BOOK VIII. xvni. 46-xix. 48 



haired kind ; the latter despise wounds. The males 

 lift one leg in making water, like dogs. Their smell is 

 disagreeable, and not less their breath. They are 

 infrequent drinkers, and they feed every other 

 day, after a full meal occasionally abstaining from 

 food for three days ; when chewing they swallovv 

 whole what they can, and when their belly will not 

 contain the result of their gluttony, they insert their 

 clenched claws into their throats and drag it out, so 

 that if they have to run away they may not go in a 

 state of repletion. From the fact that many speci- 

 mens are found lacking teeth he infers that they 

 are long-lived. Aemihanus's companion Polybius 

 states that in old age their favourite prey is a human 

 being, because their strength is not adequate to 

 hunting wikl animals ; and that at this period of 

 their lives they beset the cities of Africa, and 

 consequently when he was with Scipio he saw Uons 

 crucified, because the others might be deterred from 

 the same mischief by fear of the same penalty. 



XIX. The Uon alone of wild animals shows mercy Psychoiogy 

 to suppHants ; it spares persons prostrated jn °-' "'* ""'• 

 front of it, and when raging it turns its fury on 

 men rather than women, and only attacks chil- 

 dren when extremely hungry. Juba beheves that 

 the meaning of entreaties gets through to them : 

 at all events he was informed that the onset of a 

 herd of Hons in the forests upon a woman of Gaetuha 

 who was captured and got away again had been 

 checked by a speech in which she dared to say 

 that she was a female, a fugitive, a weakhng, a 

 suppHant to the most generous of all the animals, 

 the lord of all the rest, a booty unworthy of his glory. 

 Opinion will vary in accordance with each person's 



37 



