Kitap 22
15.24
This monstrous and once rare kind of beast the Roman people first saw when Scaurus was aedile, the father of that Scaurus in whose defence Cicero spokeWe have fragments of the oration Pro M. Aemilio Scauro, delivered in 54 B.C. The Scaurus who gave magnificent games when aedile was the same as the one defended by Cicero. His father, who was an aedile in 123 B.C. was poor at the time, and nothing is said of his games, while those of his son were famous. Pliny, N.H. viii. 96, says: eum (= hippopotamum) et quinque crocodiles Romae aedilitatis suae ludis M. Scaurus temporario euripo ostendit. It seems natural to apply this to the man defended by Cicero, and temporario euripo may have been a feature of the temporary theatre which he built on that occasion. and bade the Sardinians also to conform with the authority of the whole world in their judgement of so noble a family; and for many ages after that more hippopotami were often brought to Rome. But now they can nowhere be found, since, as the inhabitants of those regions conjecture, they were forced from weariness of the multitude that hunted them to take refuge in the land of the Blemmyae.A people of Aethiopia, near the cataracts of the Nile.
15.25
Among Egyptian birds, the variety of which is countless, the ibis is sacred, harmless, and beloved for the reason that by carrying the eggs of serpents to its nestlings for food it destroys and makes fewer those destructive pests.Cf. Cic., Nat. Deo. i. 36, 101.
