The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 127: CHAP. 24.—THE DECREE OF THE SENATE, AND LAWS RESPECTING AFRICAN ANIMALS; WHO FIRST BROUGHT THEM TO ROME, AND WHO BROUGHT THE GREATEST NUMBER OF THEM.

By the Elder Pliny

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About This Book

The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 24.—THE DECREE OF THE SENATE, AND LAWS RESPECTING AFRICAN ANIMALS; WHO FIRST BROUGHT THEM TO ROME, AND WHO BROUGHT THE GREATEST NUMBER OF THEM.

There was an ancient decree of the senate, which prohibited animals being imported from Africa into Italy; but Cn. Aufidius, the tribune of the people,1693 procured a law repealing this, which allowed of their being brought over for the games of the Circus. Scaurus, in his ædileship,1694 was the first who sent over the parti-coloured kind, one hundred and fifty in the whole; after which, Pompeius Magnus sent four hundred and ten, and the late Emperor Augustus four hundred and twenty.