History of the Rhinoceros 85 



its nose, it is provided with another smaller horn on its neck. This 

 proves that he must have read about a two-horned rhinoceros, for the 

 specimen shipped to Portugal was the single-horned species of India. 

 Martial, in one of his epigrams (Sped. Ep. XXII), has the verse, 

 "namque gravem gemino cornu sic extulit ursum." As long as the fact 

 of a two-horned rhinoceros was not yet scientifically established, — 

 and Dr. Parsons was one of the first to point it out, — the critics of 

 Martial felt greatly embarrassed over the statement that a rhinoceros 

 with double horn 1 should have lifted a bear, and arbitrarily changed 

 the verse in various ways to get around the double horn. Durer no 

 doubt had this passage in mind, and accepted it as a fact. Nobody at 

 that time, however, knew the location of the second horn: thus it found 

 its place on the neck. 2 This case is very instructive, for the Chinese 



1 The two-horned African rhinoceros is figured on the bronze coins of Emperor 

 Domitian and on Alexandrian coins of the same emperor (Imhoof-Blumer and Kel- 

 ler, Tier- und Pflanzenbilder auf Monzen und Gemmen, Plate IV, 8), and unmis- 

 takably referred to by Pausanias (/. c), who describes it as having the one horn on 

 the extremity of its nose, the other, not very large, above the latter. The struggle 

 between bear and rhinoceros is represented on a pottery lamp from Labicum, which is 

 reproduced in Fig. 7 after O. Keller (Tiere des classischen Altertums, p. 118, 

 Innsbruck, 1887), in order to illustrate the affinity of this creature with the "hog-like " 

 rhinoceros of the Chinese (Fig. 6). Durer 's picture formerly led astray many a 

 student of classical antiquity by giving the impression that a horn was really growing 

 up from the animal's back. Thus S. Bochart, in his Hierozoicon (p. 931, Lugduni 

 Batavorum, 1692), a learned treatise on the animals mentioned in the Bible, makes 

 the following observation with reference to the verse of Martial above quoted: 

 "Frustra etiam id observatur, Rhinocerotem geminum habere cornu. Alterum enim 

 est in dorso, quo ursum extulisse dici non potest. Itaque ad illud cornu non pertinent 

 haec poetae: gemino cornu sic extulit ursum." It was Bochart who proposed several 

 conjectures tending to ameliorate Martial's text. Johannes Beckmann (De historia 

 naturali veterum libellus primus, p. 129, Petropoli et Goettingae, 1766) was the first 

 to point out emphatically the actual truth in the matter, in these words: "Sed non 

 soli philologi, verum etiam physici duo cornua neglectis illis veterum locis [i.e., the 

 passages of Martial and Pausanias] negarunt Rhinoceroti; uti Scheuchzerus, Peyerus. 

 Consultius fuisset nee affirmare nee negare. Hodie enim auctoritatibus gravissi- 

 morum virorum satis probatum est, esse Rhinocerotes etiam bicornes, qui cornu 

 alterum non in fronte, non in dorso, sed etiam in nare habent." In view of our sub- 

 ject, it is of especial interest to us to note that this truth was generally recognized in 

 Europe as late as the latter part of the eighteenth century, while Chinese authors were 

 well informed on the subject from the beginning of our era. 



2 It has recently been asserted (compare the notice of S. Reinach, Retoue archeo- 

 logique, 19 13, p. 105) that the rhinoceros on a marble relief of Pompeii (Fig. 3; repro- 

 duced also by Reinach, Repertoire de reliefs, Vol. Ill, p. 93; and O. Keller, Die 

 antike Tierwelt, Vol. I, p. 388) is an exact copy of the wood-engraving by Durer and 

 accordingly the work of a forger. This point of view seems to me inadmissible, and I 

 concur with Reinach in the view that a common antique model may have been handed 

 down by the illustrators of the bestiaries. The most striking coincidence between 

 the rhinoceros of Pompeii and that of Durer is the location of the second horn on the 

 neck. This argument, however, is not cogent in establishing a close interdependence 

 of the two; for also in China, on a picture of Yen Li-pen of the T'ang period (Fig. 11), 

 the rhinoceros appears with a horn on its neck, and with scales on its body. As the 

 artists all over the world were so much puzzled as to where to place the horn or horns, 

 it is perfectly conceivable that Durer, solely guided by his reading of ancient writers, 

 even without having recourse to an antique pictorial representation, worked out his 



