82 Wild Beasts 



creatures that they might be expected to do little injury 

 if they got out of their cages in the presence of a crowd. 

 When, writes Plutarch, the city of Megara was stormed by 

 Calamus, their keepers or the authorities loosed those 

 lions kept for the games — "opened their dens, and un- 

 chained them in the streets to stop the enemy's onslaught. 

 But instead of that they fell upon the citizens and tore 

 them in such a manner that their very foes were struck 

 with horror." Another curious comment upon the timid 

 and retiring behavior of these animals is found in the fact 

 that while they were protected in Africa (preserved for the 

 spectacles) by cruel game laws which deprived people of 

 the natural right of self-defence, the loss of life in that 

 province was so great that it excited compassion even in 

 Rome, and finally led to the mitigation of these statutes 

 by Honorius, and their final abolition during the reign of 

 Justinian. 



Moffat ( " Missionary Labors and Scenes in South 

 Africa " ) had the reputation of knowing more about lions 

 than almost any one else, and it was his opinion that eying 

 them was a very questionable proceeding. Both he and 

 Andersson ("The Lion and the Elephant") say that this 

 experiment may sometimes apparently succeed, but "un- 

 der ordinary circumstances" a hungry lion "does not 

 spend any time gazing on the human eye . . . but takes 

 the easiest and most expeditious means of making a meal 

 of a man." It is not very often that things so arrange 

 themselves as to give any one a chance to try what effect 

 can be produced in this way ; still everything that could 

 happen has happened, and combining what follows with 



