Nor had the crocodile his honor given him without
a show of probable reason for it; but it is reported to
have been produced by a representation of God, it being
the only animal that is without tongue. For the divine
discourse hath no need of voice, but ‘marching by still
and silent ways, it guides mortal affairs by equal justice.’
1
Besides, they say he is the only animal that lives in water
that hath his eye-sight covered over with a thin and transparent film, descending down from his forehead, so that he
sees without being seen himself by others, in which he
agrees with the first God. Moreover, in what place soever
in the country the female crocodile lays her eggs, that may
be certainly concluded to be the utmost extent of the rise
of the river Nile for that year. For not being able to lay
in the water, and being afraid to lay far from it, they have
so exact a knowledge of futurity, that though they enjoy
the benefit of the approaching stream at their laying and
hatching, they yet preserve their eggs dry and untouched
by the water. And they lay sixty in all, and are just as
many days a hatching them, and the longest lived of them
live as many years; that being the first measure which
those that are employed about the heavens make use of.
But of those animals that were honored for both reasons,
we have already treated of the dog; but now the ibis,
besides that he killeth all deadly and poisonous vermin,
was also the first that taught men the evacuation of the
[p. 133]
belly by clysters, she being observed to be after this manner washed and purged by herself. Those also of the
priests that are the strictest observers of their sacred rites,
when they consecrate water for lustration, use to fetch it
from some place where the ibis has been drinking; for she
will neither taste nor come near any unwholesome or infectious water. Besides, with her two legs standing at
large and her bill, she maketh an equilateral triangle; and
the speckledness and mixture of her feathers, where there
are black ones about the white, signify the gibbousness of
the moon on either side.
1 Euripides, Troad. 887.
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