( 52 ) 
THE GREAT SEA SERPENT. 
The belief in the existence of sea-serpents of formidable 
dimensions is of great antiquity. Aristotle, writing about 
B.C. 340, says* : — " The serpents of Libya are of an enor- 
mous size. Navigators along that coast report having seen 
a great quantity of bones of oxen, which they believe, 
without doubt, to have been devoured by the serpents. 
These serpents pursued them when they left the shore, and 
upset one of their triremes " — a vessel of a large class, 
havins: three banks of oars. 
Pliny tells us f that a squadron sent by Alexander the 
Great on a voyage of discovery, under the command of 
Onesicritus and Nearchus, encountered, in the neighbour- 
hood of some islands in the Persian Gulf, sea-serpents 
thirty feet long, which filled the fleet with terror. 
Valerius Maximus,^ quoting Livy, describes the alarm 
into which, during the Punic wars, the Romans, under 
Attilius Regulus (who was afterwards so cruelly put to 
death by the Carthaginians), were thrown by an aquatic, 
though not marine, serpent which had its lair on the 
banks of the Bagrados, near Ithaca. It is said to have 
swallowed many of the soldiers, after crushing them in 
its folds, and to have kept the army from crossing the 
river, till at length, being invulnerable by ordinary weapons, 
it was destroyed by heavy stones hurled by balistas, 
catapults, and other military engines used in those days 
for casting heavy missiles, and battering the walls of 
* ' History of Animals,' book 8, chap. 28. 
t * Naturalis Historiae,' Lib. vi., cap. 23. 
t ^ De Factis, Dictisque Memorabilibus,' Lib. i., cap. 8, ist century. 
