ainful, and proper for its condition:

"Muta ferarum
Cogit vincla pati; truculentos ingerit ursis,
Praedonesque lupis; fallaces vulpibus addit:
Atque ubi per varios annos, per mille figuras

Egit, Lethaeo purgatos flumine, tandem
Rursus ad humanae revocat primordia formae:"

["He makes them wear the silent chains of brutes, the bloodthirsty
souls he encloses in bears, the thieves in wolves, the deceivers in
foxes; where, after successive years and a thousand forms, man had
spent his life, and after purgation in Lethe's flood, at last he
restores them to the primordial human shapes."
--Claudian, In Ruf., ii. 482.]

If it had been valiant, he lodged it in the body of a lion; if
voluptuous, in that of a hog; if timorous, in that of a hart or hare; if
malicious, in that of a fox, and so of the rest, till having purified it
by this chastisement, it again entered into the body of some other man:

"Ipse ego nam memini, Trojani, tempore belli
Panthoides Euphorbus eram."

["For I myself remember that, in the days of the Trojan war, I was
Euphorbus, son of Pantheus."--Ovid, Met., xv. 160; and see Diogenes
Laertius, Life of Pythagoras.]

As to the relationship betwixt us and beasts, I do not much admit of it;
nor of that which several nations, and those among the most ancient and
most noble, have practised, who have not only received brutes into their
society and companionship, but have given them a rank infinitely above
themselves, esteeming them one while familiars and favourites of the
gods, and having them in more than human reverence and respect; others
acknowledged no other god or divinity than they:

"Bellux a barbaris propter beneficium consecratae."

["Beasts, out of opinion of some benefit received by them, were
consecrated by barbarians"--Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 36.]

"Crocodilon adorat
Pars haec; illa pavet saturam serpentibus ibin:
Effigies sacri hic nitet aurea cercopitheci;
Hic piscem flumints, illic
Oppida tota canem venerantur."

["This place adores the crocodile; another dreads the ibis, feeder
on serpents; here shines the golden image of the sacred ape; here
men venerate the fish