De Sollertia Animalium

Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

AUTOBULUS. When Leonidas was asked what sort of man he considered Tyrtaeus to be, he said, "A good poet for whittling down the souls of the young" — meaning that through his verses he instilled in the young an impulse accompanied by spirit and love of honor, so that in battles they had no regard for their own lives. So I am afraid, my friends, that the encomium of hunting that was read yesterday may likewise rouse our young hunting-enthusiasts beyond due measure, so that they will

come to think everything else a mere side issue and nothing at all, and will be swept wholly toward this one pursuit — seeing that I myself seem, though well past the age for it, to have become more passionately affected than before, starting again as if from youth, and to long, like Euripides' Phaedra, "to call out to the hounds as I press close upon the dappled deer": so much did the argument touch me, bringing forward its many persuasive points, one after another. On the Cleverness of Animals. SOCLARUS. What you say is true, Autobulus:

for that man too seemed to me to be reviving his rhetorical powers after a long interval, indulging the young men and sharing their springtime enthusiasm. But I was especially delighted when he set beside his argument the gladiators, as no small proof that the art of hunting deserves praise, because it takes what is by nature in us, or has been learned, as delight in the combats of men against one another by the sword, and turns the greater part of it in this direction instead, providing a clean spectacle, in which skill and daring, informed by intelligence,

are pitted against senseless strength and violence, and it approves the Euripidean line: "Slight indeed is the strength of a man, but by the versatility of his wits he subdues the dread tribes of the sea, of the earth, and of the air." AUTOBULUS. And yet, dear Soclarus, they say that from that very source — hunting — there has come upon men insensibility and savagery, once it has tasted blood and been habituated, in hunts and chases, to

the blood and wounds of animals, not to be troubled by them but to delight in creatures being slaughtered and dying. Then, just as at Athens the first man put to death by the Thirty as a sycophant was said to deserve it, and the second likewise, and the third — and from this, advancing little by little, they went on to lay hands on decent men and in the end did not spare even the best citizens — so too the first man who killed a bear or a wolf won praise for it,

and then some ox or pig that had tasted of meat set out for sacrifice was charged and thought to deserve death; and from there deer, and hares, and gazelles came to be eaten, and in some places they went on to provide the flesh of sheep and dogs, and even of horses. "But the tame goose and the dove, a pet of the household hearth" — Sophocles' phrase — men tear apart and cut to pieces not, like weasels and cats, for food out of hunger, but for pleasure and as a relish,

and in doing so they have strengthened whatever in their nature is bloodthirsty and beastlike and have made it unyielding to pity, while they have blunted the greater part of their gentleness. So too, conversely, the Pythagoreans made gentleness toward beasts into a training exercise for humanity and compassion; for habit is a fearful thing, carrying a man far by means of the feelings that become, little by little, ingrained in him. But somehow, I do not know how, we who have been occupied with arguments have forgotten ourselves, cut off neither from what happened among us yesterday

nor from what is soon likely to happen today. For having declared yesterday, as you know, that in some manner all animals share in thought and reasoning, we provided our hunting-mad young men with a not unrefined or ungraceful contest concerning the intelligence of creatures of sea and of land, which, it seems, we are to judge today — if indeed Aristotimus and Phaedimus stand by their challenges. Of those two, the one, holding that the earth produces animals superior in intelligence, offered himself as advocate for his companions, while the other did the same for the sea. SOCLARUS. They do stand by them, Autobulus, and any moment now they will be here — for I saw them at dawn already marshalling their arguments. But if you wish, before the contest let us take up again among ourselves whatever, of yesterday's discussion, found no occasion to be said,

or was said over wine and in the course of drinking without due seriousness. For it seemed to me that something rather businesslike was, as it were, echoing from the Stoa — the notion that as the immortal is opposed to the mortal, and the imperishable to the perishable, and the incorporeal to body, so likewise, since the rational exists, the irrational must be opposed to it and stand over against it, and this pairing alone should not be left, among so many such correlative pairs, incomplete

and crippled, lacking its counterpart. AUTOBULUS. But who, dear Soclarus, would think it fitting, granted that the rational exists among things, that the irrational should not exist? For it is abundant and plentiful in all things that have no share of soul, and we need no further opposite to the rational; rather, everything soulless simply, as irrational and unthinking, stands opposed to that which, possessing soul, has reason

and understanding. But if someone claims that nature is not truncated but that ensouled nature possesses, in part, the rational, and in part, the irrational, another will claim that ensouled nature possesses, in part, the capacity for imagination, and in part lacks imagination, and, in part, the capacity for sensation, and in part lacks sensation — so that nature may possess these paired and opposed states and privations concerning the same class of thing,

as though holding them in balance. But if it is absurd to seek, within the ensouled, a part that has sensation and a part that lacks it, and a part that forms images and a part that does not, on the ground that every ensouled thing by nature immediately has both sensation and the capacity for imagination — then such a person, too, will not reasonably demand that a part of the ensouled be rational and a part irrational, when arguing against men who suppose that nothing shares in sensation

which does not also share in understanding, and that nothing is an animal in which there is not present, just as sensation and impulse are present by nature, some measure of judgment and reasoning as well. For nature — which, they say, does everything rightly for some purpose and with reference to something — did not make the animal capable of sensation for the bare purpose of its being affected by something and perceiving it; rather, since some things are congenial to it and many others alien,

it would not have been possible for it to survive even a moment without learning to guard against the one and to go along with the other. Now sensation supplies to each creature knowledge of both alike, but as for the responses that follow upon sensation — the seizing and pursuing of what is beneficial, and the fending off and fleeing of what is destructive and painful — there is no way for these to be present in creatures not naturally disposed to reason about something, to judge, to remember, and to attend; rather,

if you take away entirely from them expectation, memory, purpose, preparation, hoping, fearing, desiring, being distressed, then eyes and ears, even if present, are of no use to them at all; and it would be better for a creature having no use for all sensation and imagination to be rid of them altogether than to labor and be pained and suffer, when nothing is present by which it might fend these things off. And yet there is an argument of Strato the natural philosopher, demonstrating that

perceiving at all does not occur without thinking; for indeed letters, often, as we pass our eyes over them, and words falling upon our hearing, escape our notice and slip by us while our mind is fixed on other things; then afterward the mind returns and runs after and pursues each of the things let slip, picking them up again — whence the saying, "mind sees and mind hears, all else is deaf and blind," as though the affection

that occurs in the eyes and ears produces no perception at all unless the thinking faculty is present. That is why King Cleomenes, when at a drinking party a performer was being much applauded, and he was asked whether it did not seem to him excellent, told the others to judge for themselves, for his own mind, he said, was in the Peloponnese. Hence it is necessary that in all creatures capable of sensation the capacity for thought also be present, if it is by thinking that we are by nature capable of sensing. But suppose it granted that

sensation does not need the mind for its own function; still, whenever, in the animal, sensation has done its work of producing a distinction between what is congenial and what is alien, and then departs, what is it that remembers, and that already fears the things that cause pain and longs for the things that are beneficial, and, when these are not present, contrives how they will be present, preparing for itself refuges and hiding-places, and, again, snares

for the creatures it will catch, and means of escape from those attacking it? And indeed those men wear us out by saying just these things, in their introductory treatises, whenever they define "purpose" as "a signal of completion," and "design" as "an impulse before an impulse," and "preparation" as "an action before an action," and "memory" as "the retention of a proposition that has passed, of which the present instance was grasped from sensation" — for none of these is anything other than rational, and all of them

belong to all animals, just as, indeed, do the things concerning conceptions, which they call "notions" when stored up and "acts of thought" when set in motion; and all the emotions in common they agree to call "faulty judgments and opinions." It is astonishing, then, that they overlook, in beasts, the many deeds and movements of spirited anger, and many of fear, and, by Zeus, of envy and jealousy as well, while they themselves

punish dogs and horses when they do wrong, not idly but for the sake of correction, producing in them distress through pain, which we call repentance. Of pleasure, that which comes through the ears has the name "enchantment," and that which comes through the eyes, "bewitchment"; and men employ both against beasts. For deer and horses are enchanted by pipes and flutes, and men call crabs forth from their burrows

by forcing them out with hissing sounds, and they say that the shad-fish rises and comes forward when men sing and clap. The owl, in turn, is caught by being bewitched, as it strives, in eager delight, to match well with its shoulders the rhythm of those dancing before its eyes. But those who speak foolishly about these matters, saying that animals feel neither pleasure nor anger nor fear nor make preparation nor remember, but that the bee "remembers, as it were,"

and the swallow "prepares, as it were," and the lion "is angered, as it were," and the deer "is afraid, as it were" — I do not know what they will do with those who say that animals do not see or hear at all, but "see, as it were," and "hear, as it were," and do not even make sounds, but "make sounds, as it were," and do not live at all, but "live, as it were." For these statements are said no less contrary to plain evidence than the others, as

I for my part am persuaded. SOCLARUS. Then count me too, Autobulus, as persuaded of these points. But as for setting the ways of animals, their lives, their conduct, and their manner of living beside human characters, lives, actions, and modes of living, I see much else that falls short, and, above all, I see in them no clear striving toward virtue — the very thing for the sake of which reason has come into being — nor any advance toward it, nor any desire for it; and so I am at a loss how nature could have given them

the starting point, if they are unable to arrive at the goal. AUTOBULUS. But this, Soclarus, does not seem strange even to those men themselves, the philosophers: at any rate, though they set down affection for one's offspring as the starting point, for us, of community and justice, and though they see this affection present in animals in abundant and strong measure, they deny that animals share in justice at all, and do not think it fitting. Yet mules lack nothing of the generative parts:

for indeed, having both the genitals and the wombs, and the capacity to use them with pleasure, they nonetheless do not arrive at the end result, namely offspring. Consider it from another angle too, whether it is not actually laughable to say that men like Socrates and men like Plato consort with vice no less light than that of any chance slave, but are equally senseless and unrestrained and unjust — and then to fault the beasts for not being

pure and perfectly refined toward virtue, treating this as a privation rather than as a fault and weakness of reason, and this while agreeing that vice itself is something rational, of which every beast is full to overflowing — for indeed we see cowardice present in many of them, and lack of restraint, and injustice, and ill will. Whoever claims that what is not by nature disposed to receive rightness of reason does not, by nature, receive reason at all, differs in no way, first of all, from one who would claim that an ape

does not by nature share in ugliness, or that a tortoise does not deserve to be called slow, on the ground that neither is capable of receiving beauty or speed; and, further, he fails to see the crucial distinction: reason arises by nature, but excellent and perfect reason arises from care and instruction. Hence a share in the rational belongs to all ensouled beings. But the rightness and wisdom that they go looking for — they cannot say that even man possesses it as something acquired. For just as

there is a difference between one kind of sight and another, and between one kind of flight and another — hawks do not see as cicadas do, nor do eagles fly as partridges do — so too not every rational being shares equally in the supreme suppleness and sharpness that has been discovered; since indeed many examples of sociability, of courage, and of cunning in matters of provisioning and household management are found in animals, just as, on the other hand, examples of

injustice, cowardice, and foolishness are found in them too. And what has now taken place among our young men bears witness to this very point: as though there really were some difference at issue, some claim that land creatures, others that sea creatures, have been advanced by nature more toward virtue — which indeed becomes clear when horses and hippopotamuses are compared to storks; for the one kind feeds its parents, while the other kills them so that it may

mate with its mothers; and among doves and partridges: for partridges destroy and spoil the eggs, since the female, while she is brooding, does not accept mating — while doves, on the contrary, share the care between them, warming the eggs in turn, and the male is the first to feed the chicks, and if the female wanders off for too long, he strikes her and drives her back to the eggs and the chicks. As for donkeys

and sheep, Antipater, in charging them with neglect of cleanliness, somehow overlooked the lynxes and the swallows, of which the former go out of their way entirely to hide and conceal their lynx-stone, while the swallows teach their chicks, by turning them around, to void their droppings outside the nest. And yet why do we not call one tree more ignorant than another tree, as we call a sheep more cowardly than a dog, nor one vegetable more unmanly than another vegetable, as we call a deer more cowardly than a lion? Or

just as, among things that cannot move at all, one is not slower than another, nor, among things that cannot speak, is one softer-voiced than another, so too there is no such thing as one animal being more cowardly, or more sluggish, or more intemperate than another, among creatures that do not all by nature possess the capacity for thought, but possess it, in different creatures, differently, according to more and less, and this is what has produced the differences we observe? SOCLARUS. But it is a marvel how greatly man surpasses the animals in aptitude for learning and in quickness of mind, and in matters concerning

justice and community. AUTOBULUS. Yes, and indeed among animals too, my friend, many, whether through greatness of size or swiftness of foot or keenness of sight, are found remembering — while others are full of confusion and, having gone out of their minds, fail to recognize the faces most dear to them and flee the surroundings they were reared in; and it seems that in this either they fail to perceive what is plainly the case, or, perceiving what actually results from it, they choose to contend against the truth out of love of victory. SOCLARUS. You seem to me

to be hinting rightly: for the philosophers of the Stoa and of the Peripatetic school strain especially hard toward the opposite conclusion in their argument, since justice, they say, has no other origin, and becomes wholly unstable and non-existent, if all animals share in reason; for it then follows either that we necessarily act unjustly, in not sparing them, or that, if we do not make use of them, life becomes impossible and impracticable; and in a certain way

...we shall be living the life of wild beasts, if we give up the uses we get from animals. I pass over the countless myriads of Nomads and Cave-dwellers who know no food but flesh and nothing else; but for us, who suppose we live in a gentle and civilized way, what work is left undone on land, what in the sea, what skill in the mountains, what refinement of diet, if, as is fitting, we learn to deal without harm and with due caution with all animals, since they are rational and akin to us? That is not easy to say. So then we have no remedy or cure that does not either destroy life or leave us at a loss over justice, unless we keep to the ancient boundary and law by which, according to Hesiod, he who divided the natures and set each kind apart ordained that fish and beasts and winged birds should eat one another, "since there is no justice among them," but to human beings he gave justice toward one another. Where there is no possibility of just dealing on the part of animals toward us, there is likewise no possibility of our doing them wrong; and indeed those who have put forward this argument have left neither any broad nor any narrow path by which justice could find its way in besides this one.

"These, my friend," said Autobulus, "are the sentiments those men have spoken 'from the heart,' yet we should not, as with women in hard labor, fasten a birth-charm on the philosophers so that they may bring forth justice for us easily and without travail. For not even they themselves grant Epicurus, for the sake of the greatest matters, so small and trivial a thing as letting a single atom swerve the least little bit, so that stars and living creatures and chance might find a way in and what depends on us not be lost — and yet they think it proper to posit, as though it were something already established and needing no proof, an unclear and undemonstrated claim about animals as the basis for their argument about justice, when it is neither agreed upon nor otherwise demonstrated. For justice has, in that other matter, a different path, not so treacherous and steep, nor one that leads through things overturned by plain evidence, but the path which, under Plato's guidance, my own son here points out, Soclarus — your companion too — to those who are willing not to wrangle but to follow and to learn.

Since indeed that man is not altogether free of injustice who treats animals in this way, Empedocles and Heraclitus accept as true, often lamenting and reviling nature as a thing of necessity and war, having nothing unmixed or pure in it but accomplished through many unjust sufferings; where they even say that generation itself comes about from injustice, the mortal joining with the immortal, and that what is begotten is nourished contrary to nature, torn from the limbs of its begetter. Yet these views appear too harsh and bitter, unmixed with anything gentler; there is another, more fitting consolation, one that does not strip animals of reason but preserves justice in our dealing with them as is fitting — a consolation which the wise men of old introduced, but which gluttony, joined with love of luxury, cast out and destroyed once it had taken hold,

and which Pythagoras later took up again, teaching that men benefit without doing wrong. For those do no wrong who punish and kill only what is utterly unsociable and harmful, while making tame and useful for our needs whatever is gentle and friendly to humankind, each according to what it is naturally suited for — the breeding of horses and donkeys and the begetting of bulls — gifts which the Prometheus of Aeschylus says he gave us "in place of slaves, to take over our labors"; and using dogs we keep watch, and pasture goats and sheep, milking and shearing them. For human life is not taken away, nor is our livelihood destroyed, if we do not have platters of fish or goose livers, and do not cut up oxen or kids for the sake of feasting, nor, idling in theaters or amusing ourselves in hunts, force some creatures to fight unwillingly and destroy others that by nature have no means of defending themselves.

For I think that the one who plays and the one played with ought to be treated as fellow-players and with cheerfulness, not as Bion said children do, throwing stones at frogs in play — the boys playing, but the frogs no longer playing but truly dying — so it is with those who hunt and fish for their own delight while the creatures suffer and die in agony, and with those who are led off pitifully as cubs and fledglings. For it is not those who make use of animals who do wrong, but those who use them harmfully and carelessly and with cruelty."

"Hold on, Autobulus," said Soclarus, "and set aside for a moment the door of your indictment; for here approach many young men, all fond of hunting, whom it is not easy to convert and not necessary to distress." "You are right to advise this," said Autobulus; "but I know well Eubiotus and my own cousin Ariston, and the sons of Dionysius from Delphi, Aeacides and this Aristotimus here, and then Nicander the son of Euthydamus — men "skilled" in the hunting of land creatures, as Homer says, and for that reason likely to side with Aristotimus; just as, on the other side, these islanders and coast-dwellers, Heracleon of Megara and Philostratus the Euboean, "to whom the works of the sea are dear," whom Phaedimus keeps about him. As for the son of Tydeus, you would not know to which side he belongs — I mean this age-mate of ours,

Optatus, who has adorned Artemis the Huntress and Dictynna alike with many first-fruits of the chase, both of the sea and of the mountains; here he is, plainly making his way toward us, as though he means to attach himself to neither side. Or do we guess wrongly, dear Optatus, that you will be a common and impartial arbiter for the young men?" Optatus: "You surmise quite rightly, Autobulus; for long ago the law of Solon has lapsed, the one that punished those who, in a civil dispute, joined neither side."

Autobulus: "Come then, sit down here with us, so that, if we should need a witness, we may not trouble the books of Aristotle, but, following your testimony out of experience, cast our vote truly on what is said." Soclarus: "Well then, young men, has some agreement been reached among you about the order of speaking?" Phaedimus: "It has, Soclarus, though not without much rivalry; and then, by Euripides, the child of fortune —" the lot was cast on this, assigning to land creatures the right to argue their case before those of the sea. Socrates: "It is time then, Aristotimus, for you to speak and for us to listen."

Aristotimus: "The market feeds those who go to law, but for the other creatures their offspring consume much, running about among the females at the time of birth; and the kind of gray mullet they call the sea-bream feeds on its own slime; while the octopus sits in winter in a house without fire and in wretched dwellings, eating itself, so idle or so senseless or so gluttonous, or guilty of all of these together, is it. For this reason Plato, again, when legislating, forbade — or rather prayed against — the young acquiring a passion for hunting in the sea; for it affords no exercise of courage nor practice of wisdom, nor any of the training in strength

or speed or movement that men undergo in contests against bass or conger-eels or parrot-fish — whereas here on land the spirited animals exercise the love of danger and courage found in fighters, the cunning ones the thoughtfulness and intelligence of those who lay ambushes, and the swift ones the vigor and endurance of those who pursue. And these qualities have made hunting on land a noble thing; but fishing has won honor from nothing,

nor has any god thought it worthy — no one, my friend, is called "conger-slayer," as Apollo is called "wolf-slayer," nor "mullet-striker," as Artemis is called "deer-striker." And what wonder is there in this, when even for a human being it is nobler to catch a boar or a stag, or, by Zeus, a gazelle or a hare, than to buy one, while it is more dignified to buy a tunny or a crayfish or a bonito than to catch it oneself by fishing? For the ignoble

and altogether resourceless and unskilled character of these creatures has made the hunting of them a shameful, unenviable, and illiberal pursuit. And in general, since the proofs by which the philosophers show that animals share in reason are purposeful action and preparation, memory and emotion, care for offspring, gratitude toward benefactors and resentment toward those who have injured them, and further the discovery of what is necessary, and displays of virtue — such as

courage, sociability, self-control, and greatness of spirit — let us examine the sea-creatures, to see whether they show none of these things, or only some altogether faint and hard-to-discern flicker that one can barely make out even by conjecture; whereas among land-dwelling and earth-born creatures it is possible to take and observe bright, clear, and sure examples of each of these qualities. First, then, consider the purposeful preparation of bulls dusting themselves for battle and

of boars whetting their tusks; and elephants, since the wood which they eat by digging or cutting wears down and blunts one tusk, use that one for such work while keeping the other always sharp and pointed for defense. The lion always walks with his claws drawn in, hiding them within his paws, so that they may not be worn down and blunted by rubbing, nor leave an easy trail for those

tracking him; for it is not easy to find the mark of a lion's claw, but men who come upon small and indistinct tracks wander off and go astray. As for the mongoose, you have surely heard how it lacks nothing that a hoplite arming himself for battle needs: for it plasters and hardens around its body so thick a coat of mud, meaning to attack the crocodile. Consider too the preparations swallows make before bearing their young: we see how well they lay down the solid twigs

first, like a foundation, and then plaster the lighter material over them; and if they perceive that the nest needs some sticky sort of clay, flying low over a lake or the sea they skim the surface with their feathers, just enough to get them damp without becoming heavy from the wetness, then gather up dust and thus smear it on and bind together the loose and slipping parts; and in shape they make their work not angular or many-sided, but as smooth

and spherical as possible; for such a shape is both stable and roomy, and does not offer easy purchase from outside to animals plotting against it. As for the works of the spider, a common model for women's weaving and for hunters' nets, one could not admire them on a single count only: for both the fineness of the thread and the weave's not being loose or warp-like, but forming instead the continuity of a smooth membrane

joined and glued together by some imperceptibly blended stickiness, and the dyeing of its color making the surface look airy and hazy so as to escape notice, and above all, most of all, the driving and steering of the device itself, whenever something catchable is caught in it — how, like a skilled net-fisherman, it quickly draws together and gathers in its snare, perceiving and understanding what is happening — this has, through daily

sight and observation of what occurs, made the account credible. Otherwise it would seem a fable, just as it once seemed to us the story of the ravens in Libya, who, needing to drink, throw in stones, filling up and raising the level of the water until it comes within reach; then indeed I myself, seeing a dog on a ship, when the sailors were not present, dropping pebbles into a jar of oil that was not quite full, marveled

at how it perceived and understood the rise brought about when the lighter substance is pushed up by the heavier ones settling beneath it. Similar too are the doings of the bees of Crete and of the geese in Cilicia: the bees, when about to round some windy headland, ballast themselves with little pebbles so as not to be swept off course; and the geese, fearing eagles, when they cross the Taurus range, take into their mouths

a stone of good size, as if to muzzle and bridle their own love of noise and chatter, so that they may pass by unnoticed in silence. As for cranes, their manner of flight too is admired: for they fly, whenever there is much wind and the air is rough, not, as in fair weather, in a straight front or in the curve of a crescent, but at once draw themselves into a triangle and cleave with their point the wind flowing around them, so as not

to have their formation torn apart. And when they come down to land, those keeping watch by night support their body on one leg while with the other foot they grasp and hold a stone; for the tension of the grip keeps them from sleeping too long; and whenever they relax, the stone falls out and quickly wakes the one who let it slip — so that one need not wonder so much at Heracles, if with his bow

tucked under his armpit and wrapped around his mighty arm, he sleeps gripping a club in his right hand; nor again at the heron's cleverness in dealing with the oyster, once someone had guessed how it opens its closed shell — for when the heron has swallowed the shut mussel, though troubled by it, it endures until it perceives it softening and relaxing under the heat within; then, casting it up gaping and drawn open, it extracts the edible part. As for the domestic economy and

preparations of ants, it is impossible to describe them exactly, but wholly to pass them over would be a great neglect: for nature has nothing so small that it does not serve as a mirror of greater and finer things, but just as in a clear drop there is contained a reflection of every virtue — "therein is friendship," the spirit of community, and therein an image of courage, the love of toil; and therein too many seeds of self-control, and many of prudence and of justice. Cleanthes

used to say — though he did not claim that animals share in reason — that he himself once witnessed such a spectacle: ants coming to another anthill, carrying a dead ant; then, as some came up out of the anthill, as though meeting them, they went back down again, and this happened two or three times; and finally those from below brought up, as a ransom for the corpse, a grub, and the others, taking it up and handing over

the dead ant in exchange, went away. Among things evident to everyone are their fair dealing when they meet one another — those carrying nothing stepping aside from the path for those who are carrying, and letting them pass — and their gnawing apart and dividing of loads too heavy and unwieldy to carry, so that they may become easy to bear for several together. Aratus makes their handling and airing out of their eggs, apart from rain, a sign of weather, when he says, "the ants have brought up all their eggs the faster from their hollow burrow" —

and indeed some do not write "eggs" (ōia) but "stores" (hea), meaning the grain they have laid up, which, whenever they perceive it gathering mold and fear its ruin and decay, they bring up to the surface. But surpassing every notion of intelligence is their foreknowledge in dealing with the sprouting of wheat: for the grain does not remain dry and unspoiled but dissolves and turns milky as it changes toward putting forth its shoot; so, in order

that it may not become seed and so destroy its usefulness as food, but remain edible for them, they eat out the very point from which the wheat sends forth its sprout. As for those who say that ants dig out their anthills for the sake of studying them as though by dissection, I do not accept this; but they do say that the way down from the opening is not straight, nor easy for another creature to pass through, but consists of passages bent

with turns and twists, and openings that lead down finally to three hollow chambers, of which one is their common dwelling place, another a storeroom for their food, and into the third they lay away their dead. I do not think it will seem out of place to you if, after the ants, I bring in the elephants, so that we may observe the nature of intelligence together in the smallest and in the greatest bodies, neither

—neither vanishing in these smallest bodies nor falling short in those largest ones. Now most people admire the elephant for the many kinds and changes of postures it displays in theaters after being taught and trained, feats whose intricacy and refinement are not at all easy even for human practice to achieve and retain in memory and habit. But I myself see intelligence shining out more clearly in the animal's own untaught feelings and movements, as it were unmixed and unadulterated.

In Rome not long ago, when many elephants were being trained together to take up certain hazardous postures and go through movements difficult to perform, one that was the slowest to learn, and was constantly being scolded and often punished, was seen by night, off by itself, going over its lessons and practicing before the moon. And in Syria previously, Hagnon relates, an elephant was being kept in a household, and its keeper used to take a measure of barley and steal and cheat it of half each day. But once, when the master was present and watching, the keeper poured out the whole measure, and the elephant, looking at it and running its trunk through the barley, separated out and set apart the missing portion, thereby denouncing the keeper's dishonesty as clearly as it could. And another elephant, when its keeper was mixing stones and earth in with the barley in the measure, while meat was being boiled, took up a handful of ashes and threw it into the pot.

And the elephant that had been jostled about by boys in Rome, who were pricking its trunk with their styluses—when it caught one of them and lifted him into the air, everyone expected it would dash him down. But at the outcry of the bystanders it gently set him back on the ground again and passed on, judging it sufficient punishment for so young a boy to have been frightened. As for wild and unrestrained elephants, other marvels too are told, and in particular about their crossings of rivers: for the youngest and smallest one crosses first, going ahead of the rest, while the others stand and watch, so that if that one, though smallest, is not swept off its feet by the current's depth, the larger ones may take great confidence that it is safe.

Having reached this point in my discourse, I do not think I should pass over, on account of its similarity, the story of the fox. The mythographers say that a dove released from the ark was a sign to Deucalion—diving back inside in stormy weather, but flying off in fine weather. And the Thracians, even now, whenever they attempt to cross a frozen river, use a fox to test the solidity of the ice: for it goes forward quietly, laying its ear to the ice, and if it perceives by the sound that the current is running close beneath, it concludes that the freezing has not gone deep but is thin and unstable, and it stops; and if one lets it, it turns back. But if it does not hear any sound, it crosses confidently, trusting the silence.

And let us not call this an irrational precision of sense-perception, but rather a piece of reasoning drawn from sense-perception, namely: "what makes a sound is in motion; what is in motion is not frozen; what is not frozen is liquid; and what is liquid gives way." The logicians, for their part, say that the dog, at a fork with several paths, employs a disjunctive syllogism of several parts, reasoning to itself: "the animal set off either by this path, or by that one, or by that other one; but it did not go by this one, nor by that one; therefore by the remaining one." Here, they say, sense-perception supplies nothing but the minor premise, while reason furnishes the propositions and draws the conclusion from them. But the dog, in truth, has no need of such testimony—for that account is false and spurious. Sense-perception itself, working through the tracks and scent-trails of the animal, points out the direction of its flight, without any regard for disjunctive or conjunctive propositions.

And through many other deeds, feelings, and duties—things neither smelled nor seen but performed and observed only by intelligence and reason—one can discern the dog's true nature. As for its endurance and obedience and quickness of mind in hunting, I would be ridiculous to speak of these before you, the devotees of Asclepius. There was a man who took the substantial silver and gold votive offerings and, thinking he had escaped unnoticed, slipped away. But the temple's guard-dog, Capparus by name, when none of the attendants responded to his barking, set off after the fleeing temple-robber. At first, though pelted with stones, he did not give up; and when day came, he followed at a distance, not approaching closely but keeping watch from where he could see, and would not take food when it was thrown to him. When the man rested for the night, the dog kept watch nearby; and when the man set off walking again, the dog rose and followed once more. He wagged his tail at travelers he met along the way, but kept guard over the thief and stuck close to him.

Those pursuing the man, learning of this from the travelers they met—who also told them the dog's color and size—pressed the chase more eagerly, and, catching up with the man, brought him back from Crommyon. And the dog, turning around, led the way back, proud and overjoyed, as though he had made the temple-robber his own prize and quarry. The people accordingly voted that he be given food at public expense, and charged the priests to look after him forever, imitating the kindness the ancient Athenians showed toward a mule. For when Pericles was building the hundred-foot temple on the Acropolis, stones, as one would expect, were being brought up daily by many teams of animals. One of the mules that had worked eagerly in this labor but had by now been let go on account of old age would come down to the Ceramicus, and whenever he met the teams bringing up the stones he would always turn around and run alongside them, as though urging them on and encouraging them. The people, admiring his eagerness, ordered that he be maintained at public expense, just as they voted a pension for an athlete worn out by old age.

For this reason, those who say that we have no obligation of justice toward animals should be told that they speak well enough, perhaps, concerning creatures of the sea and the deep—for those are altogether alien to any sense of affection, without tenderness and having no share in any sweetness of temper, and Homer put it well: "the gray sea bore you," said of one who seems savage and unapproachable, meaning that nothing of the sea's nature is kindly or gentle. But whoever applies this same argument to land animals as well is harsh and brutish—unless he would also deny that Lysimachus owed anything in justice to the dog Hyrcanus, who alone stayed beside his master's corpse and, when the body was being burned, ran in and threw himself upon it. They say the dog of Aston did the same thing—Aston not the king, but another private man of the same name, who raised the dog.

For when his master died, the dog stayed close by the body and hovered around the bier as it was carried out, and finally, mounting the pyre, threw himself upon it and was burned along with him. And the elephant of King Porus, when Porus had been badly wounded in his battle against Alexander, gently and carefully drew out with its trunk many of the javelins that had struck him, and, though itself already in a bad way, did not give in until it perceived that the king had lost much blood and was growing faint, at which point, fearing he might fall, it sank down gently, offering him an easy descent. Bucephalas, when unadorned, would allow the groom to mount him, but once decked out in the royal trappings and neck-ornaments, he would let no one approach except Alexander himself; and if others tried to approach him, he would charge at them, neighing loudly, rearing up, and trampling those who did not flee quickly enough or get out of his way in time.

I am not unaware that this variety of examples may seem to you rather a mixed bag: it is not easy to find a single action of these clever animals that displays only one virtue in isolation. Rather, in their affectionate nature there also appears their love of honor, and in their nobility their courage of spirit; and their cunning and intelligence are not separate from their high-spiritedness and manliness. Nevertheless, for those who wish to distinguish and classify case by case: dogs display a mark of both tameness and lofty pride together, in that they turn away from those who grovel before them—as indeed has been said of this too: "they, howling, rushed upon him; but Odysseus sat down cunningly, and the staff fell from his hand"—for dogs no longer fight against those who have fallen and become abject, once their bearing has changed to match. They say too that the champion Indian dog that fought against Alexander lay quietly and paid no attention when a deer, a boar, and a bear were successively let loose against him; but the moment a lion was shown to him, he leapt up at once and made ready, plainly regarding it alone as a worthy opponent, and holding all the others in contempt.

Dogs that hunt hares, if they kill the hare themselves, take pleasure in tearing it apart and eagerly lap up the blood; but if the hare, as often happens, gives up the ghost, having spent all its breath in the final stretch of the chase, and dies on its own, the dogs, on catching up with the corpse, do not touch it at all, but stand around wagging their tails, as though they were competing not for the meat but for victory and the glory of the contest. As for cunning, there are many examples, but leaving aside foxes and wolves and the tricks of cranes and jackdaws, since these are well known, I will call as my witness Thales, the oldest of the wise men, who is said to have won no small admiration for his cleverness with a mule.

One of the salt-carrying mules, in fording a river, slipped by accident, and, once the salt had dissolved, got up much lighter; the mule noticed the cause and remembered it, so that ever after, in crossing the river, it would deliberately lower itself and dip its packs into the water, settling down and leaning first to one side and then to the other. Thales, hearing of this, ordered the men to fill the mule's packs with wool and sponges instead of salt, and load them on, and then drive the mule as usual. The mule, doing what it was accustomed to do and having soaked its load with water, realized that its cleverness had backfired against itself, and from then on, taking care and being on its guard, crossed the river in such a way that not even against its will did the water so much as touch its load.

Partridges display another kind of cunning together with parental affection: they train their chicks, while these are still unable to flee when pursued, to throw themselves down on their backs and hold up a clod of earth or some rubbish in front of their bodies, as though hiding under it; while the mother birds themselves lead the pursuers off in another direction and draw them toward themselves, flying up just in front of them and then rising a little at a time, giving the impression that they can be caught in just this way, until they have drawn the pursuers far away from the chicks. And hares, on returning to their forms, carry their young off one by one to different places, often a furlong apart from each other, so that if a man or a dog comes upon one, they will not all be endangered together; and they themselves, having laid tracks in many places by their comings and goings, take one final great leap far from their tracks, and so lie down to sleep.

The bear, when overtaken by that condition they call hibernation, before becoming altogether numb and sluggish, first clears out the spot, and, when about to go down into it, makes the rest of her journey as lightly and as buoyantly as she can, touching the ground only with the very tips of her tracks, but then draws her body along on her back and shifts herself in this way toward her den. Female deer bear their young mostly beside the road, where flesh-eating beasts do not approach; and the males, whenever they perceive that they have grown heavy from fat and excess flesh, withdraw to remote places, saving themselves by concealment when they no longer trust to flight. Among land hedgehogs, their defense and protection has given rise to a proverb: "the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog one big thing." For when the fox approaches, as Ion says, the hedgehog, curling its body into a ball around its spines, lies there, impossible either to touch or to bite.

More refined still is the hedgehog's forethought concerning its young: in autumn it creeps in under the vines, and, shaking the grapes down from the bunch with its feet, rolls itself over them on the ground, and gathers them up on its spines—a sight that once afforded all of us who saw it the spectacle of a bunch of grapes crawling or walking along. In this way, laden full with the autumn harvest, it goes off; then, going down into its den, it hands the grapes over to its young to use and take from as needed, doled out little by little. Their sleeping-den has two openings, one facing south and the other facing north; and whenever they sense in advance a change in the weather, like helmsmen shifting a sail, they close up the one facing the wind and open the other. Someone in Cyzicus, having observed this, gained a reputation for predicting on his own authority which wind was about to blow.

As for the elephants' capacity for cooperation together with intelligence, Juba reports the following: hunters dig pits for them and cover them over with light brushwood and loose litter; whenever one elephant slips in, since they travel in large groups together, the rest carry wood and stones and throw them in, filling up the hollow of the pit, so that it becomes easy for the trapped one to climb out. He also relates that elephants, untaught, make use of prayer to the gods, purifying themselves in the sea and doing obeisance to the rising sun, as if with an uplifted hand, by the raising of their trunks. This is why the elephant is the animal most beloved by the gods, as Ptolemy Philopator testified: for after defeating Antiochus, and wishing to honor the divine in a signal manner, he sacrificed, among a great many other things in thanksgiving for his victory in the battle, four elephants as well. But then, encountering in his dreams by night the god threatening him in anger on account of that outlandish sacrifice, he made many acts of propitiation and set up four bronze elephants in place of those he had slaughtered.

No less given to cooperation are lions. The young lions take out with them on the hunt the slow ones and those already old; and wherever the old ones give out, they sit down and wait, while the young ones do the hunting, and whenever they catch anything at all, they call the others back with a roar resembling the bellowing of a calf; and the old lions, recognizing the call at once, come and share the kill together. As for lions' passions, there have been many: some have become wild and utterly frenzied, while others have shown an attachment that was not without a certain human tenderness, nor devoid of affection. Such was the elephant in Alexandria that rivaled the grammarian Aristophanes: for they were in love with the same flower-girl, and the elephant's devotion was no less evident—for he would always bring her, as he passed the fruit-stalls, some of the season's produce, and would stand a long while, and, slipping his trunk gently inside the fold of her tunic as though it were a hand, would touch the swell of her breast.

And the serpent that fell in love with the girl of Aetolia used to visit her by night, sliding in against her body and coiling around her, but never did her any harm, whether willingly or unwillingly; rather, he would always withdraw decorously around dawn. But when he kept doing this continually, her neighbors moved the girl farther away. For three or four days the serpent did not come, but, it seems, went about searching and wandering; and when at last he found her again and, coming upon her, embraced her, he was not gentle as before but rather rough—

binding her hands to her body with the greater part of his coil, while with the end of his tail he whipped her legs, showing an anger that was light and tender, and had more of restraint in it than of punishment. As for the goose in Aegium that fell in love with a boy, and the ram that desired Glauce the singer to the lyre, these stories are famous, and I imagine you are already sated with many such tales; so I will let them pass.

I will let these pass. But starlings, crows, and parrots, which learn to talk and offer the breath of their voice, so pliable and imitative, to their teachers to be counted out and set to rhythm, seem to me to plead the case and speak on behalf of the other animals in the matter of learning, teaching us in a way that they too have a share in articulate speech and vocal expression. And it is quite ridiculous to leave the comparison to those creatures which do not possess even so much voice as to howl or to groan.

As for the natural, untaught cries of birds, how much music and grace attend them is attested by the most learned and sweetest-voiced men, who liken their most delightful poems and songs to the songs of swans and the odes of nightingales. But since teaching is a more rational act than learning, we must now believe Aristotle when he says that these animals actually do this: a nightingale has been observed teaching its chick to sing beforehand. Confirmation of his claim is that those nightingales which happen to have been caught young and reared away from their mothers sing worse; for those raised together are taught, and they learn not for pay nor for reputation, but because they delight in trilling out their phrases and love beauty more than mere usefulness in their voice.

On this point I can tell you a story too, which I heard from many Greeks and Romans who were present. A certain barber who kept a shop in Rome, in front of the precinct they call the Greek Market, was raising a marvelous creature, a magpie of many voices and many sounds, which reproduced human words, the cries of animals, and the noises of instruments — no one compelling it, but the bird training itself and striving, out of sheer ambition, to leave nothing unspoken and nothing unimitated.

Now it happened that a wealthy man from that quarter was being carried out for burial with many trumpets, and, as usually happens at that spot, a halt was made; the trumpeters, being applauded and urged on, lingered there a long time. After that day the magpie was voiceless and mute, not even uttering its own natural cry for its basic needs. So to those who had earlier marveled at its voice, its silence now provided an even greater marvel — a mute performance for those who habitually passed that way. Suspicions of poisoning fell on its fellow craftsmen, but most people supposed that the trumpets had stunned its hearing, and that its voice had been extinguished along with its hearing.

But it was neither of these; rather, it was, it seems, a kind of practice, a withdrawal of its mimetic faculty into itself, as though it were tuning and preparing its voice like an instrument. For suddenly it came back to life and burst forth — not with any of its familiar old imitations, but sounding out the melodies of the trumpets in their very phrasing, running through every modulation and every rhythm of their notes. So that, as I said, self-teaching proves more rational in these creatures than mere aptitude for learning.

However, there is one piece of learning by a dog that I do not think I should pass over, since I myself witnessed it in Rome. A dog took part in a mime with a dramatic plot involving many characters, giving various imitations suited to the emotions and events portrayed; and when the play staged a trial of a drug, supposedly a sleeping potion but represented in the plot as deadly, the dog took the bread in which the drug had ostensibly been mixed, and after eating a little, shortly afterward it seemed to tremble, stagger, and grow dizzy; finally, stretching itself out, it lay there like a corpse, and let itself be dragged and carried about, as the plot of the drama required.

Then, when it perceived from what was being said and done that the moment had come, it first stirred itself gently, as though rising from a deep sleep, and, lifting its head, looked about; then, to the amazement of the audience, it got up and walked over to the person it was meant to approach, fawning joyfully and affectionately — so that everyone present, including Caesar himself (for old Vespasian was present, in the Theater of Marcellus), was moved to sympathy.

But perhaps we are ridiculous to make such solemn matter of animals' capacity to learn, when Democritus declares that in the greatest matters we have become their pupils: pupils of the spider in weaving and mending, of the swallow in building, and of the melodious swan and nightingale in song, by way of imitation. In the art of medicine, too, we can see a great and noble contribution from each of the three kinds of creatures — land, air, and water — for they make use not only of drugs: tortoises eat oregano, and weasels eat rue in addition after eating a snake; dogs purge themselves of bile with a certain herb; the serpent, when its eye grows dim, thins and clears it with fennel; and the bear, on emerging from its den, first eats the wild arum, whose pungency opens up its bowel, which has grown constricted.

At other times, when it feels nauseous, the bear goes to anthills and sits down, putting out its tongue, moist and soft with sweet moisture, until it is covered with ants — for it benefits by swallowing them. As for the ibis, the Egyptians say they observed and imitated its self-administered enema of salt water; and the priests use for their ritual purification only water from which an ibis has drunk, for if the water is medicinal or otherwise unhealthy, the bird will not go near it.

Some animals are also treated by abstaining from food: wolves and lions, when gorged with meat, lie quietly and keep themselves warm. And they say that a tigress, when given a kid while on a controlled diet, did not eat it for two days, but on the third, being hungry, demanded another and tore at the cage, sparing the one she had first been given, since she now thought of it as a companion and housemate.

Moreover, it is reported that elephants practice a kind of surgery: standing beside wounded companions, they pull out arrow shafts, spears, and darts easily and without tearing the flesh. And the Cretan goats, when they eat dittany, easily expel arrows lodged in them — which readily taught pregnant women that the herb has the power to cause miscarriage, since when wounded, goats seek out, pursue, and go for nothing else but dittany.

Less astonishing, though still astonishing, is what is done by creatures endowed with a conception of number and a capacity for counting, such as the oxen near Susa possess. There, oxen irrigate the royal park by means of revolving water-scoops, and the number of scoopfuls for each is fixed: each ox brings up a hundred scoopfuls a day, and it is not possible to get it to bring up more, even by force, however much one wishes. Indeed, when men, just to test it, repeatedly add more, it stands still and will not go on, once it has delivered the fixed amount — so precisely does it reckon and remember the total, as Ctesias of Cnidus has recorded.

The Libyans laugh at the Egyptians for their fable about the oryx, that it cries out on the very day and hour when the star rises which the Egyptians themselves call Sothis but which we call the Dog-star, Sirius. For they say that all their goats together, precisely when that star rises together with the sun, turn and gaze toward the east, and that this is the surest sign of its cyclical return, and one that agrees most closely with the astronomers' tables.

But so that my speech may crown itself and come to a stop, let us now set in motion the subject that begins from sacred matters, and say a few words about the divinity of animals and their power of divination. For augury is no small or obscure part of divination, but a great and very ancient one; the keenness and intelligence of birds, so responsive through their agility to every impression, offers the god an instrument, as it were, to use and direct — toward motion, toward cries and calls and postures — now checking their course, now driving it forward like winds, in some cases cutting actions short and in others guiding impulses toward their fulfillment.

That is why Euripides, speaking generally, calls birds "heralds of the gods," while Socrates, speaking of himself in particular, says he makes himself "a fellow-slave of the swans." So too, among kings, Pyrrhus was pleased to be called an eagle, and Antiochus a hawk; whereas we use the names of fish — calling men ignorant and foolish — when we abuse or mock them.

But although land and winged creatures offer ten thousand times ten thousand instances of signs shown and foretold to us by the gods, there is not a single such instance that anyone pleading the cause of water creatures can produce; instead, all of them are cast out, deaf and blind to providence, into that godless and titanic region, as into a place fit for the impious, where the rational and intelligent part of the soul has been extinguished, and, being confounded and submerged in some last remnant of mere sensation, they seem to gasp rather than to live.

HERACLEON: Raise your eyebrows, my dear Phaedimus, and rouse yourself against us, the men of the sea and the islands. This matter of our debate has become no game, but a vigorous contest, and oratory calling for the railing and the speaker's platform.

PHAEDIMUS: Well then, Heracleon, your ambush laid with treachery is plain to see: while we are still reeling from yesterday's revel and still drenched in it, our noble friend here, sober as you can see, has attacked us by design. Yet there is no declining the contest: for I have no wish, as an admirer of Pindar, to hear it said that "the pretext of contests set aside has cast excellence into a steep darkness." You have plenty of leisure today, for it is not your choruses that stand idle, but your dogs and horses and nets and every kind of seine — since, for the sake of our discourse, a truce has been granted in common to all creatures, on land and at sea alike, for today.

But do not be afraid: I shall use this leisure in moderation, bringing in neither the opinions of philosophers, nor Egyptian myths, nor unattested tales from the Indians or Libyans. Rather, of those things which are everywhere witnessed by the men who work the sea, seen with their own eyes and giving conviction to sight, I shall set before you only a few.

And yet, in the case of examples from land, nothing stands in the way: the open land plainly offers its record to perception. But the sea gives us only a little, and grudgingly; it conceals the births and feedings, the attacks and mutual defenses of most of its creatures — among which there are no small number of instances of intelligence, memory, and cooperation that, remaining unknown, work against my argument. Moreover, land creatures, because of their kinship with us and their shared way of life, are in some way tinged by human character, and so enjoy the benefit of nourishment, teaching, and imitation — which, like an admixture of fresh water into the sea, sweetens whatever is harsh and sullen in them, and rouses whatever is dull and slow to understand, being fanned into activity by contact with human movement.

But the life of sea creatures, separated from human company by great boundaries, has nothing imported or acquired by habituation; it is entirely its own, native, and unmixed with alien character — and this is because of their location, not their nature. For nature, so far as it admits and retains any measure of learning, produces many eels called sacred, tame to human hands, such as those at Arethusa, and in many places fish that respond to their own names, as they say of the moray eel that belonged to Crassus, which, when it died, Crassus wept for.

And once, when Domitius said to him, "Did you not weep when your moray eel died?" Crassus replied, "And did you not fail to shed a tear when you buried three wives?" As for crocodiles, they not only recognize the voice of the priests calling them and submit to their touch, but even open their mouths wide and let the priests clean their teeth with their hands and wipe them with linen cloths.

Recently that excellent man Philinus, returning to us after wandering through Egypt, related that he had seen an old woman at Antaeopolis sleeping alongside a crocodile, which lay stretched out beside her on a couch very decorously. And they report from long ago that once, when King Ptolemy summoned it, the sacred crocodile did not heed or obey, despite the earnest entreaties and pleas of the priests, and this was thought to have foreshown the king's death, which occurred not long after — so that not even the highly prized art of divination is without a share for the race of water creatures, nor without honor.

For I also learn that at Sura, a village in Lycia between Phellus and Myra, men sit and divine by fish just as by birds, observing with a certain skill and reasoned method their windings, their flights, and their pursuits of one another. But let these serve as sufficient proof that the race of water creatures is not entirely foreign to us, nor without sympathy.

As for their pure and natural intelligence, a great proof of it is this common fact: no swimming creature is so easy for a man to catch by hand — unless it clings and adheres to rocks — nor so easily taken without effort, as donkeys are for wolves, bees for bee-eaters, cicadas for swallows, or serpents for deer, which draw serpents out easily; indeed the very name is formed from this, a derivative not of their swiftness but of their "drawing out" of the serpent. And a sheep, they say, actually summons a wolf by stamping its foot; and most animals, they say, approach the leopard gladly, delighted by its scent — the ape especially so.

But nearly all sea creatures possess a foresight that is wary and guarded against attacks, thanks to their intelligence, so that the work of catching them is neither simple nor trivial, but requires devices of every kind and cunning stratagems directed against them. And this is clear even from the most obvious cases. Fishermen do not want their fishing rod to have thickness, although they need it to be strong enough for the struggles of what is caught; instead they choose a thin one, so that it will not cast a broad shadow and alarm the fish's wariness.

Nor do they make the fishing line elaborately knotted with loops, or rough, since this too becomes, for the fish, evidence of a trap. And they contrive that the hairs leading down to the hook appear as white as possible, since in this way, through similarity of color, they more easily go unnoticed in the sea. As for the line in the poet, "and like a plummet of lead it darted to the depths, mounted on the horn of a field-grazing ox, bringing death to the ravening fish" — some, mishearing this, suppose that the ancients used ox-hair for their fishing lines, since "keras" (horn) is said to mean "hair," and that this is why "keirasthai" (to be shorn) and "koura" (a haircut) are so named, and that Archilochus's "keroplastes" means a man fond of adornment about his hair and given to primping.

But this is not true: fishermen use horsehair, taking it from the manes of stallions, since the hair of mares, once wetted with their urine, becomes weak and brittle. Aristotle, however, says that nothing clever or unusual is meant in these matters, but that in fact a small piece of horn is placed in front of the hook along the line, since fish coming for something else would otherwise bite through it.

As for hooks, fishermen use the round ones for mullets and amias, since these fish have small mouths and are wary of anything too straight; and often, even suspecting the round hook, the mullet swims around it in a circle, batting the bait with its tail and snatching up whatever is knocked loose; and if it cannot manage even that, it draws its mouth together and, pursing its lips, touches the bait only with the tips and nibbles a bit off it. The sea-bass, more manfully than the elephant — for it is not another creature but itself that it draws the barb from, once it has become caught on the hook — pulls the hook out on its own, widening the wound by turning its head this way and that,

...the wound, and enduring the pain from the laceration, until he casts out the hook.

The fox-shark, for its part, does not often approach the hook but avoids the trap; but once caught, it immediately turns itself inside out — for by its strength and suppleness it is able to twist and turn its body, so that what was inside becomes outside, and the hook falls away.

These cases, then, display an intelligence that is resourceful and remarkable in making use of opportunity for its own advantage; but other creatures show, along with intelligence, a sociable and mutually affectionate nature — as with the anthias and the parrotfish. When a parrotfish swallows a hook, the other parrotfish nearby leap up and gnaw through the fishing-line; and when one of their number falls into a fish-trap, they offer their tails to it from outside, and it eagerly bites hold and they pull it out together. The anthiai help a fellow of their kind still more boldly: laying the line along their back and setting the spine upright, they try to saw through it and cut it with its roughness.

And yet we know of no land animal that dares to come to the aid of another in danger — not a bear, not a boar, not a lioness, not a leopard. They will indeed gather together in the same place in the arenas, animals of the same kind, and circle around one another; but none knows how, or has the sense, to help another — instead each flees and leaps as far away as possible from the one that has been wounded and is dying.

As for the story about elephants, my friend — those that carry earth into pits and haul up one that has slipped down by means of a mound of soil — it is extraordinary and strange indeed, and, coming as it does from the books of Juba, seems to command belief as if by royal decree; but being true, it shows that many sea creatures are in no way inferior in sociability and intelligence to the wisest of land animals. But there will perhaps be a separate discussion of their sociability.

Fishermen, seeing that most fish parry the casts of the hook as if by countermoves in wrestling, have turned to force instead, netting them as the Persians do, on the ground that once creatures are caught in a net there is no escape for them through reasoning or cleverness. With casting-nets and creels, grey mullet and rainbow wrasse are caught, as well as mormyrus, sargue, gudgeon, and sea bass; and the fish called ‘the sinkers’ — red mullet, gilthead, and scorpion-fish — they draw in and enclose with trawl-nets and seine-nets. Homer was therefore right to call this class of net the ‘all-catcher.’

But against these too the dogfish have their devices, as does the sea bass: for on perceiving that it is being dragged along, it forcefully splits and pounds the ground, hollowing it out, and once it has made room by the sweeping motions of the net, it thrusts itself in and clings there until the net has passed over.

A dolphin, when it is enclosed and perceives that it has come within the embrace of a seine-net, stays put without being disturbed, but rather rejoices: for it feasts without effort on the abundant fish that are present; but when the net comes near land, it eats through it and departs. But if it fails to escape in time, the first time nothing terrible happens to it — instead the fishermen stitch bulrush cords through its dorsal fin and let it go; and if it is caught again, they punish it with blows, recognizing it by the stitch-marks. This rarely happens, however: for having been pardoned the first time, most dolphins learn their lesson and are careful thereafter not to offend again.

And since there are many further examples of caution, forethought, and evasion, it is worth not passing over that of the cuttlefish. For it has, near its neck, the so-called sac full of a dark fluid, which they call its ‘ink’; and when it is being caught, it discharges this fluid outward, contriving thereby, once the sea has been darkened, to create darkness around itself and so slip out from under and escape the eye of its hunter — imitating the gods of Homer, who often, hidden ‘in a dark cloud,’ spirit away and steal off with those they wish to save.

But enough of these examples. As for their cleverness in attacking and hunting, one can observe the ingenious tricks of many creatures. The starfish, for instance, knowing that whatever it touches dissolves and melts away, relaxes its body and lets itself be touched by whatever swims past or comes near.

You surely know the power of the electric ray, which not only numbs those who touch it directly, but even through the heaviness of the net induces a numbness in the hands of those who take hold of it. Some report, having tested this further, that if it is thrown out still alive and water is poured over it from above, one can feel the numbing effect running up to the hand and dulling the sense of touch, apparently because it is transmitted through the water, which is affected first. Having, then, an innate awareness of this power, the ray never fights anything face to face or takes such a risk; instead, circling around its prey, it scatters its emanations like arrows, first poisoning the water and then, through the water, the creature itself, which is thereby unable either to defend itself or flee, but is caught fast as if bound in chains and grows numb.

The creature called the ‘fisherman’ (angler-fish) is well known to many, and it got its name from what it does — a device which Aristotle says the cuttlefish also employs: it lets down from its neck a tentacle like a fishing-line, one naturally suited to stretch far out when relaxed and to contract back into itself again quite easily when drawn in. So whenever it sees one of the small fish nearby, it lets the fish bite at it, and then little by little draws the line in unnoticed and reels it closer, until the thing that has taken hold comes within reach of its mouth.

As for the octopus’s change of color, Pindar has made it famous, saying: ‘Adapt your mind, above all, to the color of the sea-creature, and mingle with every city [as it appears to each]’; and Theognis likewise: ‘Have the mind of the many-colored octopus, which takes on the appearance of whatever rock it clings to.’ For the chameleon changes color not through any contrivance or in order to hide itself, but simply changes under the influence of fear, being by nature timid and easily startled. This goes along with its being, as Theophrastus says, full of air: for the animal’s whole body is very nearly one great lung, from which one may infer its airy, pneumatic nature, and hence its readiness to change.

With the octopus, however, the change of color is an act, not a passive experience: it changes deliberately, using it as a device to escape the notice of what it fears and to catch what it feeds on; by deceiving them, it catches some creatures that fail to flee, and itself escapes others as they pass by unaware. The claim that it eats its own tentacles is false; but that it fears the moray eel and the conger eel is true, for it suffers badly at their hands, being unable to do anything to them since they slip out of its grasp. Just as, conversely, the spiny lobster easily gets the better of those same eels once they are in its grip — for their smoothness does not help them against its roughness — but is destroyed when the octopus wraps its tentacles around and forces its way in. This cycle and recurring round of chasing and fleeing one another nature has made into a kind of competitive training and practice for them in cunning and intelligence.

Moreover, Aristotle related a certain foreknowledge of winds possessed by the land hedgehog, just as he also marveled at the triangular flight-formation of cranes. I, for my part, offer as evidence not some particular hedgehog from Cyzicus or Byzantium, but all sea-urchins together, which, when they sense that a storm and rough sea are coming, ballast themselves with small pebbles, so that they are not overturned by their own lightness nor swept away once the swell arises, but stay firmly fixed to the little rocks.

The changing of the cranes’ flight-direction against the wind is not peculiar to that one kind of creature: rather, all fish alike, with similar understanding, always swim against the wave and the current, and take care that the wind, if it should come from behind, does not ruffle open their scales and so hurt the body by exposing and roughening it. For this reason they always keep themselves oriented head-on into the current: for the sea, being split in this way along the crown of the head, presses down the gills and, flowing smoothly over the surface, keeps them close and does not raise the roughness. This, then, as I said, is common to fish, with the exception of the ellops (sturgeon): this fish, they say, swims with the wind and current, not fearing the ruffling-up of its scales, since its scales do not overlap toward the tail.

The tuna, moreover, has so keen a sense of the equinoxes and solstices that it can even teach a person, without any need of astronomical tables: for wherever the winter solstice overtakes it, it stays still and remains in the same spot until the equinox. But clever too is the crane’s grasping of a stone, so that when it lets the stone drop, it is repeatedly woken up.

And how much cleverer, my friend, is the case of the dolphin, for which it is not permitted to stand still or cease from motion — its nature is perpetually in motion, and the end of its life and the end of its movement coincide! Whenever it needs sleep, it raises its body up to the surface of the sea, then lets itself sink down on its back through the depths, lulled to sleep by a sort of gentle rocking swell, until it strikes and touches the bottom. Waking up in this way, it darts off with a rush, and once back up at the surface again lets itself sink once more, and so is carried along, contriving for itself a rest mixed together with motion. They say tuna do the same thing, and for the same reason.

Now that I have just finished describing their mathematical foreknowledge of the sun’s turning-points, to which Aristotle is a witness, hear next about their skill in arithmetic. First, though, by Zeus, let me mention their skill in optics, of which even Aeschylus seems to have been aware: for he says somewhere, ‘having turned his left eye aside, like a tuna.’ For tuna are thought to be weak-sighted in one eye; hence, when they enter the Black Sea, they keep the land on their right, and the opposite when they go out — very sensibly and intelligently always relying, for the safety of their body, on their better eye.

As for arithmetic, tuna have needed it, it seems, on account of their sociable and mutually affectionate attachment to one another, and have reached such mastery of that science that, since they thoroughly enjoy being raised and gathering together in schools, they always arrange their numbers into a cube-shaped formation, forming a single solid body out of all of them, bounded by six equal square faces; and they then swim maintaining this formation, so that the whole block presents an even, symmetrical front on every side. At any rate, the tuna-watcher, if he accurately counts the number visible on the surface, can immediately declare the size of the whole school, knowing that its depth is arranged in a rank equal to its breadth and its length. Indeed, it is this schooling behavior that has given the amia its very name, and I think the same is true of the young tuna (pelamys) as well.

As for the other kinds that are seen living together sociably in schools, one could not state their number; rather, we must turn instead to their individual partnerships and forms of cohabitation. Among these is the pinna-guard (pearl-mussel crab), which used up so much of Chrysippus’s ink, holding pride of place in every one of his books, both on natural philosophy and on ethics; for he never learned of the sponge-guard, since he would not have left it out if he had.

The pinna-guard, then, is a crab-like creature, so they say, which lives together with the pinna-mussel and, sitting in front of it, guards the entrance, keeping the shell open and gaping until one of the small fish that they prey on falls in; then it bites the flesh of the pinna, which prompts it to close the shell, and together they eat the catch that has now been enclosed within their fence.

The sponge, meanwhile, is driven by a small creature that is not crab-like but rather resembles a spider; for the sponge is not lifeless, insensate, or bloodless, but, though it is attached to rocks like many other creatures, it has its own motion, internal to itself, one that needs, so to speak, prompting and guidance. Being otherwise porous and left slack in its openings through sluggishness and dullness, whenever some edible thing enters, it closes up and consumes it once its guardian gives the signal. Still more, when a person approaches or touches it, being informed and alerted, it bristles, so to speak, and closes its body up, making it dense and firm, so that cutting it free is easy enough for its harvesters, but slow and laborious.

Purple-shellfish, gathering in colonies, build a comb in common, like bees, in which they are said to breed. They take up the edible mosses and seaweeds clinging to their shells, providing one another a kind of banquet passed round in turn, each grazing on what is on the outside of the next.

And why should one marvel at sociability in such creatures, when even the most unsociable and beastly of all the animals that rivers, lakes, and seas nourish, the crocodile, shows itself remarkably capable of partnership and mutual favor, in its dealings with the plover? For the plover is a bird of the marshes and riverbanks, and it guards the crocodile, not out of its own free provisioning but being fed on the crocodile’s leftovers.

For whenever it perceives, while the crocodile is asleep, that the mongoose is plotting against it, smearing itself with mud and dusting itself off against it like an athlete, it wakes the crocodile with its cries and pecking; and the crocodile has grown so tame toward it that it opens its mouth wide and lets it inside, and takes pleasure as the bird gently picks out and probes with its beak the small scraps of flesh caught between its teeth. And when it has had enough and wants to close its mouth, it tilts its jaw and gives a signal, and does not let it fall shut until the plover, perceiving this, has flown out.

The creature called the ‘pilot-fish’ is small, about the size and shape of a goby, but its surface, on account of the roughness of its scales, is said to resemble a ruffled bird; it always keeps company with one of the great sea-monsters and swims ahead of it, guiding its course, so that it will not run aground on rocks or fall into some shoal or strait from which escape is difficult. For the sea-monster follows it, obediently guided, as a ship follows its rudder.

As for anything else the monster takes into its gaping mouth — animal, boat, or stone — everything sinks in and is at once destroyed and lost; but the pilot-fish it recognizes and takes up inside its mouth, as if it were an anchor. For the pilot-fish sleeps within it, and the sea-monster stands still and lies at rest while it rests; and when the pilot-fish sets out again, the monster follows after, never leaving it by day or by night — or else it wanders aimlessly and goes astray, and many such monsters have perished, driven ashore like rudderless ships. Indeed, we ourselves witnessed such a case near Anticyra not long ago; and it is recorded that earlier, when one ran aground and rotted not far from Bounoi, a plague resulted.

Is it, then, worth comparing to these partnerships and mutual dealings the friendships Aristotle records between foxes and snakes, on account of their having the eagle as a common enemy, or those between bustards and horses, because the birds enjoy coming close to horses and scratching through their dung? For my part, I do not see so great a mutual concern even among bees, or among ants. For they all together promote the common task, but no individual gives any particular thought or care to another individual as such.

We shall see this difference still more clearly if we turn our discussion to the oldest and greatest of social works and duties — those concerning procreation and the rearing of offspring. First, those [fish] that graze in places bordering on lakes, or that take shelter in rivers...

fish that live in the sea near lagoons or in waters fed by rivers, when they are about to give birth, run up into the fresh water, pursuing the gentleness and stillness of the fresh streams; for calm is good for giving birth, and freedom from predators is found together with lagoons and rivers, so that the offspring are preserved. This is why the greatest number of births, and the best, occur around the Euxine Sea; for it does not harbor sea-monsters, but only a scrawny seal and a small dolphin.

Moreover, the mingling of the rivers—since the largest and most numerous empty into the Pontus—provides a mild and suitable blend for those giving birth there. But the case of the anthias is most wonderful, the fish that Homer calls "sacred." Some think that "sacred" here means "large," just as they call a certain bone the "sacred bone" because it is large, and call epilepsy, being a great disease, the "sacred disease"; but others take it, in general use, to mean the fish that is "released" and consecrated.

Eratosthenes seems to mean the chrysophrys, the "golden-browed," when he speaks of a sacred fish with golden eyebrows; many mean the ellops, since it is rare and not easy to catch. It appears often around Pamphylia; whenever the fishermen catch one, they crown themselves and crown their boats, and they are received with clapping and applause and honored as they sail in. But most people believe that the anthias is called sacred, and is in fact sacred, because wherever an anthias is seen there is no dangerous creature about; sponge-divers dive down with confidence when it is present, and fish give birth with confidence, as though they held a guarantee of safety. The reason is hard to determine—whether the predatory creatures flee the anthias, as elephants flee the wild boar and lions flee the cock, or whether the fish, being intelligent and possessed of memory, recognizes and keeps watch for signs of places free of predators.

But the forethought for their offspring is common to all fish that give birth. The males do not eat their own young, but even linger by the spawn, guarding the eggs, as Aristotle has recorded; and those that follow the females sprinkle their milt upon the eggs little by little, for otherwise what is born does not grow large but remains incomplete and stunted. The wrasses, for their part, fashion something like a nest out of seaweed and wrap it around their spawn, sheltering it from the surf.

As for the dogfish, its affection surpasses that of any of the tamest animals in sweetness of disposition and kindness toward its young: it first produces an egg, then the creature not outside but inside itself, and so nourishes and carries it as though from a second birth. When the young grow larger, the mother releases them outside and teaches them to swim nearby; then again she takes them back into herself through her mouth, and offers her body to them as a dwelling place, providing at once room, nourishment, and refuge, until they are able to help themselves.

Wonderful too is the tortoise's care in the matter of birth and the preservation of her offspring. She lays her eggs after coming up close to the sea, but since she cannot brood over them nor stay long on dry land, she buries the eggs in the sand and heaps over them the smoothest and softest part of the beach. When she has covered and hidden them securely, some say that she scratches and marks the spot with her feet, making it recognizable to herself; others say that the female, being turned about by the male, leaves behind distinctive marks and imprints of her own.

But more wonderful still is this: having watched for the fortieth day—for it is in that many days that the eggs are hatched and burst open—she approaches, and each mother, recognizing her own treasure, opens it gladly and eagerly, as no human being opens a chest of gold. As for crocodiles, the rest is much the same, but regarding the location—no reckoning gives a person insight into the cause, nor any process of reasoning; hence they say that the foreknowledge shown by this creature is not rational but divinatory.

For the crocodile lays her eggs neither farther nor nearer than the point to which the Nile, when it rises, will flood and cover the land at that season of the year—so that any farmer who comes upon the eggs both knows for himself and tells others how far the river will advance that year. In this way she has calculated it so precisely that, without the eggs being wetted, she herself, once wetted, may still brood over them.

If the young are stolen, then whichever hatchling, as soon as it emerges, fails to seize something at hand in its mouth—whether a fly, a little worm, a piece of earth, a twig, or a blade of grass—the mother tears it apart and kills it with a bite; but the spirited and active ones she cherishes and looks after, exactly as the wisest of men think proper, apportioning her affection by judgment, not by mere feeling.

And indeed seals give birth on dry land, but little by little they lead their pups forward and give them a taste of the sea, then quickly bring them out again, and they do this repeatedly, in turn, until the young, becoming accustomed in this way, grow confident and come to love the life of the sea. Frogs, for their part, use summoning-calls in their mating, producing the sound called the "ololygon," which is an erotic and nuptial cry. When the male has thus drawn the female to him, they remain together through the night, for they cannot mate in the water, and by day they are afraid to couple on land; but once darkness has fallen, they come forward and mate without fear. At other times they make their voice ring out in anticipation of rain, and this is counted among the most reliable of signs.

But, dear Poseidon, what an absurd and laughable thing has just happened to me, if, while lingering over seals and frogs, the creature most wise and most beloved of the gods among the animals of the sea has escaped me and passed by unmentioned! What nightingales would deserve comparison, for love of music, with the halcyon, or what swallows for love of their young, or what doves for love of their husbands? Or what bees could be compared to it for skill? Whose birth-giving, whose labor and travail has a god so honored?

For they tell that only a single island received the birth-pangs of Leto, but for the halcyon, when she gives birth around the solstice, the god stills the whole sea into windlessness and calm. Hence there is no other creature that people love so much, for whose sake they sail without fear for seven days and seven nights at the very height of winter, considering passage by sea at that time safer than travel by land.

But if I must also say a few words about each of the virtues she possesses: she is so devoted to her husband that she consorts with him and welcomes his company not just at one season but throughout the year, and this is not from wantonness—for she never mates with another at all—but out of goodwill, like a wedded wife, and out of affection. And when the male grows weak and burdensome to accompany because of old age, she takes him up, carries him in his old age and nurtures him, never letting him go nor abandoning him apart, but taking him upon her shoulders she carries him everywhere, tends him, and stays with him until his death.

As for her love of offspring and her concern for the safety of her young, once she perceives that she herself is pregnant, she turns at once to the building of her nest—not kneading mud nor plastering it against walls and roofs as the swallows do, nor using many active parts of her body, as the bee does when it enters into the honeycomb, opening it up, where the six feet, all touching together, divide the whole vessel into hexagonal cells. The halcyon, by contrast, has a single simple instrument, a single tool, a single implement—her mouth—and no other assistant to her industry and skill; what she contrives and constructs with it is hard to credit unless one has observed it with one's own eyes:

the thing molded—or rather built, like a ship—by her, alone among many shapes, resists capsizing and cannot be swamped. For she gathers the spines of the needlefish and puts them together, binding them to one another by weaving them, some straight and some crosswise, as though throwing a weft across a warp, making use of bends and turns through one another, so as to fit them together and produce something round and stable, elongated in shape, resembling a fisherman's weel.

When she has finished it, she carries it and sets it down beside the wash of the wave, where the sea, striking it gently, teaches her to repair and thicken whatever is not well fitted together, as she watches it loosen under the blow, while what is properly joined it compresses and binds fast, so that it becomes hard to break apart or pierce even with stone or iron. No less admirable than this is the symmetry and shape of the cavity of the vessel: for it has been made to admit only that one creature herself as she enters it, while to everything else it is entirely blind and hidden, so that nothing can get inside, from either the land or the sea.

Now I suppose none of you has failed to see the nest; but for my part, having often seen and touched it, I am moved to say and sing, "Once on Delos I beheld such a thing, beside Apollo's shrine"—I mean the horned altar, celebrated among the things called the Seven Sights, because, needing neither glue nor any other binding, it has been fastened and fitted together solely from the right-hand horns. May the god be gracious—being himself something of a musician and an islander—to the celebrated sea-siren, and kindly laugh off those questions which people ask in mockery, asking why Apollo...

...not even knowing... a red mullet... that Aphrodite, near the sea, makes her own rites and sisterhoods, and delights in nothing being slaughtered. At Lepcis the priests of Poseidon eat nothing from the sea at all, while, as you know, the initiates at Eleusis hold the red mullet in reverence, and the priestess of Hera at Argos abstains from it in honor of the creature: for it is the mullets above all that hunt down and consume the sea-hare, which is deadly to man; and for this reason, as creatures friendly to man and life-saving, they enjoy immunity.

And indeed shrines and altars of Artemis Dictynna and of Apollo Delphinius exist among many of the Greeks; but the special place which the god has made his very own is where the descendants of the Cretans dwell, who used a dolphin as their guide—for the god himself did not swim ahead of the expedition, having changed his shape, as the mythographers say, but sent a dolphin to guide the men's voyage and brought them down to Cirrha. It is also recorded that the men sent to Sinope by Ptolemy Soter to fetch the statue of Sarapis, Soteles and Dionysius, when driven off course by a violent wind and carried, against their intention, past Malea with the Peloponnese on their right, then wandering and disheartened,

a dolphin appeared before their prow, as though calling them onward, and led them to safe harbors and to gentle anchorages of that coast where they might rest secure, until, guiding and escorting the ship in this manner, it brought them safely into Cirrha. From this they sacrificed a landing-offering and learned that of the two statues they must take up and carry away that of Pluto, but make a cast of that of Kore and leave it behind. It was likely, then, that the god should also love the creature's love of music—Pindar too, comparing himself to it, says that he is stirred like a sea-dolphin, whom the lovely melody of pipes has roused in the windless swell of the sea.

But it seems rather that its love of humankind is what makes it beloved of the gods: for it alone embraces man simply because he is man. Among land creatures, some cherish no one, and the tamest cherish only those who feed them, out of need—the dog, the horse, the elephant—and those they are used to; swallows, for their part, settle in among us to get what they need, shade and necessary safety, but flee and fear man like a wild beast. But to the dolphin alone, beyond all others, belongs by nature toward men that very thing sought after by the best philosophers—love without need.

For needing nothing at all from man, it is nevertheless well-disposed and friendly to all, and has come to the aid of many. Of these the story of Arion is known to everyone, for it is famous everywhere. But you, my friend, have opportunely reminded me of Hesiod's line: "yet you have not reached the end of your tale"—for in telling the story of the dog one ought not to have left out the dolphins. The dog's testimony was, after all, a mute one—barking, and rushing with cries upon the murderers—

whereas at Nemea, when the body was being tossed about by the sea, dolphins took it up, passing it eagerly one to another, and set it out at Rhium, revealing it slain. Myrsilus of Lesbos records the story of Enalus the Aeolian, who was in love with the daughter of Smintheus, who had been thrown into the sea by the Penthilidae in accordance with an oracle of Amphitrite; and Enalus himself leapt into the sea after her and was carried safe to Lesbos by a dolphin.

And the goodwill and affection of the dolphin toward the boy of Iasus seemed, through its excess, to be love itself: it used to play with him and swim beside him daily, and let itself be touched at close quarters; then, when the boy mounted upon it, it did not flee, but bore him gladly, turning and bending in whatever direction he inclined, while all the people of Iasus would gather together on the shore each time to watch. But once, when a great rainstorm fell together with hail,

the boy, swept off, slipped away and died, and the dolphin, taking him up together with his corpse, drove itself along with him onto the land and would not leave the body until it too died, having judged it right to share in the death of which it seemed to have been, in part, the cause. And a memorial of this misfortune is stamped on the coinage of the people of Iasus: a boy riding upon a dolphin. From this story the tale about Coeranus also gained credence, though it seems fabulous.

Being a Parian by birth, he came upon a catch of dolphins at Byzantium, caught in a seine and in danger of being cut to pieces, and he bought them all and released them. A little while later, as the story goes, he was sailing in a fifty-oared ship carrying men who turned out to be pirates; and in the strait between Naxos and Paros, when the ship capsized and the rest were destroyed, they say that he alone, a dolphin swimming beneath him and buoying him up,

was carried to a cave on Sicinus, which is shown even to this day and is called the Cave of Coeranus. It is said that on this account Archilochus composed the line: "gentle Poseidon spared Coeranus alone of fifty men." And later, when he had died and his relatives were burning his body near the sea, many dolphins appeared along the shore, as though showing themselves come to attend his funeral, and they remained until the rites were completed.

That the shield of Odysseus bore the emblem of a dolphin, Stesichorus too has recorded; and as for the reason, the people of Zacynthus preserve the memory, as Critheus attests: for Telemachus, while still an infant, as they say, slipped into deep water and was saved when dolphins took him up and swam him back to shore; and it was for this reason that his father had the design engraved on his seal and as the ornament of his shield, repaying the creature in kind.

But since I said beforehand that I would tell you no tale at all, and I myself do not know how, in speaking of dolphins, I was carried unawares far beyond what is credible, running aground on Odysseus and Coeranus, I now impose the penalty on myself: I stop, for I am already talking too much. It is open to you, then, gentlemen of the jury, to cast your vote. But we, for our part, have long ago resolved upon the saying of Sophocles: for a speech, even when in dispute with itself, is still...

fashions a middle ground uniting both. For if you two combine what you have said to each other and bring it together into a single argument, you will fight well in common cause against those who would strip animals of reason and understanding.

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