96 Cuvier's Lectures on the Natural Sciences. 



order of that emperor. On this precious relic, which was dis- 

 covered at Palestrina, the ancient Praeneste, the animals of Egypt 

 and Ethiopia are figured, with their names written under each. 

 The lower part represents the inundation of the Nile. The forms 

 of the ibis, the crocodile, and the hippopotamus, are given with 

 great exactness ; but the hippopotamus is very ill described by 

 the Roman naturalists, who have done nothing else than copy the 

 passage in Herodotus. On the upper part of the mosaic, we see, 

 among the mountains of Ethiopia, the giraife, under the name of 

 nabis ; apes, and various reptiles ; in all, thirty animals, easily 

 recognized, and whose nomenclature is thus determined. 



Antoninus, the successor of Adrian, conforming to the esta- 

 blished custom, likewise exhibited games, in which were crocodiles, 

 hippopotamuses, strepsiceroses, (Nubian antelopes,) and hj^aenas, 

 different from those described by Agatarchis. 



Marcus Aurelius abhorred such spectacles ; but his son, Com- 

 modus, resumed them eagerly: with his own hand he slew a 

 tiger, a hippopotamus, and an elephant. He let loose in the circus 

 a great number of ostriches, and, as they ran about, shot off their 

 heads, with crescent-shaped blades fixed on the points of arrows. 

 Herodian, who relates the fact, says, that the birds, after being 

 decapitated, continued running about for some time : the experiment 

 has been successfully repeated on ducks. Septimius Severus, in 

 the tenth year of his reign, during the fetes on the marriage of 

 Caracalla, let four hundred animals out of a machine, amongst 

 which were some wild asses, and bisons. At the marriage of 

 Heliogabalus, there were chariots drawn by all kinds of wild beasts. 



The most expensive and most curious collections of animals 

 were those of the Gordians. The first emperor of this name, in 

 one day, exposed to view a thousand panthers. Probus, one of 

 their successors, had trees planted in the circus, and more 

 than a thousand ostriches, and a countless throng of different 

 animals, were seen running about in this artificial forest. 



So long as the Roman empire existed in the west, similar 

 exhibitions were continued ; and, in spite of the prohibitions 

 of Constantino, there were some even under Christian emperors. 

 Theodosius gave a fight of animals in the circus; and even 

 Justinian exhibited in the amphitheatre twenty lions and thirty 

 panthers. 



Such sights, continued uninterruptedly for more than four 

 hundred years, must have afforded the Roman naturalists opportu- 

 nities of making numerous observations on the form, habits, and 

 organization of foreign animals ; yet science received little from 

 their labours. It seems, that the animals, once killed, were applied 

 to no farther use ; which is proved by the fact, that all the 

 writers of the first, second, and third centuries of the Christian 

 era, who have treated on this subject, have borrowed every thing 

 th^y say from Greek authors, who lived before the Roman con- 

 quest. Pliny himself is a mere compiler. 



