al.]

So great was the authority of ARISTOTLE, that AELIAN, who wrote two
centuries later and borrowed many of his statements from the works of
his predecessor, perpetuates this error; and, after describing the
exploits of the trained elephants exhibited at Rome, adds the expression
of his surprise, that an animal without joints ([Greek: anarthron])
should yet be able to dance.[1] The fiction was too agreeable to be
readily abandoned by the poets of the Lower Empire and the Romancers of
the middle ages; and PHILE, a contemporary of PETRARCH and DANTE, who in
the early part of the fourteenth century, addressed his didactic poem on
the elephant to the Emperor Andronicus II., untaught by the exposition
of ARISTOTLE, still clung to the old delusion,

[Greek:
"Podes de toutps thauma kai saphes teras,
Ous, ou kathaper talla ton zoon gene,
Eiothe kinein ex anarthron klasmaton,
Kai gar stibarois syntethentes osteois,
Kai te pladara ton sphyron katastasei,
Kai te pros arthra ton skelon hypokrisei,
Nyn eis tonous agousi, nyn eis hypheseis,
Tas pantodapas ekdromas tou theriou.

* * * * *

Brachyterous ontas de ton opisthion
'Anamphilektos oida tous emprosthious
Toutois elephas entatheis osper stylois
'Orthostaden akamptos hypnotton menei."]
v. 106, &c.

[Footnote 1: [Greek: "Zpson de anarthron sunienai kai rhuthmou kai
melous, kai phylattein schema physeos dora tauta hama kai idiotes kath'
ekaston ekplektike]."--AELIAN, _De Nat. Anim_., lib. ii. cap. xi.]

SOLINUS introduced the same fable into his _Polyhistor_; and DICUIL, the
Irish commentator of the ninth century, who had an opportunity of seeing
the elephant sent by Haroun Alraschid as a present to Charlemagne[1] in
the year 802, corrects the error, and attributes its perpetuation to the
circumstance that the joints in the elephant's leg are not very
apparent, except when he lies down.[2]

[Footnote 1: Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, c. xvi. and _Annales Francorum_,
A.D. 810.]

[Footnote 2: "Sed idem Julius, unum de elephantibus mentions, falso
loquitur; dicens elephantem nunquam jacere; dum ille sicut bos
certissime jacet, ut populi communiter regni Francorum elephantem, in
tempore Imperatoris Karoli viderunt. Sed, forsitan, ideo hoc de
elephante ficte aestimando scriptum est, eo quod genua et suffragines sui
nisi quando jacet, non palam apparent."--DICUILUS, _De Mensura Orbis
Terr