Natural Hiftory of the Ancients. 5 



Agamemnon wears a lion's fkin as a mantle; 

 but the animal generally appears in fimiles. 

 Penelope ponders on her bed before fleeping, as a 

 lion when furrounded by a ring of hunters takes 

 counfel with himfelf. We fee the lion in fuch 

 pafTages exulting at finding prey, whether flag or 

 wild goat, killing a hind's fawns, putting to flight 

 and feizing oxen, terrifying bleating goats by 

 his prefence, driven ravening by men and boys 

 from the fold, flaying a bull, fighting with a wild 

 boar for water with its cubs, or tracking out 

 a man who has flolen them, being attacked and 

 killed by angry villagers, or itfelf attacking the 

 folds. Each of thefe pictures is beautiful in itfelf, 

 and the whole give an excellent hiflory of the 

 habits of the European lion. OdyfTeus, after the 

 flaughter of the fuitors, glares round him like a 

 lion. Lions were engraved on the belt of Hercules, 

 and furrounded the forcerefs Circe's abode; cats 

 even at this early period being favourite animals 

 of witchcraft. Proteus again changes himfelf into 

 a lion, fo that this animal mufl have been fuffi- 

 ciently familiar to Greeks. When the favagery of 

 Cyclops devouring the two haplefs comrades of 

 OdyfTeus has to be painted, Homer makes him " eat 

 like a lion from the mountains," tearing them 

 limb from limb and not even leaving their bones. 

 Jackals are only introduced at any length in one 

 paffage, but that an eminently charafteriflic one. 

 The Trojans follow OdyfTeus " like dappled jackals 

 from the mountains flanding round a wounded, 

 branchy flag, whom a hunter has fmitten with an 



