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90 FIRST PERIOD—ANTIQUITY

India, according to what Ctesia writes, there are men with dogs' heads,
who clothe themselves with the skins of wild beasts and bark instead of
speaking. There are also a kind of men having only one leg, and who
have great speed in leaping. Others are without any neck and have
their eyes between their shoulders. Megasthenes writes that among the
nomad Indians are men who instead of a nose have only holes, and have
their legs bent like serpents. At the extreme confines of India, toward
the East, are men without any mouth and with their bodies entirely
covered with hair, who live on nothing but air and odors, which they
inhale through the nose."^
In Plin\'s day the most prodigious virtues were attributed to herbs;
in regard to this the following example is sufficient:
"The herb near which dogs may have made water, when gathered,
but without being touched by iron, cures luxations very promptly."-
It must not be thought that Pliny accepted such beliefs without reserve.
He notes them, because preceding authors had accepted them, and
because if certain things appear to us evidently absurd, their absurdity
could not be equally evident at a period when little more than nothing
was known in regard to physical and physiological laws, and when the
impossibility of rationally explaining natural effects led men to admit
the existence of marvellous virtues and influences in every being and m
all bodies. On the other hand, Pliny expressly says, for his own justi-
fication, in Chapter I of Book VII: "I do not want to bind my faith in
many things which I am about to say; but rather refer the readers to the
authors from whom I have taken them."
As is to be expected, we find in Pliny's works, in regard to teeth, a
strange mixture of truth and errors.
In Chapter XV of Book VII, after having said that some children
are born with teeth, and after having cited, as examples, Manius Curius,
who was therefore called Dentatus, and Gn.eus Papirius Carbo, both
illustrious men, he adds:
" In women such a thing was considered a bad augury in the days
of the kings. In fact, Valeria having been born with teeth, the seers
said that she would be the ruin of the city to which she would be taken;
she was sent to Suessa Pometia, which in those da\s was a very flourish-
ing city; and, in fact, the prediction was verified. Some, instead of teeth,
have an entire bone; of this there was an example in the son of Prusias,
King of Bith\'nia, who instead of upper teeth had one single bone."
"The teeth alone are not consumed by fire, and do not burn with
the rest of the body. And \et these teeth, which withstand the flames,
are worn awav and hollowed out b\- pituita. The\ wear out b\- being

C. I'liiiii SlluiuIi, llistonx- Muiuli, lili. vii, cap. ii. ' Lib. x.\i\ , cap. cxi.