Chap. 34.] 
WOLYES. 
283 
away the voice of a man,^^* if it is the first to see him. Africa > 
and Egypt produce wolves of a sluggish and stunted na- 
ture those of the colder climates are fierce and savage. 
That men have been turned into wolves, and again restored to 
their original form,^^ we must confidently look upon as untrue, 
unless, indeed, we are ready to believe all the tales, which, for 
so many ages, have been found to be fabulous. But, as the 
belief of it has become so firmly fixed in the minds of the 
common people, as to have caused the term Versipellis"^'' to 
be used as a common form of imprecation, I will here point 
out its origin. Euanthes, a Grecian author of no mean repu- 
tation, informs us that the Arcadians assert that a member 
of the family of one Anthus is chosen by lot, and then taken 
to a certain lake in that district, where, after suspending 
his clothes on an oak, he swims across the water and goes 
away into the desert, where he is changed into a wolf and as- 
sociates with other animals of the same species for a space of 
nine years. If he has kept himself from beholding a man 
during the whole of that time, he returns to the same lake, 
and, after swimming across it, resumes his original form, only 
with the addition of nine years in age to his former appear- 
ance. To this Fabius^^ adds, that he takes his former clothes as 
well. It is really wonderful to what a length the credulity of 
6''* Hence the proverbial expression applied to a person who is suddenly 
silent upon the entrance of another ; " Lupus est tibi visus." 
65 Cuvier says, that the wolves of Africa are of the ordinary size, and 
conjectures that this remark probably applies to the chakale, or " Canis 
aureus " of Linnaeus, which is of the colour of the wolf, and the size of the 
fox, and is common throughout all Africa. — B. 
. 66 The opinion that men were converted into wolves by enchantment, or 
a preternatural agency, was at one time so generally received, as to have 
led to judicial processes, and the condemnation of the supposed criminal. 
— B. To the relator of the above story that men lose their voice on seeing a 
wolf, Scaliger wishes as many blows as at different times he had seen a wolf 
without losing his voice. 
6^ This literally means " changing the skin ;" it was applied by some 
ancient medical writers to a peculiar form of insanity, where the patient 
conceives himself changed into a wolf, and named XvKavdpuyina, " lycan- 
thropy." The word appears to have been in common use among the Ro- 
mans, and to have he^n applied by them to any one who had undergone a 
remarkable change in his character and habits ; in this sense it is used by 
Plautus, Amphitryon, Prol. 1. 123, and Bacchides, A. iv. sc. 4, 1. 12. — B. 
^8 It is not known who is here referred to ; it is not probable that it is 
Fahius Pictor, the Eoman historian. — B. 
^9 It is rather curious to find Pliny censuring others iox credulity ; indeed 
