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Pliny And The Modesty Of Elephants.

Pertinax

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Ive become absorbed in Pliny, some of his one liners' are priceless: and I dont mean this to denigrate him where it appears that "modern" science concludes he is mistaken in a thing.

 

For some reason I was drawn to his writing on the Elephant , which he describes as second only to man in intellect and a thoughtful beast capable of offering homage to the Gods, and to its own Chief beasts.My favourite observation was "elephants mate in secret because of their modesty" what a quaint but elegant phrase :its impossible to stop smiling whilst reading because although you may for a while feel superior due to your modernity , what is startling is how close to modern thought the great man is throughout the books.

 

Pompey of course suffered the curses of the Arena when Elephants provided by him for sport "played on the sympathy of the crowd ,entreating them with indescribable gestures", the curse worked of course as we know.Note: I was playing Rome total realism and found the Elephants seriously hard to kill.

 

Under Agnus castus ,the herb,he expounds that the concentate of the plant is used to check "violent sexual desire" , and thus acts an antidote to the "genitalia stimulating bites" from poisinous spiders. This is interesting stuff,he is absolutely right of course in terms of male desire the "castus" is from the greek meaning chaste and in the middle ages monkish communities self medicated to diminish desires of the flesh.The spider bite interests me, obviously you had to watch where you sat in Rome. :ph34r:

 

The herb fell out of use in Europe after 1700 to be rediscovered much later and is now freely available -though usually as a uterine tonic especially in menopause.

 

Gallery pictures: hemlock,yarrow and wild carrot posted today all have a passing resemblance but Hemlock is the Virgil Sollozo of the group,look at the leaf structure.

 

Im gratified at the number of visitors to the Herbal Gallery -I thought it would be far too abstruse for interest.

beer report-Dark Star Brewery-Espresso, yes a coffee flavoured beer! and a glass of Timmermans Peche as dessert.

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Pantagathus

How funny... :) I have commented elsewhere (not at UNRV) before about Pliny's passage on elephants.

 

It really is a wonderful segment. The one thing that stuck me about it (and is what I posted about) was in regards to ivory and their tusks...

 

It seems to me, the implications of Pliny believing that elephants buried their tusks because they knew the value men attached to them for irovy suggests that for the most part ancient man utilized fossil ivory (from mamoths-mastadons!) as their primary source and harvested from a newly deceased elephant if that primary source wasn't available.

 

Is that the impression that passage gave you Pertinax?

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Pertinax

I looked hard at the passage-and was trying to imagine what he was driving at ,obviously the Elephant was a cultural icon (to use a modern term), and ivory was fantastically valuable -as an item of conspicuous consumption vis a vis the fabulous nature of the actual beast, how would he know that they buried tusks? so I think your comment is very appropriate Pantagathus, it seems to betray a pre knowledge of fossil deposits. The whole entry on elephants is suffused with a sort of moral restraint and sadness, not reserved for many other animals or people.

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