318 
pliist's nattjeal history. 
[Book YIII. 
would allow no one to mount but himself, and that its fore- 
feet were like those of a man ; indeed it is thus represented 
in the statue before the temple of Yenus Genetrix.^^ The late 
Emperor Augustus also erected a tomb to his horse ; on which 
occasion Germanicus Csesar^^ wrote a poem, which still exists. 
There are at Agrigentum many tombs of horses, in the form of 
pyramids. Juba informs us, that Semiramis was so greatly 
enamoured of a horse, as to have had connection with it.^^ 
The Scythian horsemen make loud boasts of the fame of their 
cavalry. On one occasion, one of their chiefs having been 
slain in single combat, when the conqueror came to take the 
spoils of the enemy, he was set upon by the horse of his oppo- 
nent, and trampled on and bitten to death. Another horse, 
upon the bandage being removed from his eyes, found that he 
had covered his mother, upon which he threw himself down a 
precipice, and was killed. "We learn, also, that for a similar 
cause, a groom was torn to pieces, in the territory of Eeate.^® 
Por these animals have a knowledge of the ties of consanguinity, 
and in a stud a mare will attend to its sister of the preceding 
year, even more carefully than its mother. 
Their docility, too, is so great, that we find it stated that 
the whok of the cavalry of the Sybarite army were accustomed 
to perform a kind of dance to the sound of musical instruments. 
These animals also foresee battles; they lament over their 
masters when they have lost them, and sometimes shed tears ^"^ 
of regret for them. "When King Nicomedes was slain, his 
horse put an end to its life by fasting. Phylarchus relates, 
32 This account is given by Suetonius, Life of Julius C^sar, c. 61. Cuvier 
suggests that the hoofs may have been notched, and that the sculptor 
probably exaggerated the peculiarity, so as to produce the resemblance to 
a human foot. — B. 
33 The nephew of Tiberius and the father of the Emperor Caligula. — B. 
3* ^lian, Hist. Anim. B. xii. c. 40, states that three mares of Miltiades 
and Evagoras, which had been victorious in the Olympic games, were buried 
with sepulchral honours in the Ceramicus. — B. 
35 Ajasson suggests, with much plausibility, that when connections of this 
description are mentioned, the report originated from persons who had 
significant names, as Leboeuf and Poulain ; analogous to our names of 
Lamb, Bull, Hog, &c.— B. 
46 See B. iii. c. 17. 
37 We here find Pliny tripping, for he has previously said, in B. vii. 
c. 1, that man is the only animated being that sheds tears. See also c. 
19 of the present Book, where he represents the lion as shedding tears. 
