306 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 286. 



town where his death from illness took place, and 

 treats the story of his suicide as a mere report : 



" De cujus morte multimodis apud plerosque scriptum 

 «st : sed nos eundem potissimiim Thupydidem auctorem 

 probamus : qui illuin ait Magnesias morbo mortuum : ne- 

 que negat, fuisse famam, veneuum sua sponte sumpsisse." 

 — Themistocks, cap. x. 



Lastly, Cicero accounts for the tradition on the 

 ground of the opportunity which it afforded for 

 rhetorical display, and the prosaic nature of the 

 actual fact : 



" Hunc isti aiunt, cum taurum iramolavisset, excepisse 

 sanguinem patera, et eo poto, mortuum concidisse. Hanc 

 enim mortem rhetorics, et tragice ornare potuerunt : ilia 

 mors vulgaris nullum prsebebat materiem ad ornatum." 

 — De CLir. Orat, cap. xii. 



I think that a consideration of these authorities, 

 without fiirther discussion of the corrupted pas- 

 sage from Sophocles, will lead to the case of 

 Themistocles being given up. That of Hannibal 

 appears still more improbable. The general be- 

 lief is, that this warrior, upon learning that Prus- 

 sias, king of Bithynia, had invested the house in 

 ■which he had taken refuge, destroyed himself by 

 means of poison which he carried about with him 

 in his ring, so as to be prepared for such an emer- 

 gency (" Venenum quod semper secum habere 

 consueverat, sumsit." — Cor. NepJ). If this was 

 not the case, it will require to be explained how, 

 under the circumstances, he contrived to obtain 

 the bull's blood for the purpose ; unless, indeed, 

 the poison in his ring were a concentrated prepa- 

 ration from that liquid, resembling in its effects 

 the prussic acid of modern chemistry. 



The evidence of Pliny is very unsatisfactory. 

 It is true that he speaks of bull's blood as a poison, 

 but asserts that it is innocuous at ^gira : 



" Taurinus quidem recens inter venena est, excepta 

 ^gira. Ibi enim sacerdos Terrae vaticinatura, tauri san- 

 guinem bibit, priusquam in specum descendat." — Nat. 

 Hist, lib. xxviii. 41. 



He places also the blood of the horse in the 

 same category : 



" Damnatur equinum, tantum inter venena : ideo fla- 

 mini sacrorum equum tangere non licet, cum Komae 

 publicis sacris equus etiam immoletur." — Ibid. 40. 



Pausania?, too, speaks (Achaica, xxv.) of an an- 

 cient temple of deep-bosomed Terra at Gasus, in 

 Achaia, of which a woman was perpetual priestess. 

 She was required to remain chaste after her elec- 

 tion, and trial was occasionally made of her con- 

 tinence by causing her to drink bull's blood ; if it 

 appeared from this test that she had lapsed, she 

 immediately expiated the offence by death. We 

 are not informed by what effects she was assumed 

 to be guilty ; but should suppose that the blood 

 might or might not coagulate, according to cir- 

 cumstances, and so a test be obtained ; like the 

 ordeals of the Middle Ages, sufficiently invariable 



in its action to have led to its use as a judicial 

 criterion. 



Passing on to modern dissertations on the sub- 

 ject, the theory of M. Salverte is not unworthy of 

 notice : 



" Experience has proved that the blood of bulls does 

 not contain any deleterious property. But in the East, 

 and some of the Grecian temples, they possessed the secret 

 of composing a beverage which couldprocure a speedy and 

 an easy death ; and which, from its dark red colour, had 

 received the name of ' bull's blood,' a name unfortunately 

 expressed in the literal sense by the Greek historians. 

 Such is my conjecture, and I trust a plausible one. We 

 shall also, by and by, see how the same blood of Nessus, 

 which was given to a pretended love-philter, was taken 

 in a literal sense by some mythologists who might have 

 been set right by the vei-y accounts of it which they 

 copied. The blood of the Hydra of Lerna, in which Her- 

 cules's arrows being dipped, rendered the wounds they 

 inflicted mortal, seems to me to signify nothing more than 

 that it was one of those poisons which archers in every 

 age have been accustomed to make use of in order to 

 render the wounds of their arrows more deadly. And 

 again, we have a modern instance of the same equivo- 

 cation. Near Basle is cultivated a wine which has re- 

 ceived the name of Blood of the Swiss ; not only from its 

 deep colour, but from the circumstance of its bemg grown 

 on a field of battle, the scene of Helvetian valour. Who 

 knows but, in a future day, some literal translator may 

 convert those patriots, who every j'ear indulge in ample 

 libations of the 'Blood of the Swiss' at their civic feasts, 

 into anthropophagi ? " — Philosophy of Mayic, vol. i. p. 41. 



So have we the resin dragon's-blood, and the herbs 

 adder's-tongue, colt's-foot, horsetail, &c. 



Voltaire treats the whole matter as fictitious, 

 and adduces his own experience as to the harm- 

 lessness of the sanguinary draught : 



" Repetons souvent des verites utiles. II y a toujours 

 eu moins d'empoisonnements qu'on ne I'a dit ; il en est 

 presque com me des parricides. Les accusations ont ^ti^ 

 communes, et ces crimes ont e'te tres-rares. Une preuve, 

 c'est qu'on a pris long-temps pour poison ce qui n'en est 

 pas. Combien de princes se sont defaits de ceux qui leur 

 etoient suspects en leur fesant boire du sang du taureau ! 

 Combien d'autres princes en ont avale pour ne point 

 tomber dans les mains de leuvs ennemis 1 Tous les his- 

 toriens anciens, et meme Plutarche, I'attestent. 



" J'ai ete tant berce de ces contes dans mon enfance, 

 qu'h, la fin j'ai fait saigner un de mes taureaux dans I'ide'e 

 que son sang m'appartenoit, puis qu'il ^toit ne dans mon 

 Stable (ancienne pre'tention dont je ne discute pas ici la 

 validite) ; je bus de ce sang comme Atr^e, et Mdlle de 

 Vergi. II ne me fit pas plus de mal que le sang de cheval 

 n'en fait aux Tartares, et que le boudin ne nous en fait 

 tous les jours, surtout lors qu'il n'est pas trop gras. 



" Pourquoi le sang de taureau serait-il un poison quand 

 le sang de bouquetin passe pour un remfede ? Les pay- 

 sans de mon canton avalent tous les jours du sang de 

 bceuf qu'ils appellent de \a. fricassee; celui de taureau 

 n'est pas plus dangereux. Soyez sur, cher leeteur, que 

 Th^mistocle n'en mourut pas." — Diet, Fhilosophique 

 (Empoisonnements). 



Similar opinions were expressed by Sir Henry 

 Halford in an erudite paper on the poisons of the 

 ancients, read in 1832 at the annual Conversazione 

 of the College of Physicians. In this interesting 

 dissertation — not included, it is to be regretted. 



