90 PLINY THE ELDER. 



his Pretorship represented a shew of an hundred 

 lionSj with manes and collars of haire: and after 

 him Fompeius the Great shewed 600 of them fight- 

 ing in the grand Cirque^ whereof 315 were male 

 lions with mane. And CcEsar Dictatour brought 

 400 of them into the shew-place. The taking of 

 them in old time was a verie hard peece of worke, 

 and that was commonly in pit-fals : but in the Em- 

 peror Claudius his daies it chaunced, that a shep- 

 heard or heardman who came out of Gaetulia^ taught 

 the manner of catching them : a thing (otherwise) 

 that would have been thought incredible, and alto- 

 gither unbeseeming the name and honour of so good- 

 ly a beast. This Getulian I say, fortuned to en- 

 counter a lion, and when he was violently assailed 

 by him, made no more adoe but threw his mandi- 

 lion or cassocke full upon his eies. This feat or cast 

 of his was soone after practised in the open shew- 

 place, in such sort, that a man would hardly have 

 beleeved, but he that saw it, that so furious a beast 

 should so easily be quailed and daunted so soone as 

 ever hee felt his head covered, were the things never 

 so light ; making no resistance, but suffering one 

 to doe what he would with him, even to bind him 

 fast, as if in very truth all his vigor and spirit rested 

 in his eyes. Lesse therefore is it to be marveiled at, 

 that Lysimaclms strangled a lion, when as by com- 

 maundement oi Alexander the Great, he was shut up 

 alone togither with him. The first that yoked them 

 at Rome and made them to draw in a charriot, 

 was M. Ant07iius. And verily it was in the time 

 of civill warre, after the battaile fought in the plains 

 of Pharsalia, a shrewd fore-token and unhappie pre- 

 sage for the future event, and namely, for men of 



