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

Chapter 301: CHAP. 25.—HOW COCKS ARE CASTRATED. A COCK THAT ONCE SPOKE.

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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. 25.—HOW COCKS ARE CASTRATED. A COCK THAT ONCE SPOKE.

When castrated, cocks cease to crow. This operation is performed two different ways. Either the loins of the animal are seared with a red-hot iron, or else the lower part of the legs; after which, the wound is covered up with potter’s clay: this way they are fattened much more easily. At Pergamus,2957 there is every year a public show of fights of game-cocks, just as in other places we have those of gladiators.

We find it stated in the Roman Annals, that in the 2958 consulship of M. Lepidus and Q. Catulus a dung-hill cock spoke, at the farm-house of Galerius; the only occasion, in fact, that I know of.