Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/658

 34^ Museums and Raree Shows in Antiquity.

appears that he is describing the African rhinoceros which, as he says, has two horns on its snout.

Another writer saw seals fighting with bears, a passage which Professor Jennison, of the Manchester Zoological Gardens, explains as follows : " Has it ever been suggested that these were probably Polar bears [ursus maritimus) ? Bears, always plentiful in the spectacles, are not referred to elsewhere in connexion with seals or water, though water exhibits usually got special mention, for example the crocodiles and hippopotami of Scaurus and Augustus. No bear except a Polar bear would enter water after his prey. The best way to exhibit such a treasure in Rome was to provide a tank, stock it with seals which were cheap and plentiful, and turn in the bears — thus providing a fine display of natation and the certainty of a good noisy fight."!

But to return to the imperial gardens where the great trophy was not the collection of animals, but the Triton. Listen to Pausanias ; first he describes the Triton at Tanagra : ^ " Yet more wonderful (than the image of Dionysos) is the Triton. The more pretentious of the stories about the Triton is that before the orgies of Dionysos the women of Tanagra went down to the sea to be purified, and that as they swam the Triton attacked them, and that the women prayed to Dionysos to come to help them, and that the god hearkened to them, and conquered the Triton in the fight. The other story is less dignified but more probable. It is that the Triton used to waylay and carry off all the cattle which were driven to the sea, and that he even attacked small craft, till the Tanagraeans set out a bowl of wine for him. They say that, lured by the smell, he came at once, quaffed the wine and flung himself on the shore and slept, and a man of Tanagra

1 Calpurnius Siculus, Ed., vii. 65-6 ; G. Jennison, Classical Review xxxvi. p. 7. ^ Pausanias, ix. 20. 45 ; 21. i.