The Complete Essays (81 page)

Beasts are born, reproduce, feed, move, live and die in ways so closely related to our own that, if we seek to lower their motivations or to raise our own status above theirs, that cannot arise from any reasoned argument on our part. Doctors recommend us to live and behave as animals do – and ordinary people have ever said:

Tenez chauts les pieds et la teste;
Au demeurant, vivez en beste
.

[Keep feet and head warm:
Then live like the beasts.]

Sexual generation is the principal natural action. Our human members are rather more conveniently arranged for that purpose; and yet we are told that if we want to be really effective we should adopt the position and posture of the animals:

more ferarum
Quadrupedumque magis ritu, plerumque putantur
Concipere uxores; quia sic loca sumere possunt,
Pectoribus positis, sublatis semina lumbis
.

[Most think that wives conceive more readily in the posture of wild animals and four-footed beasts; that is because the semen can find its way better when the breasts are low down and the loins up-raised.]

[AI] All those immodest and shameless movements that women have invented out of their own heads are condemned as positively harmful; women are advised to return to the more modest and poised comportment of animals of their sex.

Nam mulier prohibet se concipere atque repugnat,
Clunibus ipsa viri Venerem si laeta retractet,
Atque exossato ciet omni pectore fluctus.
Ejicit enim sulci recta regione viaque
Vomerem, atque locis avertit seminis ictum
.

[For the woman hinders or averts conception when passion leads her to withdraw Venus and her buttocks from the man, diverting the flow entirely over her yielding belly; she makes the plough-share leap out of its furrow and broadcasts the seed where it does not belong.]
⁸⁰

[A] If justice consists in rendering everyone his due, then animals which serve, love and protect those that treat them well and which attack strangers and those that do them harm show some resemblance to aspects of our own justice; as they also do by maintaining strict fair-shares for their young.

As for loving affection, theirs is incomparably more lively and consistent than men’s. King Lisimachus had a dog called Hircanus. When its master died it remained stubbornly by his bed, refusing to eat or drink; when the day came to cremate the body, it ran dashing into the fire and was burned to death. The dog of a man called Pyrrhus did the same: from the moment he died it would not budge off its master’s bed, and when they bore the body away, it let itself be carried off too, finally throwing itself into the pyre as they were burning its master’s corpse.

There are also inclinations where our affection arises not from reasoned counsel but by that random chance sometimes called
sympathy
. Animals are capable of it too. We can see horses grown so attracted to each other that we can hardly get them to live or travel apart. We can see them attracted to a particular kind of coat among their fellow horses, as we are to
particular faces; whenever they come across it they straightway approach it with pleasure and display their affection, whereas they dislike or hate a different kind of coat.

Animals, like us, have a choice of partners and select their females. Nor are they free from our jealousies and great irreconcilable hatreds.

Desires are either natural and necessary, like eating and drinking; natural and not necessary, such as mating with a female; or else neither natural nor necessary, like virtually all human ones, which are entirely superfluous and artificial. Nature needs wonderfully little to be satisfied and leaves little indeed for us to desire. The activities of our kitchens are not Nature’s ordinance. Stoics say that a man could feed himself on one olive a day. The choiceness of our wines owes nothing to Nature’s teachings, any more than do the refinements we load on to our sexual appetites:

neque illa
Magno prognatum deposcit consule cunnum
.

[That does not demand a cunt descended from some great consul.]
⁸¹

False opinions and ignorance of the good have poured so many strange desires into us that they have chased away almost all the natural ones, no more nor less than if a multitude of strangers in a city drove out all the citizens who were born there, snuffed out their ancient power and authority, seized the town and entirely usurped it.

Animals obey the rules of Nature better than we do and remain more moderately within her prescribed limits – though not so punctiliously as to be without something akin to our debaucheries. Just as there have been mad desires driving humans to fall in love with beasts, so beasts have fallen in love with us, admitting monstrous passions across species: witness the elephant which was the rival of Aristophanes the Grammarian for the affection of a young Alexandrian flower-girl and which was every bit as dutiful in its passion as he was: when walking through the fruit market it took fruit in its trunk and brought it to her. It never took its eyes off her except when it had to and sometimes slipped its trunk into her bosom through her neckband and stroked her breasts. We are also told of a dragon which fell in love with a maiden; of a goose enamoured of a boy in the town of Asopus, and of a ram which sighed for Glaucia the minstrel-girl – and baboons falling madly in love with women are an everyday occurrence. You can also see some male animals falling for males of their own kind.

Oppianus
⁸²
and others relate some examples to show that beasts in their couplings respect the laws of kinship, but experience frequently shows us the contrary:

nec habetur turpe juvencae
Ferre patrem tergo; fit equo sua filia conjux;
Quasque creavit init pecudes caper; ipsaque cujus
Semine concepta est, ex illo concipit ales
.

[The heifer feels no shame if covered by the sire nor does the mare; the billy-goat goes on to the nanny-goats he has fathered, and birds conceive from the semen that begot them.]
⁸³

Has there ever been a more express case of subtle malice than that of the mule of Thales the philosopher? Laden with salt, it chanced to stumble when fording a river, so wetting the sacks; noticing that the salt dissolved and lightened its load, it never failed, whenever it could, to plunge fully loaded into a stream. Eventually its master discovered its trick and ordered it to be laden with wool. Finding its expectations deceived, it gave up that trick.

Some animals so naturally mirror the face of human avarice that you can see them stealing anything they can and hiding it carefully, even though they never have any use for it.

As for household management beasts surpass us in the foresight necessary to gather and store for the future, and also possess many of the kinds of knowledge required to do so. When ants notice their grain or seeds going mouldy and smelling badly, they stop them from spoiling or going rotten by spreading them on the ground outside their storehouses, airing, drying and freshening them up. But the measures and precautions they take to gnaw out their grains of corn surpass any imaginable human foresight. Corn does not always stay dry and wholesome but gets soft, flabby and milky, as a step towards germinating and sprouting anew; to stop it turning to seed-corn and losing its nature and properties as grain in store for future use, ants gnaw off the end which does the sprouting.

As for war – the most grandiose and glorious of human activities – I would like to know whether we want to use it to prove our superiority or, on the contrary, to prove our weakness and imperfection. We know how to defeat and kill each other, to undermine and destroy our own species: not much there, it seems, to make them want to learn from us.

[B]
quando leoni
Fortior eripuit vitam leo? quo nemore unquam
Expiravit aper majoris dentibus apri?

[When has a stronger lion ever torn life from a weaker lion? In what woodlands has a wild boar ever died at the teeth of a stronger?]
⁸⁴

[A] They are not universally free from this, though – witness the furious encounters of bees and the enterprises of their monarchs in the opposing armies:

saepe duobus
Regibus incessit magno discordia motu,
Continuoque animos vulgi et trepidantia bello
Corda licet longe praesciscere
.

[Often there arises great strife between two King bees; great movements are afoot; you may imagine the passion and the warlike frenzy which animates the populace.]
⁸⁵

I can never read that inspired account without thinking that I am reading a description of human vanity and ineptitude.

The deeds of those warriors which ravish us with their horror and their terror; those tempestuous sounds and cries:

[B]
Fulgur ibi ad coelum se tollit, totaque circum
Aere renidescit tellus, subterque virum vi
Excitur pedibus sonitus, clamoreque montes
Icti rejectant voces ad sidera mundi;

[There, armour glitters up to heaven and all the surrounding fields shimmer with bronze; the earth shakes beneath the soldiers’ tread; the mountains re-echo to the stars above, the clamour striking against them;]
⁸⁶

[A] that dread array of thousands upon thousands of soldiers bearing arms; such bravery, ardour, courage: be pleased to consider the pretexts, many and vain, which set them in motion and the pretexts, many and frivolous, which make them cease.

Paridis propter narratur amorem
Graecia Barbariae diro collisa duello
.

[They narrate how Greece, for the love of Paris, made fatal war against the Barbarians.]
⁸⁷

It was because of the lechery of Paris that all Asia was ruined and destroyed: one man’s desires, the annoyance and pleasure of one man, one single family quarrel – causes which ought not to suffice to set two fishwives clawing at each other’s throats – were the soul, the motive-force, of that great discord.

Do we want to trust the word of those who were the main authors and prime movers of wars like these? Then let us listen to Augustus, the greatest, most victorious and most powerful Emperor there ever has been, sporting and jesting (most amusingly and wittily) about several battles risked on land and sea, the life and limb of the five hundred thousand men who followed his star, and the might and treasure of both parts of the Roman world, exhausted in the service of his adventures:

Quod futuit Glaphyran Antonius, hanc mihi poenam
   
Fulvia constituit, se quoque uti futuam.
Fulviam ego ut futuam? Quid, si me Manius oret
   
Paedicem, faciam? Non puto, si sapiam.
Aut futue, aut pugnemus, ait. Quid, si mihi vita
   
Charior est ipsa mentula? Signa canant!

[Because Antony fucked Glaphyra, Fulvia decided I had to fuck her – as revenge. Me, fuck Fulvia! Supposing Manius begged me to bugger him? Not if I can help it! ‘Fuck or we fight,’ she said. What if my cock is dearer than life to me?… Sound the war trumpets!]

(I quote my Latin with freedom of conscience! You, my Patroness, have given me leave.)
⁸⁸

Now this mighty Body, War, with so many facets and movements, which seems to threaten both earth and heaven –

[B]
Quam multi Lybico volvuntur marmore fluctus,
Saevus ubi Orion hybernis conditur undis,
Vel cum sole novo densae torrentur aristae,
Aut Hermi campo, aut Lyciae flaventibus arvis,
Scuta sonant, pulsuque pedum tremit excita tellus
.

[As the waves innumerable which roll in the Libyan sea, when fierce Orion plunges into the billows as winter returns; or, as when the summer sun bakes the thick shooting corn on the plains of Hermus or the golden fields of Lycia: so clash the shields, and the stricken land trembles beneath their feet] –

[A] this mad Monster with all its many arms and legs, is only Man: weak, miserable, wretched Man. An ant-hill disturbed and hot with rage!

It nigrum campis agmen
.

[The black battalion advances in the plain.]
⁸⁹

A contrary wind, the croak of a flight of ravens, a stumbling horse, an eagle chancing by, a dream, a word, a sign, a morning mist, all suffice to cast him down and bring him to the ground. Let a ray of sunlight dazzle him in the face, and there he lies, limp and faint. Let a speck of dust blow into his eyes (as our poet Virgil writes of the bees), and all our ensigns, all our legions, even with Pompey the Great himself at the head of them, are broken and shattered… (I believe it was Pompey who was defeated by Sertorius in Spain with such fine arms as these, [B] which also served a turn for others – for Eumenes against Antigonus, and for Surena against Crassus: