previous next

γούνατα τέσσερα. H. is of course mistaken in giving a camel two knees and two thighs in each of its back legs; but his mistake is due to careful, though unscientific, observation. We may note that (1) he took the heel of the camel for a second knee: this mistake is not unnatural, as a glance at a camel will show, owing to the length of the camel's metatarsal bone. He then infers that, as it had two knees in each leg, it would also have two thighs. (2) The camel appears to have more than one joint in its legs when it kneels to receive a load; Aristotle (Hist. An. ii. 1, 499 a), who corrects H. without naming him, points out that this is due to the way in which the camel doubles its legs under it (διὰ τὴν ὑπόστασιν τῆς κοιλίας), as if it were double-jointed. For other explanations of H.'s blunder see Bähr, ad loc.

τὰ αἰδοῖα, ‘veretrum retro versum habet,’ which is a fact.

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.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: