CHAPTER XII
ÆLIAN—THE MACEDONIAN INVENTION, OR THE FIRST MENTION OF AN ARTIFICIAL FLY
“They knew ’e stole; ’e knew they knowed; They did not tell, or make a fuss, But winked at Ælian down the road, And ’e winked back—the same as us!”[426]
Ælian (170-230 a.d.), who, though born in Italy and brought up in the Latin tongue, acquired so complete a command of Greek that he could speak it as well as an Athenian gentleman (hence his sobriquet μελίγλωττος), composed his works in Greek.
His Natural History[427] soon became a standard work on Zoology, although in arrangement it is very defective: for instance, he skips from elephants (XI. 15) to dragons in the very next chapter, and from the livers of mice in II. 56 to the uses of oxen in II. 57. This treatment of things, ποικίλα ποικίλως, is asserted by the author to be intentional, so as to avoid boring the reader. For his part he avows that he prefers observing the habits of animals and fish, listening to the nightingale, or studying the migration of cranes, to heaping up riches![428]
(a) FISHERMAN AND SON. (b) SON SALUTING WAYSIDE HERMES.
From a Greek vase in Vienna. R. Schneider, Arch. epig. Mitth., iii., Pl. 3.