CHAPTER XII 
ZELIAN--THE MACEDONIAN INVENTION, OR THE 
FIRST MENTION OF AN ARTIFICIAL FLY 
“ They knew ’e stole; ’e knew they knowed ; 
They did not tell, or make a fuss, 
But winked at lian down the road, 
And ‘e winked back—the same as us!” ? 
ZELIAN (170-230 A.D.), who, though born in Italy and brought 
up in the Latin tongue, acquired so complete a command of 
Greek that he could speak it as well as an Athenian gentleman 
(hence his sobriquet peAlyAwrroc), composed his works in 
Greek. 
His Natural History? soon became a standard work on 
Zoology, although in arrangement it is very defective: for 
instance, he skips from elephants (XI. 15) to dragons in the 
very next chapter, and from the livers of mice in IT. 56 to the 
uses of oxen in II. 57. This treatment of things, zom«iAa 
qoitAwe, is asserted by the author to be intentional, so as to 
avoid boring the reader. For his part he avows that he pre- 
fers observing the habits of animals and fish, listening to the 
nightingale, or studying the migration of cranes, to heaping 
up riches ! 3 
Whether as a Naturalist lian possesses any value, whether 
his work is “‘ scrappy and gossiping, and largely collected from 
older and more logical writers,’ 4 or “from the industry 
1 After Kipling. 
2 Yep) Zdwv ididryTos. 
3 See Smith’s Dict. Gk. and Rom. Biog. and Myth., s.v. ‘ Elian.’ 
4 Perizonius has proved that lian transferred large portions of the 
Deipnosophiste of Athenzus to his Varia Historia, a robbery which must 
have been committed almost in the lifetime of the pillaged author: that 
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