Ὀρθοστάδην ἄκαμπτος ὑπνώττων μένει.
v. 106, &c.
Solinus introduced the same fable into his Polyhistor; and Dicuil, the Irish commentator of the ninth century, who had an opportunity of seeing the elephant sent by Haroun Alraschid as a present to Charlemagne[56] in the year 802, corrects the error, and attributes its perpetuation to the circumstance that the joints in the elephant’s leg are not very apparent, except when he lies down.[57]
It is a strong illustration of the vitality of error, that the delusion thus exposed by Dicuil in the ninth century, was revived by Matthew Paris in the thirteenth; and stranger still, that Matthew not only saw but made a drawing of the elephant presented to King Henry III. by the King of France in 1255, in which he nevertheless represents the legs as without joints.[58]
In the numerous mediæval treatises on natural history, known under the title of Bestiaries, this delusion regarding the elephant is often repeated; and it is given at length in a metrical version of the Physiologus of Theoraldus, amongst the Arundel Manuscripts in the British Museum.[59]
With the Provençal song writers, the helplessness of the fallen elephant was a favourite simile, and amongst others Richard de Barbezieux, in the latter half of the twelfth century, sung,[60]
“Atressi cum l’olifans
Que quan chai no s’ pot levar.”