), imply either speed or ferocity. And what must we understand under the latter term? We must look to the context. It is of a god speaking of himself and of his attributes. He is proud of them, and certainly does not wish them to be taken in a bad sense. Nor is it necessary that we should do so. We have only to remember what we learnt at school.
Cicero (de Sen., 10, 33) contrasts the ‘ferocitas juvenum,’ the high pluck of the young, with the ‘infirmitas puerorum,’ and the ‘gravitas’ and ‘maturitas’ of later periods of life.
Livy uses the term ferox, in the same sense as Cicero.
What we have to understand of the Egyptian expression is, ‘mettlesome, of high, unbridled spirit.’
In the later texts the Bennu bird has been substituted for the beasts of the chase.
[3.] The later texts read
, but all the earlier ones give another word