378 SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



THE GREAT SEA SERPENT. 



THE belief in the existence of sea serpents of formidable, 

 dimensions is of great antiquity. Aristotle, writing about 

 B.C. 340, says* : " The serpents of Libya are of an enor- 

 mous size. Navigators along that coast report having seen 

 a great quantity of bones of oxen, which they believe, 

 without doubt, to have been devoured by the serpents. 

 These serpents pursued them when they left the shore, and 

 upset one of their triremes " a vessel of a large class, 

 having three banks of oars. 



Pliny tells us | that a squadron sent by Alexander the 

 Great on a voyage of discovery, under the command of 

 Onesicritus and Nearchus, encountered, in the neighbour- 

 hood of some islands in the Persian Gulf, sea serpents 

 thirty feet long, which filled the fleet with terror. 



Valerius Maximus,J quoting Livy, describes the alarm 

 into which, during the Punic wars, the Romans, under 

 Attilius Regulus (who was afterwards so cruelly put to 

 death by the Carthaginians), were thrown by an aquatic, 

 though not marine, serpent which had its lair on the 

 banks of the Bagrados, near Ithaca. It is said to have 

 swallowed many of the soldiers, after crushing them in 

 its folds, and to have kept the army from crossing the 

 river, till at length, being invulnerable by ordinary weapons, 

 it was destroyed by heavy stones hurled by balistas, 

 catapults, and other military engines used in those days 

 for casting heavy missiles, and battering the walls of 



' History of Animals,' book 8, cha-. 28. 

 t Naturalis Historic, lib. vi., cap. 23. 

 \ De Factis, Dictisque Memorabtlibus, lib. i., cap. 8, 1st century. 



