^^■ 



94 Cuvier's Lectures on the Natural Sciences, 



the tirtie of Curius Dentatus, it was a stroke of policy to put to 

 death some of these animals, to lessen the fear which they had at 

 first excited. There were not, however, the same reasons for the 

 second massacre ; but, doubtless, the Romans could not be desirous 

 of introducing elephants into their armies, and thus of altering 

 tactics whose excellence they had proved. As little would they 

 be disposed to present them to the allied kings, from an apprehen- 

 sion of adding too much to their power. Sixty-five years after 

 the triumph of Metellus, in the year 186 before Christ, Marcus 

 Fulvius, to absolve himself from a vow which he had made in the 

 iEtolian war, exhibited panthers and lions. These animals might 

 have come from Africa, or, perhaps, from Asia Minor, where, 

 at this period, they were still found. 



A taste for these spectacles being apparent in the people, 

 Scipio Nasica and Publius Lentulus exhibited many elephants, 

 forty bears, and fifty-three panthers. Quintus Scaevola shewed 

 several lions fighting with men. Sylla exhibited more than a 

 hundred male lions. In the year 38 before Christ, ^milius 

 Scaurus, during his aedileship, distinguished himself, not only 

 by the number of his animals, but still more by shewing many 

 which had never before been seen in Rome. At these spec- 

 tacles the first hippopotamus was seen. There were also five 

 living crocodiles, five hundred panthers, and what appeared more 

 strange, the bones of the animal to which it was said that 

 Andromeda had been exposed. These bones had been brought 

 from the town of Joppa (Jaffa) on the coast of Palestine. There 

 were among them vertebrae a foot and a half long, and a bone not 

 less than six-and-thirty feet in length, probably the lower jaw of a 

 whale. In the year 35 before Christ, Pompey, at the opening of 

 his theatre, exhibited a lynx, a cephus from Ethiopia, (a species 

 of ape,) a single-horned rhinoceros, twenty elephants fighting 

 with men, four hundred and ten panthers, and six hundred lions, 

 whereof three hundred and fifteen had manes. All the sovereigns 

 of Europe could not now produce such a number. Cicero, who 

 was present at these games, speaks of them with great disdain, 

 and says, that the people at last took pity on the elephants. In 

 the year 48 before Christ, Antony exhibited lions harnessed to a 

 chariot ; it was the first time these animals had been so employed, 

 but they were not the first that had been tamed. A Carthaginian, 

 named Hanno, had a lion which followed him through the city 

 like a dog ; but his trouble was ill rewarded, for his countrymen 

 banished him, thinking that a man who could tame a ferocious 

 beast, must possess some secret power, by means of which he 

 might, perhaps, subdue themselves. In the year 46 before Christ, 

 Caesar shewed, in an amphitheatre, covered over with a purple 

 awning, four hundred lions with manes, several wild bulls fighting 

 with men, and twenty elephants, which were attacked by five 

 hundred foot soldiers. On the evening of his triumph, he returned 

 home preceded by elephants bearing torches. 



We may imagine the unbounded riches of the men who could 



