86 PLINY THE ELDER. 



his voice for the time. Those which are produced 

 in Africa and Egypt are small and sluggish ; but in 

 the colder climates they are fierce and cruel. That 

 men are changed into wolves^, and afterwards re- 

 stored to their proper shape, we must either be- 

 lieve to be false, or else at once admit all those tales 

 which have for so many ages been proved to be fa- 

 bulous. But how this opinion came to be so firmly 

 fixed, that when we would apply the most oppro- 

 brious term to one, we call him versipelUs (or turn- 

 skin), I shall shew. Euanthes, a respectable Greek 

 writer, reports that he found among the records of 

 the Arcadians, that a person is chosen by lot from 

 the family of Anthus. Being led to a certain pool 

 in that country, he relinquishes his clothes, v/hichare 

 hung up on an oak, swims over, proceeds into the de- 

 serts, is transformed into a wolf, and for nine years 

 herds with the wild animals of that race. This pe- 

 riod being completed, if he has refrained from eating 

 human flesh, he returns to the same pool, and, re- 

 crossing it, is restored to his original form, only look- 

 ing nine years older than before. Fabius adds, that 

 he finds his clothes again. It is strange to see how 

 far the credulity of the Greeks goes ; for there is no lie 

 so shameless that it does not find one of them to vouch 

 for it. Thus, Agriopas, who wrote of the conquerors 

 at the Olympic games, relates that Demoenetus of 

 Parrhasia, at a sacrifice, ate of the entrails of a child 

 that had been oifered as a victim (for the Arcadians 

 at that time oifered human sacrifices to Lycean Ju- 

 piter), and turned himself into a wolf ; and that the 

 same person, ten years after, having been restored 

 to his proper shape, fought at the Olympian games, 

 and was proclaimed victor. Besides, it is commonly 



