II] OF COWS AND OXEN 185 



eyed), and that a kind of large grape is called 

 5 humamma (cow's udder). I know, too, that Jupiter 

 chose to assume the form of a bull when, being in 

 love with Europa, he carried her from Phoenicia 

 across the sea ; that it was a bull who saved Nep- 

 tune's children by Menalippa when they were babies 

 from being trampled in a cattle-pen under the feet 

 of a herd; and, lastly, that from its putrid corpse 

 spring the sweet bees, mothers of honey — whence 

 the Greeks call bees bugenes (i3oy7fver^ = ox-born). We 

 have it recorded in writing that an ox spoke plainer 

 Latin than did Hirrius ^ at Rome in the Senate after 

 he had been elected praetor. 



But do not be uneasy, I will give you as much 

 satisfaction as the man who wrote the ** Bugonia " ^ 

 could have done. 



' The text here is hopelessly corrupt. No plausible emenda- 



n has ever been proposed — and no story concerning either 

 Plautius (?) Hirrius or an ox is known which seems to apply 

 even remotely to anything in the text. Planius might easily 

 have been corrupted to plautius. I have translated planius. 

 The speaking of an ox was a common prodigy. Cf. Livy, 

 XXXV, 21 : Et, quod maxime terrebat, Consulis Cn. Domitii 

 hcrvem locutum: Roma Cave tihi, etc. Cf. Pliny, viii, 45: Est 

 frequens in prodigiis priscorum bovevi locutum : quo nuntiato 



natum sub dio haberi solitum. 

 Bugoniam. Keil quotes Hieronymus in Euseb. Chron. : 

 Eumelusy qui bugoniam et Europam . . . composuit, and thinks 

 with Scaliger and others that the bugonia was a poem in praise 

 of bees. There seems to be no evidence to support this, and 

 '^of/yovta must surely mean " the begetting of oxen" (cf. Qr\\v- 



yta, Oioyovia, etc.), not the birth (of bees) from oxen. 



The words are, of course, connected with § 2 : Vide quid 



I 



