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186 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
but that they have some coherency with our riotous
licenciousnesse. And even as there have beene found
certaine furious longings and unnaturall desires which
have provoked men unto the love of beasts, so have
diverse times some of them beene drawn to love us,
and are possessed with monstrous affections from one
kind to another : witnesse the elephant that in the
love of an herb-wife, in the city of Alexandria, was
corivall with Aristophanes the Grammarian, who in all
offices pertayning to an earnest woer and passionate
suiter yeelded nothing unto him ; for, walking thorow
the fruit-market, he would here and there snatch up
some with his truncke, and carry them unto her:
as neere as might be he would never loose the sight
of her, and now and then over her band put his truncke
into her bosome, to feele her breasts. They also report
of a dragon that was exceedingly in love with a young
maiden, and of a goose in the city of Asope which
dearely loved a young childe; also of a ram that
belonged to the musitian Glausia. Do we not daily see
munkies ragingly in love with women, and furiously to
pursue them ? And certaine other beasts given to love
the males of their owne sex? Oppianus and others
report some examples to show the reverence and manifest
the awe some beasts in their marriages beare
unto their kindred ; but experience makes us often see
the contrary:
nee habetur turpe juvencoe
Ferre patrem tergo: fit equo sua filia coniux :
Quasque a eavit, init pecudes caper: ipsaque CUIUS
Semine concepta est, ex illo concipit ates. 1
To beare her Sire the Heifer shameth not:
The Horse takes his owne Fillies maiden-head:
The Goat gets them with young whom he begot:
Birds breed by them, by whom themselves were bred.
Touching a subtil pranke and witty tricke, is there
any so famous as that of Thales the philosopher's mule,
which, laden with salt, passing thorow a river chanced
¹ OVID. Metam, 1. x. 325.