Book 13
7
HERODOTUS, in the third book of his Histories, has left the statement that lionesses give birth but once during their whole life, and at that one birth that they never produce more than one cub. His words in that book are as follows: iii. 108. But the lioness, although a strong and most courageous animal, gives birth once only in her lifetime to one cub; for in giving birth she discharges her womb with the whelp. Homer, however, says that lions (for so he calls the females also, using the masculine or common (epicene) gender, as the grammarians call it) produce and rear many whelps. The verses in which he plainly says this are these: Iliad, xvii. 133. He stood, like to a lion before its young, Beset by hunters in a gloomy wood And leading them away. In another passage also he indicates the same thing: Iliad, xviii. 318.
