()()2 THE ANTIQUITY OF THE LION IN OKKKOE. 



Further, ai'ter culling attention to the fact that Aristotle coi-rected 

 a nonsensical statement of Herodotus on the act of parturition of the 

 lion, he adds: 



* * * It i^eems very unlikely that Aristotle should have Ijeeii al)le to correct 

 the historian's account of the parturition of the lioness but not have thought it 

 worth his while to verify the more obvious and patent fact of the occurrence of the 

 lion in northern Greece. « 



And on page 59 he .says: 



It is very improbable that * * * he should in two places (i. e., also vi, 31) 

 have repeated so important a statement as that of the presence of the lion in the 

 whole of northern Greece, from Abdera in Thrace to the confines of ^olia, without 

 verification and ui)on the mere credit of Herodotus, whom he elsewhere designates 

 as afalmlist and whose errors in natural history he points out and rectifies in several 

 places. 



All this, though not cogent, is so ol»\ ious that it is easily understood 

 when the philologist and the historian do not ((uestion Herodotus's 

 ''account, so definitely presented and twice repeated by Aristotle, a 

 native of that region.'"' Nay, J. Beloch^ even adds: "That it [the 

 lionj once spread over the whole peninsula (i. e., also over middle 

 (ireece and the Peloponnesu.s) is shown by the myths of the Nemean 

 and Cithajronian lions."'' On the part of phdology there is thus 

 a})parently no ground to doubt the ancient tradition that even in 

 historic time, about 500 b. c, there were lions in a i)art of Europe 

 situated near Asia. 



Turning from the ancient tradition to the domain of linguistic facts, 

 we find among the Greeks a high antiquity of the lion's name,'' unpar- 



"Loc. cit., vol. IX, p. 56, 1860. 



''O. Schrader, Reallexikon der indo-gernianischen Altertumskunde, vdl. i, j). 50<S 

 lilOl. 



'Griecliische Geschichte, vol. i, p. 37, note 1, l<sy3. 



''The same was already maintained l)y Lewis, loc. cit., 1860, and Dawkins and 

 rtanford have adopted it, as we shall see below, in 1869. 



« Compare, in the first place, W. Schulze, Qu^estiones epicic, p. 70 et seq., (Tueter- 

 slohae, 1892; so already Th. Benfey, Griechisches Wurzellexikon, ii, 1, Berlin, 

 1842; F. A. Pott, Etymologische Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Indo-German- 

 ischen Sprachen, 2d ed., ii, p. 1261, Lemgo, 1867; F. Kauffmann, in Paul und 

 Braune's Beithigen, vol. xu, p. 210, 1887 For the Celtic forms see W Stokes, 

 Urkeltischer Sprachschatz, edited by A. Bezzenberger (=A. Fick, Vergleichendes 

 Worterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen, 4th ed., vol. ii), p. 242, Gottingen, 

 1894; for the Slavo-Lettonian, J. Kartowicz (V. .lagic) in the Archiv fiir Slavische 

 Philologie, vol. ii, p. 364 1877, and A. Bruckner, Die Slavischen FremdwiJrter im 

 Litauischen, pp. 103 and 105, Weimar, 1877; for the old high German, besides O. 

 Schade, Altdeutsches Worterbuch, 2d ed., vol. ii, p. 547 sq., Halle, 1872-1882; also 

 O. Bremer in Paul und Braune's Beitriigen, vol. xiii. p. 384-387, 1888, against F 

 Kauffmann, ibid., vol. xu, p. 207-210, 1887, and H. Palander, Die althochdeutschen 

 Tiernamen, vol. i, p. 46 sq., Darmstadt, 1899. Schulze (loc. cit.) considers the Greek 

 name as the final source of all the other p]uropean designations, as a genuine Greek 

 word, while L. j\Iey(>r (Handbuch der griechischen Etymologic, vol. iv, p. 499, 



