1. The translation is from Virgil (1999: 66–67).
2. [Translator’s note: The corresponding passage in the Advancement of Learning (1604) runs as follows: “so that the fable and fiction of Scylla seemeth to be a lively image of this kind of philosophy or knowledge; which was transformed into a comely virgin for the upper parts; but then candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris (“with howling monsters girt about her white waist,” Virgil, Eclogue VI, 75), so the generalities of the schoolmen are for a while good and proportionable; but then when you descend into their distinctions and decisions, instead of a fruitful womb for the use and benefit of man’s life, they end in monstrous altercations and barking questions.” The dichotomous image may coincidentally remind us of Shakespeare’s Lear (without the barking): “Down from the waist they are Centaurs, / Though women all above: / But to the girdle do the gods inherit, / Beneath is all the fiends.’ ”]
3. Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, with an English translation by Richard M. Gummere, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1917, vol. III, pp. 397–411 [“On Instinct in Animals”].
4. On the history of these two versions, see Giuseppe Girgenti, in his commentary on the Italian translation of Porphyry’s De abstinentia (Astinenza dagli animali, Milano, Bompiani, 2005, n. 22 to Book III).
5. Sextus Empricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 69, trans. R. G. Bury, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1955, pp. 41–43.
6. As Sextus himself explains in Outlines of Pyrrhonism II, 158 (p. 253), the fifth nondemonstrable argument “deduces from a disjunctive premiss and the opposite of one of its clauses the other clause,” as for example “Either it is day or it is night; but it is not night; therefore it is day.” Naturally, in the version with the crossroads (as opposed to the one with the ditch) what we have is a “multiple syllogism.”
7. [Translator’s note: Philo’s Greek original survives only in a sixth-century Armenian translation. This and the previous quote are from Abraham Terian, Philonis Alexandrini De Animalibus: The Armenian Text with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, Chico, California, Scholars Press, 1981, pp. 87 and 103–4. The English translator criticizes the “syntactical awkwardness” of the Armenian text, and his own translation is in fact quite unidiomatic. In our transcription of the first citation, Terian’s term “shaft,” which would seem to indicate a vertical cavity, has been replaced by “ditch,” indicating a horizontal barrier, more in keeping with the context.]
8. See Plutarch’s Moralia, XII, Trans. by Harold Cherniss and William Helmbold, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1957, pp. 309–479. The same volume (pp. 487–533) contains the dialogue Bruta animalia ratione uti mentioned below.
9. Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, With an English Translation by A. F. Schofield, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1958–9, vol. II, Book VI, para. 59 (pp. 81–83).
10. Porphyry, On Abstinence from Killing Animals, trans. by Gillian Clark, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000, p. 85.
11. Pliny, Natural History, vol. III (Books VIII–XI), translated by H. Rackham, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940, pp. 101–103.
12. See, for example, Columella: “Now, as I promised in the earlier part of my treatise, I will speak of the dumb guardians of the flocks, though it is wrong to speak of the dog as a dumb guardian; for what human being so clearly or so vociferously gives warning of the presence of a wild beast or of a thief as does the dog by its barking? What servant is more attached to his master than is a dog? What companion more faithful? What more wakeful night-watchman can be found? Lastly, what more steadfast avenger or defender?” (De re rustica, books V–IX, trans. E. S. Forster and Edward Heffner, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1954, pp. 305–307). C. Julius Solinus, too, addresses the barking of the dog in his Collectanea rerum mirabilium VI.
13. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, Oliver Berghof with the collaboration of Muriel Hall, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 253. Likewise, see also Rabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis, VIII De bestiis.
14. “Canis vero ubi vestigium leporis cervive reperit, et ad diverticulum semitae venerit, et quoddam viarum compitum, quod partes in plurimas scinditur, ambians singularum semitarum exordium, tacitus secum ipse pertractat, velut syllogisticam vocem sagicitate colligendi ordoris demittens. Aut certe, inquit, in hanc partem deflexit, aut in illam. Aut certe in humc se anfractum contulit, sed nec in stam, nec in illam ingressus est, superest igitur ut in istam partem se contulerit, et sic falsitate repudiata in veritatem prolabitur” (De bestiis, III, 11, PL 177 86d). A similar text from the same period is found in the Cambridge Bestiary, except that the dog is pursuing, not a hare, but a deer.