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

Chapter 143: CHAP. 40. (26.)—WHO FIRST EXHIBITED THE HIPPOPOTAMUS AND THE CROCODILE AT ROME.

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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. 40. (26.)—WHO FIRST EXHIBITED THE HIPPOPOTAMUS AND THE CROCODILE AT ROME.

M. Scaurus was the first who exhibited this animal at Rome, together with five crocodiles, at the games which he gave in his ædileship, in a piece of water 1771 which had been temporarily prepared for the purpose. The hippopotamus has even been our instructor in one of the operations of medicine.1772 When the animal has become too bulky by continued over-feeding, it goes down to the banks of the river, and examines the reeds which have been newly cut; as soon as it has found a stump that is very sharp, it presses its body against it, and so wounds one of the veins in the thigh; and, by the flow of blood thus produced, the body, which would otherwise have fallen into a morbid state, is relieved; after which, it covers up the wound with mud.