The Lion 79 



the king's chariot, and fought as the Greek mastiffs (the 

 dogs of Molossos) did at Marathon, or those of the British 

 during Caesar's invasion. Herodotus (" Polymnia ") states 

 that when Xerxes' hordes were moving in the country that 

 lay between the rivers Nestos in Abedra, and Achelous 

 of Acarnania, the camel trains suffered much loss from 

 the attacks of these animals. He informs us that their 

 range was restricted to this district, and expresses his 

 surprise that camels, being creatures that these lions 

 had never seen and might have been supposed to shun, 

 were their especial victims. After Herodotus, when the 

 Greeks began to write about everything that attracted 

 their attention, much was said in one way or another 

 concerning lions, but it amounted to no more than the 

 little that can be found in Roman archives. It really 

 seems as if classic writers left out on purpose everything 

 that one would have cared most to know. Not even the 

 minute and laborious scholarship of the sixteenth century, 

 devoted as it mainly was to the explication of antiquity, has 

 succeeded in extracting from these records any informa- 

 tion which is at all commensurate with the opportunities 

 afforded for observation in ancient times. The lion occu- 

 pied an exceptional position then as now ; he was a fav- 

 orite subject for poetic allusion, for epigram, and rhetorical 

 flourishes. But his character was as much a conventional 

 one at that time as it is at present. This may be also 

 seen in art, where, whether sculptured and painted, or set 

 in mosaics, he was depicted in what were supposed to 

 be characteristic attitudes from Persepolis and the rock 

 tablets of Kaf to the Sea of Darkness, and from the 



