146 
PLINY S NATUEAL HISTORY. 
[Book YIL 
doubted instance. His mother was the produce of an act of 
adultery, committed with a male of Ethiopia ; and although 
ghe herself differed in no way from the ordinary complexion 
of other females, he was born with all the swarthy com- 
plexion of his Ethiopian grandfather.^^ 
These strong features of resemblance proceed, no doubt, from 
"the imagination of the parents, over which we may reasonably 
believe that many casual circumstances have a very powerful 
influence ; such, for instance, as the action of the eyes, the 
ears, or the memory, or impressions received at the moment of 
conception. A thought even, momentarily passing through 
the mind of either of the parents, may be supposed to produce 
a resemblance to one of them separately, or else to the two 
combined. Hence it is that the varieties are much more nu- 
merous in the appearance of man than in that of other ani- 
mals ; seeing that, in the former, the rapidity of the ideas, the 
quickness of the perception, and the varied powers of the in- 
tellect, tend to impress upon the features peculiar and diversified 
marks ; while in the case of the other animals, the mind is 
immovable, and just the same in each and all individuals of 
the same species.^ A man named Artemon, one of the common 
people,^^ bore so strong a resemblance to Antiochus, the king 
of Syria, that his queen Laodice, after her husband Antiochus 
was slain, acted the farce of getting this man^^ to recommend 
^ Aristotle, in his History of Animals, relates a similar, but not the 
same, story ; he says that it occurred in Sicilj^, though he afterwards speaks 
of it as having happened in Elis. It is conjectured by Ajasson, that the 
individual might have been born in Sicily, and have exhibited himself in 
Elis, as a wrestler. If we are really to believe that his complexion was 
that of an -^Ethiopian, it is much more probable that his mother may have 
had connection with a negro. — B. 
^9 Few readers will fail here to recall to mind the story about the clock, 
in the opening chapter of " Tristram Shandy." 
Dalechamps refers us to a remark of the same kind in Cicero, Tusc. 
Qusest. B. i. c. 80 ; but Ajasson remarks, that the resemblance mentioned 
by Cicero refers to the mind and manners, not to the body ; Lemaire, 
vol. iii. p. 67. — B. 
6^ Aulus Gellius says, that he was one of the royal family. 
62 This man resembled Antiochus III., surnamed the Great, to such a 
degree, that when that monarch had been slain in a tumult by his people, 
bis wife, Laodice, daughter of Mithridates V., King of Pontus, put 
Artemon into a bed, pretending that he was the king, but dangerously ill. 
Many persons were admitted to see him ; and all believed that they were 
listening to the words of their king, when he recommended to them Laodice 
and her children. 
