On the Characteristics of Animals is a collection in seventeen books of short accounts of animals, real and fabulous, by Aelian of Praeneste, a Roman who wrote in Attic Greek at Rome in the late second and early third centuries CE. Philostratus reports that he never left Italy, and the work is a reader's gathering rather than a record of observation: Aelian draws on earlier writers, often by name, from Ctesias, Theophrastus and Hecataeus of Abdera to Alexander of Myndus and Clitarchus, and adds a few things he saw or heard himself.
The preface finds it remarkable that dumb creatures share the wisdom and justice of men, and many entries make the comparison, telling of animals' loyalty, courage, cunning, love and gratitude, as in the story of Androcles and the lion at the end of Book VII. There is no order by kind. Elephants, snakes, fish, birds and insects follow one another, with sacred animals, Indian marvels and ways of hunting and fishing among them, and in the epilogue at the end of Book XVII Aelian defends the mixture as deliberate, for the sake of variety. The work survives complete in medieval manuscripts, one part to each book.
Aelian of Praeneste On the Characteristics of Animals: summary and contents (PDF)
Aelian of Praeneste On the Characteristics of Animals: summary and contents (Markdown)
Contents
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Αʹ Book I
In his preface Aelian finds it no wonder that people are wise and just, but remarkable that dumb creatures share such gifts, and offers his collection to whoever finds it useful. The entries begin with the herons of the Diomedean island, which welcome Greeks and shun barbarians. Later come the owl that holds birds spellbound by changing its face, the prawn that kills the sea bass from inside its throat, and the bee kings, which never use a sting.
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Βʹ Book II
Thracian cranes gather at the Hebrus for the flight to the Nile, each swallowing a stone for ballast; as they rise, the oldest circles the flock three times and dies, and the rest bury it before they fly. Swallows fear Tereus, winged creatures born in fire die in cold air, and a lizard cut in two rejoins. Near the end frogs half formed rain on Aelian between Naples and Dicaearchia, and the ox is praised, whose carcass breeds bees.
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Γʹ Book III
Among the Moors a lion shares a man's road and spring, and a housewife can shame a hungry one away from her hut with a rebuke whose gist Aelian reports from the Moors. Storks migrate with the cranes, and Alexander of Myndus says that in old age they become men on the islands of Ocean. Last comes a camel tricked into covering its mother, which killed its keeper and then itself, set against Oedipus.
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Δʹ Book IV
Partridges are the most lustful of birds, and trainers set a fighting male's mate beside it so that it never flees in her sight; a Cretan lover, about to be killed, asks for the blow in his chest so that his beloved never thinks him a coward. Indian sheep and goats, the chameleon that baffles a snake with a broad stalk in its jaws, and the lion's neck follow; finches foresee coming snow and take to the woods.
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Εʹ Book V
Each autumn the black birds called memnones fly to Memnon's tomb in the Troad to fight until half of them are dead, a funeral contest for the son of Eos. A goose loves the boy Amphilochus of Olenus, as Theophrastus tells, and a ram and a goose love Glauce, the citharode of Chios. Geese cross the Taurus with stones in their beaks to keep silent past the eagles, and herds of deer swim in file from the Syrian mountains to Cyprus.
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Ϛʹ Book VI
Animals need no speech to rouse their courage: the boar whets its tusks, the lion lashes itself, and a defeated bull trains alone and abstains like Iccus of Tarentum, whom Plato praises. Further on the hunted beaver bites off its testicles and throws them to its pursuers, and gadfly and horsefly are told apart. Near the end a fox kills a hedgehog, and the wolves of Conopium on the Maeotis guard fishermen for a share of the catch.
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Ζʹ Book VII
Ctesias says the king's oxen at Susa draw a hundred buckets each and refuse one more; aged elephants retire to sacred pastures beneath Atlas. The crocotta imitates woodcutters' voices and calls a man by name to kill him, and a lion wounded by a youth riding with Juba the Moor takes its revenge long after. Androcles' story ends the book: he is defended in the arena by the lion he once healed, and freed with it by the crowd.
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Ηʹ Book VIII
From Indian accounts come hunting dogs sired by tigers, one of which, shown to Alexander, ignores deer, boar and bear but seizes a lion and keeps its grip even when maimed. Snakes and their tricks follow, among them the typhlops and the acontias that leaps from trees onto passers-by, and wolves hold an ox in a mire until it drowns. Aelian ends by asking which fish Homer called sacred.
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Θʹ Book IX
An old lion, past hunting, is led out by his sons and called to share their kill. At Epidaurus the temple servants take off a woman's head to draw out a tapeworm and cannot replace it, until Asclepius returns and sets it back; Aelian then addresses the god. Mice that taste salt bear more young, the nautilus sails on its shell, and the viper spits out its venom before mating with the moray.
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Ιʹ Book X
Elephants seldom love, yet a hunter sent among the Moors by the Roman emperor saw two bulls fight over a young female until both lost their tusks, a match Aelian sets against Paris rescued from Menelaus. A bronze wolf at Delphi recalls a wolf that led a prophet to stolen offerings, the Egyptian village of Chusae honours Aphrodite Urania through the cow, and at Eryx the victims come to the altar of their own accord.
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ΙΑʹ Book XI
Hecataeus of Abdera is the source for the Hyperboreans' rites of Apollo: three priests, sons of Boreas and Chione, and swans from the Rhipaean mountains that circle the temple and sing with the choir. Sophocles' Tyro is quoted on a mare shamed by the cropping of her mane, and mice and weasels quit Helice before its fall. Last come creatures that hardly accord with physis, among them a four-horned stag dedicated at Pytho and a five-footed calf Aelian saw at Alexandria.
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ΙΒʹ Book XII
Sacred fish come first: at Myra in Lycia they eat the flesh of Apollo's victims when the priest calls, and at Bambyce, renamed Hierapolis by Seleucus, they swim in troops under leaders. Aelian doubts the Egyptian tale of a lamb that spoke under Bocchoris. Red Sea fishes coloured gold, purple and green are described, with a sea-ape; in Etruria wild beasts are piped into the nets, and the anthias dies as if lamenting.
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ΙΓʹ Book XIII
Gods speak through animals in the first stories: an eagle sits all day on Gordius's yoke to foretell the kingship of Midas, and a wolf snatches the boy Gelon's tablet and draws him out of his school before it collapses. Ways of catching fish recur, from the Carians' bait for the sargus to gilthead stranded among poplar branches set in the sand. Between them, hares tire in dense thickets, and the rabbit keeps its Iberian name, koniklos.
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ΙΔʹ Book XIV
On Athena's island near Epidamnus, tame mackerel fed by fishermen hem in strange shoals for them every day in return. Other fish and fishing follow: the parrot-wrasse's bile against jaundice, the sea-horse that brings on madness, and an old Cretan fisherman at Rhithymna whose sea-horses helped save his sons from a mad dog's bite. It ends with fishermen on a frozen river who cut the ice around their net and ride it ashore.
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ΙΕʹ Book XV
On the Astraeus, between Beroea and Thessalonica, speckled fish take the local hippurus fly, which spoils at a human touch, so the Macedonians fish with a lure of red wool and cock's feathers instead. Other fish and shellfish follow, among them the clams of the Istrian sea that float in shoals at harvest. The last entry tells how Gerana, queen of the Pygmies, was turned by Hera into the crane that wars on them.
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ΙϚʹ Book XVI
The purple-shell must be killed with one blow or it spends its dye, which Aelian takes to explain Homer's "purple death". A long run on the beasts of India and its borders follows: talking parrots, peacocks, green pigeons, and the solitary kartazonos with its single black horn, whose foals are shown to the king of the Prasii. It closes with Pammenes on winged scorpions in Egypt and Ctesias on the night-hunting snakes of the river Argades.
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ΙΖʹ Book XVII
Giant snakes lead the last book: forty-cubit serpents and sacred crabs from a periplus of the Red Sea, painted snakes from Clitarchus, and vast vipers among the Troglodytes from Nymphis. Lions wipe out the Libyan Nomaei, Euphorion tells of the neades whose roar split the earth of Samos, and the Indian king marches behind a hundred thousand elephants. In his epilogue Aelian defends what he has gathered, professes his love of truth and leaves his style to fair judges.