CHAPTER XII

AELIAN^ SOLINUS AND HORAPOLLO
Aelian On the Nature of Animals — General character of the work — Its hodge-podge of unclassified detail — Solinus in the middle ages — His date — General character of his work; its relation to Pliny — Animals and gems — Occult medicine — Democritus and Zoroaster not regarded as magicians — Some bits of astrology — Alexander the Great — The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo — Marvels of animals — Animals and as- trology— The cynocephalus — Horapollo the cosmopolitan.
From mystic and theurgic compositions we return to works of the declining Roman Empire which deal more directly with nature but, it must be confessed, in a manner somewhat fantastic. About the beginning of the third century, Aelian of Praeneste, who is included by Philostratus in his Lives of the Sophists, wrote On the Nature of Animals} Its seventeen books, written in Greek, which Aelian used flu- ently despite his Latin birth, are believed to have reached us partly in interpolated form through two families of manuscripts, of which the older and less interpolated text is found in a thirteenth century manuscript at Paris and a somewhat earlier Vatican codex.^ A number of its chap- ters are similar to and perhaps borrowed from Pliny's Natural History; at any rate they are commonplaces of an- cient science ; but the work also has a marked individuality. Parallels have also been noted between this work and the later Hexaemeron of the church father Basil. Aelian was much cited in Byzantine literature and learning, and if he was not directly used in the Latin west, at least the attitude
* Ilepi fciwv IStoTT/Tos. I have used henceforth be cited without title both the editio princeps by Gesner, in the notes. Zurich, 1556, and the critical edi- tion by R. Hercher, Paris, 1858, * See PW, and Christ, Gesch. d. and Teubner, 1864. The work will griech. Litt., for further details.
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CHAP.xii AELIAN, SOLINUS, AND HORAPOLLO 323
toward animals which he displays and his selection of mate- rial concerning them are as apt precursors of medieval Latin as of medieval Greek scientific literature.
In preface and epilogue Aelian himself adequately indi- General cates the character of his work. He is impressed by the of^^^g ^^ customs and characteristics of animals, and marvels at their work, wisdom and native shrewdness, their justice and modesty, their affection and piety, which should put human beings to blush. Thus Aelian's work is marked by that tendency which runs through ancient and medieval literature to ad- mire actions in the irrational brutes which seem to indicate almost human intelligence and virtue on their part, and to moralize therefrom at the expense of human beings. An- other striking feature of his work is its utterly whimsical and haphazard order. He mentions things simply as they happen to occur to him. This fact, too, he recognizes, but refuses to apologize for, stating that it suits him, if it does not suit anyone else, and that he regards a mixed-up order as more motley, variegated, and pleasing. Not only does he attempt no classification whatever of his animals and mention snakes and quadrupeds and birds in the same breath ; he also does not complete the treatment of a given animal in one passage but may scatter detached items about it through- out his work. There is, for instance, probably at least one