Chap. 4.] 
FOEMS OE THE TRTTOIS'S, ETC. 
363 
represented. 'Nov yet is the figure generally attributed to the 
nereids^^ at all a fiction ; only in them, the portion of the body 
that resembles the human figure is still rough all over with 
scales. For one of these creatures was seen upon the same 
shores, and as it died, its plaintive murmurs were heard even 
by the inhabitants at a distance. The legatus of Gaul,^^ too, 
wrote word to the late Emperor Augustus that a considerable 
number of nereids had been found dead upon the sea-shore. I 
have, too, some distinguished informants of equestrian rank, 
who state that they themselves once saw in the ocean of Gades 
a sea-man, which bore in every part of his body a. perfect re- 
semblance to a human being, and that during the night he 
would climb up into ships ; upon which the side of the vessel 
where he seated himself would instantly sink downward, and 
if he remained there any considerable time, even go under 
water. 
In the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, a subsidence of the 
ocean left exposed on the shores of an island which faces the 
province of Lugdunum"^ as many as three hundred animals or 
more, all at once, quite marvellous for their varied shapes and 
enormous size, and no less a number upon the shores of the 
have exhibited them, or asserted that they have seen them. It was only 
last year," he says, " that all London was resorting to see a wonderful sight 
in what is commonly called a mermaid. I myself had the opportunity of 
examining a very similar object : it was the body of a child, in the mouth 
of which they had introduced the jaws of a sparus [probably our " gilt- 
head]," while for the legs was substituted the body of a lizard. The body 
of the London mermaid," he says, " was that of an ape, and a fish attached 
to it supplied the place of the hind legs." 
23 Primarily the nereids were sea-nymphs, the daughters of Nereus and 
Doris. Dalechamps informs us, that Alexander ab Alexandro states that 
he once saw a nereid that had been thrown ashore on the coasts of the 
Peloponnesus, that Trapezuntius saw one as it was swimming, and that 
Draconetus Bonifacius, the Neapolitan, saw a triton that had been pre- 
served in honey, and which many had seen when taken alive on the coast 
of Epirus. We may here remark, that the triton is the same as our " mer- 
man," and the nereid is our " mermaid." 
Of Gallia Lugdunensis, namely. The legatus was also called " rec- 
tor," and "propraetor." 
25 Or " mer-man," as we call it. Dalechamps, in his note, with all the 
credulity of his time, states that a similar sea-man had been captured, it 
was said, in the preceding age in Norway, and that another had been seen 
in Poland, dressed like a bishop, in the year 1531. Juvenal, in his 14tU 
Satire, makes mention of the monsters of the ocean, and the youths of the 
sea." 26 See B. iv. c. 31, 32. 
