INFLUENCE OJF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 563 



neous nature of substances, their chemical composition, and 

 their mutual affinities. 



The only names which we can bring forward in connection 

 with the study of organic nature, are the anatomist Marinus, 

 Rufus of Ephesus who dissected apes and distinguished 

 between nerves of sensation and of motion, and Galen of 

 Pergamus, who eclipsed all others. The natural history of 

 animals by ^Elian of Prameste, and the poem on fishes by 

 Oppianus of Cilicia, contain scattered notices, but no facts based 

 on personal examination. It is impossible to comprehend how 

 the enormous multitudes of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopo- 

 tamuses, elks, lions, tigers, panthers, crocodiles, and ostriches, 

 which for upwards of four centuries were slain in the Roman 

 circus, should have failed to advance the knowledge of com 

 parative anatomy.* I have already noticed the merit of 

 Dioscorides in regard to the collection and study of plants, 

 and it only remains therefore to observe that his works exer- 

 cised the greatest influence on the botany and pharmaceutical 

 chemistry of the Arabs. The botanical garden of the Roman 

 physician Antonius Castor, who lived to be upwards of a hun- 

 dred years of age, was perhaps laid out in imitation of the 

 botanical gardens of Theophrastes and Mithridates, but it did 

 not in all probability lead to any further advancement in 

 science than did the collection of fossil bones formed by the 

 Emperor Augustus, or the museum of objects and products of 

 nature which has been ascribed on very slight foundation to 

 Apuleius of Madaura.f 



The representation of the contributions made by the epoch of 

 the Roman dominion to cosmical knowledge, would be incom- 

 plete, were I to omit mentioning the great attempt made by 

 Caius Plinius Secundus to comprise a description of the uni- 

 verse in a work consisting of thirty-seven books. In ^the 



* The Numidian Metellus caused 142 elephants to be killed in the 

 circus. In the games which Pompey gave, 600 lions and 406 panthers 

 were assembled. Augustus sacrificed 3500 wild beasts in the national 

 festivities, and a tender husband laments that he could not celebrate the 

 day of his wife's death by a sanguinary gladiatorial fight at Verona, 

 " because contrary winds had detained in port the panthers which had 

 been bought in Africa !" (Plin., Epist., vi. 34.) 



t See p. 557. Yet Apuleius, as Cuvier remarks (Hist, des Sciences 

 naturelles, t. i. p. 287), was the first to describe accurately the bony 

 hook in the second and third stomach of the Aplysiae. 

 2 o2 



