previous next

CHAP. 26. (22.)—THE GOOSE.

The goose also keeps a vigilant guard; a fact which is well attested by the defence of the Capitol, at a moment when, by the silence of the dogs, the commonwealth had been betrayed:1 for which reason it is that the Censors always, the first thing of all, attend to the farming-out of the feeding of the sacred geese. What is still more, too, there is a love-story about this animal. At Ægium one is said to have conceived a passion for a beautiful boy, a native of Olenos,2 and another for Glauce, a damsel who was lute-player to King Ptolemy; for whom at the same time a ram is said also to have conceived a passion. One might almost be tempted to think that these creatures have an appreciation of wisdom:3 for it is said, that one of them was the constant companion of the philosopher, Lacydes, and would never leave him, either in public or when at the bath, by night or by day.

1 When the Capitol was besieged by the Gauls.

2 Near Patræ, m Achaia. Ælian gives his name as Amphilochus.

3 A singular quality in a goose. Ælian says, that Lacydes was a peripatetic philosopher, and that he honoured the goose with splendid obsequies, when it died.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Latin (Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, 1906)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide References (1 total)
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: