Noctes Atticae

That Homer in his poems and Herodotus in his Histories spoke differently of the nature of the lion.

HERODOTUS, in the third book of his Histories, has left the statement that lionesses give birth but once during their whole life, and at that one birth that

they never produce more than one cub. His words in that book are as follows: [*](iii. 108.)

But the lioness, although a strong and most courageous animal, gives birth once only in her lifetime to one cub; for in giving birth she discharges her womb with the whelp.

Homer, however, says that lions (for so he calls the females also, using the masculine or

common

(epicene) gender, as the grammarians call it) produce and rear many whelps. The verses in which he plainly says this are these: [*](Iliad, xvii. 133.)

1. He stood, like to a lion before its young,
2. Beset by hunters in a gloomy wood
3. And leading them away.

In another passage also he indicates the same thing: [*](Iliad, xviii. 318.)

1. With many a groan, like lion of strong beard,
2. From which a hunter stole away its young
3. Amid dense woods.

Since this disagreement and difference between the most famous of poets and the most eminent of historians troubled me, I thought best to consult that very thorough treatise which the philosopher Aristotle wrote On Animals. And what I find that he has written there upon this subject I shall include in these notes, in Aristotle's own language. [*](The passage is not quoted; see critical note. Aristotle tells us that the lioness gives birth to young every year, usually two, at most six, sometimes only one. The current idea that the womb is discharged with the young is absurd; it arose from the fact that lions are rare and that the inventor of the story did not know the real reason, which is that their habitat is of limited extent. The lionesses in Syria give birth five times, producing at first five cubs, then one less at each successive birth.)

That the poet Afranius wisely and prettily called Wisdom the daughter of Experience and Memory.

THAT was a fine and true thought of the poet Afranius about the birth of Wisdom and the means of acquiring it, when he said that she was the daughter of Experience and Memory. For in that way he shows that one who wishes to be wise in human affairs does not need books alone or instruction in rhetoric and dialectics, but ought also to occupy and train himself in becoming intimately acquainted with and testing real life, and in firmly fixing in his memory all such acts and events; and accordingly he must learn wisdom and judgment from the teaching of actual experience, not from what books only, or masters, through vain words and fantasies, have foolishly represented as though in a farce or a dream. The verses of Afranius are in a Roman comedy called The Chair:[*](298, Ribbeck3.)

1. My sire Experience was, me Memory bore,
2. In Greece called Sophia, Wisdom in Rome.

There is also a line of Pacuvius to about the same purport, which the philosopher Macedo, a good man and my intimate friend, thought ought to be written over the doors of all temples: [*](348, Ribbeck3.)

1. I hate base men who preach philosophy.

For he said that nothing could be more shameful or insufferable than that idle, lazy folk, disguised with beard and cloak, should change the character and advantages of philosophy into tricks of the tongue and of words, and, themselves saturated with vices, should eloquently assail vice.