their skin itself is devoid of sensation, especially in the head. It does not heal up when wounded in any place where there is only skin and no flesh, as in the cheek and eyelid.
{94.} L [228] Viviparous species have bristles, but oviparous ones have feathers or scales, or shells like tortoises, or bare skin like snakes. Feathers in all cases have hollow stalks ; when cut off they do not grow again, but when plucked out others grow in their place. Insects use fragile membranes to fly with, flying-fish fly over the sea with damp membranes and bats among houses with dry ones ; the wings of bats also have joints.
[229] Shaggy hair grows out of a thick skin, whereas women have finer hair; horses have abundant hair in the mane, lions on the shoulders, rabbits on the cheeks inside and also under the feet, hair in both places being also recorded in the case of the hare by Trogus, who infers from this example that among human beings also the hairy ones are more licentious : the hare is the shaggiest animal there is. [230] Man alone grows hair on the private parts, and if this does not occur is sterile, this applying to both sexes. Human beings have some hair at birth and grow some later; the latter does not grow with men who have been castrated, though the hair they had at birth does not fall off; just as women also do not much lose their hair, although there have been cases of women afflicted with baldness, and also with down on the face, when menstruation has ceased. With some men the hair that comes after birth does not grow readily. Four-footed animals shed their hair and grow it again every year. [231] With men the hair of the head grows fastest and next that of the beard. When the hair is cut it does not grow again from the incision, as plants and all other things do, but continues growing from the root. The hair grows longer in some diseases, especially consumption, and in old age too, and also on the bodies of the dead. Licentious people loose the hair they had at birth earlier and grow fresh hair more quickly. With four-footed animals the hair gets thicker with age and the wool thinner. Four-footed animals have shaggy backs and bare bellies.
Boiling oxhide produces glue; bulls hide makes the best.
{95.} L [232] Man is the only species in which the male has teats ; with the rest of the animals there are only the marks of teats. But with the females also only those have teats on the breast that are able to lift their offspring up to them. No oviparous species has teats ; and only the viviparous have milk. Among flying species only the bat has milk, as I think the story about screech-owls, that they drop milk from their teats into the mouths of babies, is a fabrication. It is an acknowledged fact that even in old days the screech-owl was one of the creatures under a curse, but what particular bird is meant I believe to be uncertain.
[233] With asses the teats are painful after foaling, and consequently they refuse to suckle their foals after five months, whereas mares give suck almost a whole year. Whole-hoofed species that never have more than two foals all have two dugs, and these always between the thighs. Animals with cloven feet and horns have the dugs in the same place, cows having four and sheep and goats two. Those that bear large litters and that have toes on the feet have more dugs, and these in a double row the whole length of the belly - for instance swine, of which the good breeds have twelve dugs and the common ones two less ; similarly with dogs. Some species have four dugs in the middle of the belly, for instance leopards, others two, for instance lionesses. The elephant has only two dugs beneath the shoulders and not on the breast but close to it, concealed under the shoulder-blades. None of the species with toes have dugs beneath the thighs. [234] Sows give their first dugs to the pigs born first in each litter, these being the dugs nearest to their throats, and each pig in the litter knows its own dug in the order in which it was born, and gets its food from that one and not at another. If its nurseling is taken away from it the dug at once goes dry and shrivels up, whereas if one out of the whole litter is left the dug that had been assigned to it at birth alone hangs down and does service. [235] She-bears carry four dugs. Dolphins only have two nipples at the bottom of the belly, which are not prominent and project slightly sideways ; and the dolphin is the only animal that gives suck while in motion. But whales and seals also suckle their young.
{96.} L [236] A woman's milk produced before the seventh month is of no use, but from that month, when the embryo is alive, it is healthy. With the females of most species milk flows from the whole of the dugs and even from the fold of the shoulder-blades. Camels have milk until they are in foal again; camel's milk is thought to be most agreeable if three parts of water are added to one of milk. A cow does not have milk before calving ; and after the first calving there are always beestings, which condense into a sort of foam unless water is mixed with them. [237] Asses in foal begin to give milk at once. Where the pasture is rich it is fatal for their foals to have tasted their mothers' milk in the two days after birth ; the name for the illness is beestings-fever. Cheese is not made from species with teeth in both jaws, as their milk does not curdle. Camels' milk is the thinnest and mares' milk the next thin ; asses' milk is thickest, so that it is used as a substitute for rennet. [238] Asses' milk is actually thought to contribute something to the whiteness in women's skin ; at all events Domitius Nero's wife Poppaea used to drag five hundred she asses with foals about with her everywhere and actually soaked her whole body in a bath-tub with ass's milk, believing that it also smoothed out wrinkles. All milk is made thicker by fire and turned into whey by cold. Cow's milk makes more cheese than goat's milk, almost as much again from the same quantity. Animals with more than four dugs are not serviceable for cheese, and those with two are better.
[239] The curds of the roebuck, hare and goat are praised, but that of the rabbit is the best, and is even a cure for diarrhoea - the rabbit is the only animal with teeth in both jaws that has this property. It is remarkable that the foreign races that live on milk for so many centuries have not known or have despised the blessing of cheese, at most condensing their milk into agreeable sour curds and fat butter. Butter is a foam of milk of thicker and stickier substance than what is called whey ; it must be added that it possesses the quality of oil and is used for anointing by all foreigners and by ourselves in the case of children.
{97.} L [240] Of cheese from the provinces the most highly praised at Rome, where the good things of all nations are estimated at first hand, is that of the district of Nemausus, coming from the villages of Lesura and Gabalicus ; but it only wins approval for a short time and when fresh. The Alps prove the value of their pastures by two kinds of cheese : the Dalmatian Mountains send the Docleate and the Ceutronian send the Vatusic. [241] A larger number belong to the Apennines : these send Coebanum cheese from Liguria, chiefly made of sheep's milk, Sassinate cheese from Umbria, and Luna cheese from the borderland of Etruria and Liguria - this cheese is remarkable for its size, in fact it is actually made up to the weight of 1000 pounds the cheese ; but nearest to Rome is the Vestinian, and the kind from the Caedician Plain is the most approved. Herds of goats also have their special reputation for cheese, in the case of fresh cheese especially when smoke increases its flavour, as with the supremely desirable cheese made in the city itself; for the cheese of the Gallic goats always has a strong medicinal taste. But of cheeses from overseas the Bithynian is quite famous. [242] That pastures contain salt, even where it is not visible, is chiefly detected from the fact that all cheese as it gets old turns saltish, just as cheeses steeped in vinegar and thyme undoubtedly return to their original fresh flavour. It is recorded that Zoroaster in the desert lived for twenty years on cheese that had been so treated as not to be affected by age.
{98.} L [243] Man is the only land two-footed animal, and the only one that has a throat, shoulders instead of forequarters like the others, and elbows. In animals possessing hands, the hands only have flesh inside, the outside consisting of sinews and skin.
{99.} L [244] Some people have six fingers on each hand. It has come down to us that the two daughters of a man of patrician family named Marcus Coranius were called Sedigitae {"Six-Fingers"} on this account, and that Volcatius Sedigitus was distinguished in poetry. The human fingers have three joints and the thumb two, and it bends in the opposite direction to all the fingers, stretching out by itself on a slant, and it is thicker than the others. The thumb is equal to the smallest finger in length, and two of the rest are equal to one another, between them the middle finger extending longest. The four-footed animals that live by plunder have five toes on the front feet and four on the others. [245] Lions, wolves, dogs and the leopard have five claws on the hind feet as well, with the one next the joint of the leg hanging down ; the other species, which are smaller, have five toes also.
Not all people's arms are a pair; it is known that a Thracian gladiator named Studiosus in Gaius Caesar's training-school had his right arm longer than his left.
Some animals use the service of their front feet as hands, and sit moving their food to their mouth with them, for instance squirrels. {100.} L [246] In fact the monkey tribes have a perfect imitation of a human being in their face, nostrils, ears and eyelashes - they are the only four-footed animals with eyelashes - on the lower lid as well, also paps on the breast, and arms and legs bending similarly in opposite directions, and nails on their hands, and fingers, and a longer middle finger. They differ a little from human beings in their feet, for these are very long like their hands, but make a foot-print like the palm of a hand. They also have a thumb and knuckles like a human being; and besides a genital organ, and this in the males only, they also have all internal organs to pattern.
{101.} L [247] It is believed that nails are the extremities at the end of sinews. All creatures have nails that also have fingers, but in the monkey they overlap like tiles, whereas in man they are broad (and they continue to grow after a man is dead) ; and they are crooked in beasts of prey but straight in the other animals, for instance dogs, excepting the nail that in most species hangs downward from the leg. [248] All animals with feet have toes, except the elephant ; for the elephants toes are unshaped and though five in number yet undivided and only slightly separated, and resembling hooves, not nails, and the fore feet are larger, the joints of the hind feet being short, and also an elephant's knees bend inward like a man's, whereas the other animals bend the knees of the hind legs in the opposite direction to those of the forelegs ; for viviparous animals bend their knees in front of them and the joints of the hocks backward.
{102.} L [249] In man the knees and elbows bend in opposite directions, and the same is the case with bears and the monkey tribe, which are consequently not at all swift. In the oviparous quadrupeds, the crocodile and the lizards, the front knees curve backward and the hind knees forward, but these species have legs that bend like the human thumb ; and so also have the multipedes, except the hindmost legs of the species that jump. Birds curve their wings forward like the front legs of quadrupeds but their thigh backward.
{103.} L [250] The knees of a human being also possess a sort of religious sanctity in the usage of the nations. Suppliants touch the knees and stretch out their hands towards them and pray at them as at altars, perhaps because they contain a certain vital principle. For in the actual joint of each knee, right and left, on the front side there is a sort of twin hollow cavity, the piercing of which, as of the throat, causes the breath to flow away. There is a religious sanctity belonging to other parts also, for instance in the right hand : kisses are imprinted on the back of it, and it is stretched out in giving a pledge. [251] It was a custom with the Greeks in early days to touch the chin in entreaty. The memory is seated in the lobe of the ear, the place that we touch in calling a person to witness ; similarly behind the right ear is the seat of Nemesis (a goddess that even on the Capitol has not found a Latin name), and to it we apply the third finger after touching our mouths, the mouth being the place where we locate pardon from the gods for our utterances.
{104.} L [252] Varicose veins in the legs occur only in a man but rarely in a woman. Oppius records that Gaius Marius who was seven times consul was the only man who underwent an operation for the removal of varicose veins without lying down.
{105.} L [253] All animals start walking with the right foot and he down on the left side. Whereas the other animals walk as they like, only the lion and the camel pace with one foot after the other, that is with the left foot not passing but following the right foot. Human beings have the largest feet; the females of all species have more slender feet; man alone has calves and legs that are fleshy. We find it stated in the authorities that a certain person in Egypt had no calves. Man alone has an arched sole to the foot (with some exceptions - [254] a deformity that is the origin of the surnames Plancus {"Flatfoot"}, Plautus {"Broadfoot"}, Pansa {"Splayfoot"}, Scaurus {"Swellfoot"}, just as from the legs come the names Varus {"Knock-knee"}, Vatia {"Bowleg"}, Vatinius {"Bandyleg"}, deformities that also occur in animals). Some animals without horns have solid hooves : consequently in place of horns a kick of the hoof is their weapon. And the same animals have no pastern-bone, but those with cloven hooves have one. Pastern-bones are also lacking in animals having toes, and no animal has them in the forefeet. The camel's pastern-bones resemble those of the ox but are a little smaller ; for the camel's foot is divided in two by a very small cleft, and is fleshy at the tread like a bear's, for which reason a camel's feet are liable to split on too long a journey without shoeing.
{106.} L [255] Only with animals of the draught kind do the hooves grow again. In some places in Illyria pigs have solid hooves. Horned animals mostly have cloven hooves. No species has both solid hooves and two horns ; the only animal with one horn is the rhinoceros, and the only one with one horn and cloven hooves the antelope. The rhinoceros is the only solid-hoofed animal that has pastern-bones, for pigs are thought to belong to both classes, and consequently their pastern-bones are mis-shapen. Persons who have thought that a human being has pastern-bones have been easily refuted. Of the animals with toes only the lynx has something resembling a pastern-bone, and the lion a still more twisted one. But the true pastern-bone is at the ankle-joint, projecting with a hollow bulge and attached with a ligature onto the joint.
{107.} L [256] Some birds have toes, others are web footed, and others intermediate, with separate toes but also broad feet ; but all have four toes, three in front and one at the heel - the latter however absent in some long-legged species ; the wry-neck alone has two toes on either side of the foot. The same bird has a tongue like a snake's which it stretches out a long way, and it turns its neck round towards its back; it has large claws like a jay's. [257] Some of the heavier birds, though none of those with crooked talons, have spurs added on the legs. The long-legged birds fly with their legs extended towards their tail, but the short-legged ones draw them into their middle. Those who say that there is no bird without feet assert that black martins have specially short feet, and also the Alpine swift, a bird that is very rarely seen. Even snakes with the feet of geese have been seen before now.
{108.} L [258] The insects with hard eyes have the front feet longer, so that they may occasionally rub their eyes with their feet, as we observe in house-flies. Insects with long hind feet leap, for instance locusts. But all these have six feet. Some spiders have two very long feet in addition. Each foot has two joints. We have said { 9.83 } that some marine species also have eight feet, octopuses, cuttle-fish of both varieties, and crabs, which move their fore-feet in the opposite direction to the others and their hind-feet in a circle or slantwise ; they are also the only animals with feet of a rounded shape. [259] All the other species have two guiding feet, only crabs have four. Land species that exceed this number of feet, as most worms, have not less than twelve, and some as many as a hundred. No kind has an odd number of feet.
[260] In the species with solid feet the legs are of the proper size at birth, afterwards more truly stretching out than growing. Consequently in infancy they scratch their ears with their hind feet, which when older they are unable to do, because length of time increases the size of only the surface of their bodies. For this reason at the early stages they can only feed by bending their knees, and this goes on till their neck reaches full growth.
There is a dwarf kind in all species of animals, and even among birds.
{109.} L [261] We have already specified { 10.173 } the species o{ which the males have genital organs behind them. These organs are bony in wolves, foxes, weasels and ferrets, which also furnish sovereign remedies for stone in man. In the bear too it is said, these organs become horny as soon as the animal dies. The eastern peoples think that this organ in the camel makes a most reliable bowstring. There are also certain racial distinctions in connexion with it, and even varieties of ritual, the Galli, priests of the Mother of the Gods, practising amputation within the limits of injury. [262] On the other hand in a few women there is a curious resemblance to the male organ, as there is in hermaphrodites of either sex, a thing that I believe first occurred with the class of quadrupeds also in the principate of Nero : at all events Nero used to show off a team of hermaphrodite mares, that he had found in district of the Treveri in Gaul, harnessed to his chariot, apparently deeming it a very remarkable spectacle to see the Emperor of the World riding in a miraculous carriage.
{110.} L [263] The testicles in sheep and oxen hang down against the legs, but in pigs they are closely knit to the body. In the dolphin they are very long, and stowed away in the lower part of the belly, and in the elephant also they are concealed. In oviparous creatures they are attached to the loins on the inside, these animals being very rapid in copulation. Fishes and snakes have no testicles, but instead of them two passages from the kidneys to the genitals. Buzzards have three. In man only they may be crushed owing to an injury or from natural causes, and this forms a third class, in distinction from hermaphrodites and eunuchs, the impotent. In every species except leopards and bears the males are the stronger.
{111.} L [264] Almost all species except man and monkeys, both the viviparous and the oviparous, have tails corresponding to the requirements of their bodies, bare with the hairy species, like boars, small with the shaggy ones, like bears, very long with the bristly, like horses. With lizards and snakes when cut off they grow again. The tails of fishes steer their winding courses after the manner of a rudder, and even serve to propel them like a sort of oar by being moved to the right and left. Actual cases of two tails are found in lizards. [265] Oxen's tails have a very long stem, with a tuft at the end, and in asses it is longer than in horses, but it is bristly in beasts of burden. A lion's tail is shaggy at the end, as with oxen and shrew-mice, but not so with leopards; foxes and wolves have a hairy tail, as have sheep, with which it is longer. Pigs curl the tail, dogs of low breeds keep it between their legs.
{112.} L [266] Aristotle thinks that only animals with lungs and windpipe, that is those that breathe, possess a voice ; and that consequently even insects make a sound, but have not a voice, the breath passing inside them and making a sound when shut up there, and that some, as bees, give out a buzz, others, as grasshoppers, a brief hiss, because the breath is received in two hollows under the chest and encountering a movable membrane inside makes a sound by rubbing against it. He thinks that flies, bees and other similar creatures begin and cease to give an audible sound when they begin and cease to fly, as the sound is caused by friction and by the air inside them, not by breathing ; and that locusts make a sound by rubbing their wings against their thighs. [267] It is indeed believed that among aquatic creatures scallops similarly make a rushing sound when they fly, but that shell-fish and crustaceans have no voice nor sound of any kind. But the other fishes, although they lack lungs and windpipe, are not entirely devoid of any sound at all - people advance the quibble that their hiss is made with the teeth - and the fish in the river Achelous called the boar-fish has a grunt, and so have others about which we have spoken { 9.70 }. Oviparous species have a hiss - snakes a long one, tortoises an abrupt one. Frogs have a special kind of voice, as has been said, unless in their case also we are to allow some uncertainty, because 'voice' means a sound formed in the mouth, not in the chest. Still in the case of frogs the nature of the localities also makes a great deal of difference : the frogs in Macedonia are reported to be dumb, and also the boars. [268] Among birds the smaller ones are more talkative, and particularly at the mating season. Some birds, e.g. quails, give a cry when fighting, others, e.g. partridges, before a fight, others, e.g. domestic fowls, when they have won. With the latter the cocks have a crow of their own, but with other birds, for instance the nightingale class, the hens also have the same note. Some birds sing all the year, some at certain seasons, as has been said in dealing with the species separately. [269] The elephant squeezes out a sound like a sneeze from its actual mouth, not through the nostrils, but through the nostrils it emits a harsh trumpet sound. In oxen alone the lowing of the females is louder, but in every other kind of animal the females' voice is not so loud as that of the males, even (in the case of the human race) those that have been castrated. [270] The infant gives no sound at birth until it emerges entirely from the womb. It begins to talk when a year old ; but Croesus had a son who spoke at six months and while still at the rattle stage, a portent that brought the whole of that realm to downfall. Infants that began to speak quicker are slower in starting to walk. The voice gets stronger at fourteen, but it gets weaker in old age ; and it does not alter more often in any other animal.
There are other facts besides about the voice that deserve mention. It is absorbed by the sawdust or sand that is thrown down on the floor in the theatre orchestras, and similarly in a place surrounded by rough walls, and it is also deadened by empty casks. Also it runs along a straight or concave surface of wall and carries words although spoken in a low tone to the other end, if no unevenness of the surface hinders it. [271] In a human being the voice constitutes a large part of the external personality : we recognise a man by it before we see him just in the same way as we recognise him with our eyes ; and there are as many varieties of voices as there are mortals in the world, and a person's voice is as distinctive as his face. This is the source of the difference between all the races and all the languages all over the world, and of all the tunes and modulations and inflexions, but before all things of the power of expressing the thoughts that has made us different from the beasts, and has also caused another distinction between human beings themselves that is as wide as that which separates them from the lower animals.
{113.} L [272] When animals are born with extra limbs these are useless, as is always the case when a human being is born with a sixth finger. In Egypt it was decided to rear a monstrosity, a human being with another pair of eyes at the back of the head, though he could not see with these.
{114.} L [273] For my own part I am surprised that Aristotle not only believed but also published his belief that our bodies contain premonitory signs of our career. But although I think this view unfounded, and not proper to be brought forward without hesitation lest everybody should anxiously seek to find these auguries in himself, nevertheless I will touch upon it, because so great a master of the sciences as Aristotle has not despised it. [274] Well then, he puts down as signs of a short life few teeth, very long fingers, a leaden complexion and an exceptional number of broken creases in the hand ; and on the other side he says that those people are long-lived who have sloping shoulders, one or two long creases in the hand, more than thirty-two teeth, and large ears. Yet he does not, I imagine, note all these attributes present in one person, but separately, trifling things, as I consider them, though nevertheless commonly talked about. In a similar manner among ourselves Trogus, himself also one of the most critical authorities, has added some outward signs of character which I will append in his own words : [275] 'When the forehead is large it indicates that the mind beneath it is sluggish ; people with a small forehead have a nimble mind, those with a round forehead an irascible mind ( as if this were a visible indication of a swollen temper! ) When people's eyebrows are level this signifies that they are gentle, when they are curved at the side of the nose, that they are stern, when bent down at the temples, that they are mockers, when entirely drooping, that they are malevolent and spiteful. [276] If people's eyes are narrow on both sides, this shows them to be malicious in character; eyes that have fleshy corners on the side of the nostrils show a mark of maliciousness ; when the white part of the eyes is extensive it conveys an indication of impudence ; eyes that have a habit of repeatedly closing indicate unreliability. Large ears are a sign of talkativeness and silliness.' Thus far Trogus.
{115.} L [277] The lion's breath contains a severe poison and the bear's is pestilential : no wild animal will touch things that have come in contact with its vapour, and things that it has breathed upon go bad more quickly. Of the remaining species nature has willed that in man alone the breath shall be corrupted in a great many ways, even by bad food and bad teeth, but most of all by old age. The old man cannot feel pain, he lacks all touch and taste, without which there is no sensation at all ; his breath comes and goes, constantly retiring from him, [278] ultimately to depart from him and thereafter to be all that remains out of a human being. The breath was a draught drawn from heaven ; yet for it also a penalty has been invented, so that even that which is the very means of living may not give us joy in life. This applies specially to the Parthian races, even from youth up, because of their lack of discrimination in diet, for even their mouths smell from too much wine. But their upper classes use as a remedy the seed of the citron-tree, which has a remarkably sweet aroma, adding it to their food.
[279] The breath of elephants attracts snakes out of their holes, that of stags scorches them. We have mentioned { 7.13 } the races of men that rid their bodies of snakes' poison by sucking it out. Moreover swine will eat snakes, and to other animals it is poison. The creatures we have designated insects can all be killed by sprinkling with oil ; vultures are killed by ointment (they are attracted by the scent, which repels other birds), and beetles by a rose. A scorpion kills some snakes. In Scythia the natives poison their arrows with vipers' venom and human blood ; this nefarious practice makes a wound incurable - by a light touch it causes instant death.
{116.} L [280] We have said { 10.69 } which animals feed on poison. Some otherwise harmless species after feeding on poisonous things become harmful themselves also. In Pamphylia and the mountain regions of Cilicia people who eat boars when these have devoured a salamander die, for there is no indication in the smell or taste ; also water or wine when a salamander has died in it is fatal, and so is even drinking from a vessel out of which one has drunk ; and similarly with the kind of frog called a toad ! so full of traps is life ! [281] Wasps devour a snake greedily, and by so doing make their sting fatal. And so widely does diet vary that according to Theophrastus in a district where people live on fish the cattle also eat fish, but only live fish.
{117.} L [282] Simple food is the most serviceable for a human being - an accumulation of flavours is unwholesome, and more harmful than sauces. But it is difficult completely to digest all the components contained in articles of food, all that is sharp or rough or unusual or varied, or excessive in quantity and swallowed greedily ; and it is more difficult in summer than in winter, and in old age than in youth. The emetics that have been devised for digestive troubles have a chilling effect on the body, and are extremely bad for the eyes and the teeth.
[283] To digest one's food while asleep is more conducive to corpulence than to strength, and consequently it is thought preferable for men in training to assist their digestion by taking a walk ; at all events food is most thoroughly assimilated while keeping awake. {118.} L Sweet and fat foods and drinking add bulk, whereas dry and lean and cold foods and thirst reduce it. Some animals and also domestic cattle in Africa only drink once in three days. Starvation is not fatal to a human being after even five days ; it is certain that a good many people have actually endured it more than ten days. Man is the only animal liable to the disease of a continuously insatiable appetite.
{119.} L [284] Again some things tasted in a very small quantity allay hunger and thirst and conserve the strength, for instance butter, mare's milk cheese, liquorice root. But anything in excess is exceedingly detrimental, even in all departments of life, but particularly to the body, and it pays better to reduce the quantity of what is in any manner burdensome.
But let us pass on to the remaining branches of Natural Science.
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