Chap. 4.] FOEMS OF THE TEITONS, ETC. 363 



represented. Xor yet is the figure generally attributed to the 

 nereids-^ at all a fiction ; only in them, the portion of the body 

 that resembles the human figure is still rough all over with 

 scales. For one of these creatures was seen upon the same 

 shores, and as it died, its plaintive murmurs were heard even 

 by the inhabitants at a distance. The legatus of Gaul,-'^ too, 

 wrote word to the late Emperor Augustus that a considerable 

 number of nereids had been foimd dead upon the sea-shore. I 

 have, too, some distinguished informants of equestrian rank, 

 who state that they themselves once saw in the ocean of Gades 

 a sea-man,-^ which bore in every part of his body a perfect re- 

 semblance to a human being, and that during the night he 

 would climb up into ships ; upon which the side of the vessel 

 where he seated himself would instantly sink downward, and 

 if he remained there any considerable time, even go under 

 water. 



In the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, a subsidence of the 

 ocean left exposed on the shores of an island which faces the 

 province of Lugdunum'^ as many as three hundred animals or 

 more, all at once, quite marvellous for their varied shapes and 

 enormous size, and no less a number upon the shores of the 



have exhibited them, or asserted that they have seen them. '^ It was only 

 last year," he says, " that all London was resorting to see a wonderful sight 

 in what is commonly called a mermaid. I myself had the opportunity of 

 examining a very similar object : it was the body of a child, in the mouth 

 of which they had introduced the jaws of a sparus [probably our " gilt- 

 head]," while for the legs was substituted the body of a lizard. The body 

 of the London mermaid," he says, " was that of an ape, and a fish attached 

 to it supplied the place of the hind legs." 



23 Primarily the nereids were sea-nymphs, the daughters of Nereus and 

 Doris. Dalechamps informs us, that "Alexander ab Alexandro states that 

 he once saw a nereid that had been thrown ashore on the coasts of the 

 Peloponnesus, that Trapezuntius saw one as it was swimming, and that 

 Draconetus Bonifacius, the Neapolitan, saw a triton that had been pre- 

 served in honey, and which many had seen when taken alive on the coast 

 of Epirus. "We may here remark, that the triton is the same as our " mer- 

 man," and the nereid is our " mermaid." 



-* Of Gallia Lugdunensis, namely. The legatus was also called " rec- 

 tor," and " propraetor." 



25 Or " mer-man," as we call it. Dalechamps, in his note, with all the 

 credulity of his time, states that a similar sea-man had been captured, it 

 was said, in the preceding age in Norway, and that another had been seen 

 in Poland, dressed like a bishop, in the year 1531. Juvenal, in his 14tk 

 Satire, makes mention of the " monsters of the ocean, and the youths of the 

 sea." 26 See B. iv. c. 31, 32. 



