Читать книгу The Natural History of Pliny (Vol. 1-6) - Pliny the Elder - Страница 409

Table of Contents

In Italy also it is believed that there is a noxious influence in the eye of a wolf; it is supposed that it will instantly take away the voice of a man,1733 if it is the first to see him. Africa and Egypt produce wolves of a sluggish and stunted nature;1734 those of the colder climates are fierce and savage. That men have been turned into wolves, and again restored to their original form,1735 we must confidently look upon as untrue, unless, indeed, we are ready to believe all the tales, which, for so many ages, have been found to be fabulous. But, as the belief of it has become so firmly fixed in the minds of the common people, as to have caused the term “Versipellis”1736 to be used as a common form of imprecation, I will here point out its origin. Euanthes, a Grecian author of no mean reputation, informs us that the Arcadians assert that a member of the family of one Anthus is chosen by lot, and then taken to a certain lake in that district, where, after suspending his clothes on an oak, he swims across the water and goes away into the desert, where he is changed into a wolf and associates with other animals of the same species for a space of nine years. If he has kept himself from beholding a man during the whole of that time, he returns to the same lake, and, after swimming across it, resumes his original form, only with the addition of nine years in age to his former appearance. To this Fabius1737 adds, that he takes his former clothes as well. It is really wonderful to what a length the credulity1738 of the Greeks will go! There is no falsehood, if ever so barefaced, to which some of them cannot be found to bear testimony.

So too, Agriopas, who wrote the Olympionics,1739 informs us that Demænetus, the Parrhasian, during a sacrifice of human victims, which the Arcadians were offering up to the Lycæan1740 Jupiter, tasted the entrails of a boy who had been slaughtered; upon which he was turned into a wolf, but, ten years afterwards, was restored to his original shape and his calling of an athlete, and returned victorious in the pugilistic contests at the Olympic games.

It is also commonly supposed, that the tail of this animal contains a small lock of hair, which possesses an amatory power; and that when the creature is caught, this hair is shed by it, but has no virtue whatever, unless it is procured from the animal while alive.1741 It is said that these animals couple for no more than twelve days in the year;1742 and that when pressed by hunger they will eat earth. Among the points of augury, to have our progress cut short to the right by a wolf, if at the time its mouth is full, is the best of omens. There is a species, which is known as the stag-wolf, such as we have already said1743 were brought from Gaul and exhibited in the Circus by Pompeius Magnus. It is said, that however hungry this animal may chance to be, if it only turns its head while eating, it immediately becomes oblivious of the food that is before it, and takes its departure to seek it elsewhere.1744