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 Priscian
Answers to King Khosroes of Persia
 Ancient Commentators on Aristotle

GENERAL EDITORS: Richard Sorabji, Honorary Fellow, Wolfson College,

University of Oxford, and Emeritus Professor, King’s College London, UK;
and Michael Griffin, Assistant Professor, Departments of Philosophy and
Classics, University of British Columbia, Canada.

This prestigious series translates the extant ancient Greek philosophical

commentaries on Aristotle. Written mostly between 200 and 600 AD, the
works represent the classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic
schools in a crucial period during which pagan and Christian thought were
reacting to each other. The translation in each volume is accompanied by an
introduction, comprehensive commentary notes, bibliography, glossary of
translated terms and a subject index. Making these key philosophical works
accessible to the modern scholar, this series fills an important gap in the
history of European thought.

A webpage for the Ancient Commentators Project is maintained at

ancientcommentators.org.uk and readers are encouraged to consult the site
for details about the series as well as for addenda and corrigenda to
published volumes.
 Priscian
Answers to King Khosroes of Persia

Translated by Pamela Huby, Sten Ebbesen, David

Langslow, Donald Russell, Carlos Steel and
Malcolm Wilson

Introduction by Richard Sorabji

Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY
 Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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www.bloomsbury.com
BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2016
Paperback edition first published 2018

© Pamela Huby, Sten Ebbesen, David Langslow, Donald Russell, Richard Sorabji, Carlos
Steel and Malcolm Wilson, 2016

Pamela Huby, Sten Ebbesen, David Langslow, Donald Russell, Richard Sorabji, Carlos Steel
and Malcolm Wilson have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining

from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or
the authors.

British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-47258-413-7
PB: 978-1-35006-058-6
ePub: 978-1-47258-414-4
ePDF: 978-1-47258-415-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data
Names: Priscian, active approximately 500-530, author. | Huby, Pamela M., translator.
Title: Answers to King Khosroes of Persia / Priscian ;
translated by Pamela Huby and [5 others] ; introduction by Richard Sorabji.
Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury
Publishing Plc, 2016. | Series: Ancient commentators on Aristotle | Includes bibliographical
references and indexes in English, Latin, and Greek. | Includes bibliographical
references and indexes in English, Latin, and Greek.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016013011 (print) | LCCN 2016031322 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781472584137 (hardback) | ISBN 9781472584144 (ePub) |
ISBN 9781472584151 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781472584151 (epdf) | ISBN 9781472584144 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Islamic philosophy–Greek influences. | Philosophy, Arab. |
Philosophy, Ancient–Early works to 1800. | Philosophy and science–Miscellanea–
Early works to 1800. | Khosrow I, King of Persia, -579. | BISAC: PHILOSOPHY / History &
Surveys / Ancient & Classical. | PHILOSOPHY / General. | PHILOSOPHY / Mind & Body.
Classification: LCC B744.3 .P7513 2016 (print) | LCC B744.3 (ebook) |
DDC 186/.4–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016013011

Series: Ancient Commentators on Aristotle

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

 Contents

Abbreviations vi
Conventions vii

Introduction Richard Sorabji 1

Translation 11
Preface 13
Chapter 1: About the Soul, and Especially the Human 15
Chapter 2: On Sleep 27
Chapter 3: On Dreams as a Source of Prophecy 34
Chapter 4: Astronomy and Climate 40
Chapter 5: On the Efficacy of Contrary Medical Prescriptions 47
Chapter 6: The Tides 50
Chapter 7: How Elemental Bodies get Displaced 59
Chapter 8: How Location Affects the Character of Living Things 70
Chapter 9: Why do Things in a Good Universe Harm
Each Other? 76
Chapter 10: Of What is the Wind Made and Where Does its
Motion Come From? 82

Notes 87
Bibliography 131
English–Latin Glossary 135
Latin–English Index 143
Latin–Greek Index 151
Subject and Name Index 157
 Abbreviations

Bywater Bywater, I., Prisciani Lydi quae extant Metaphrasis in

Theophrastum et Solutionum ad Chosroem liber,
Supplementum Aristotelicum 1.2 (Berlin: Reimer, 1886)

Dübner Dübner, F., Plotini Enneades cum S Porphyrii et Procli

Institutiones et Prisciani Philosophi Solutiones (Paris: Didot,
1855), cited from Bywater’s apparatus

Edelstein-Kidd Edelstein, L., and Kidd, I. G., Posidonius I: The Fragments

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), with
translations in I. G. Kidd, Posidonius III: The Translation of
the Fragments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999)

FHSG Fortenbaugh, W. W., Huby, P. M., Sharples, R. W., and Gutas,

D., Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life, Writings,
Thought, and Influence, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1992)

Long-Sedley Long, A. A., and Sedley, D. N., The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2

vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)

SAW-Pos Stephen White, ‘Posidonius and Stoic Physics’, in R. Sorabji

and R. W. Sharples, eds, Greek and Roman Philosophy
100BC–200AD, 2 vols (London: Institute of Classical
Studies, 2007), vol. 1, pp 35–76

SVF Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. H. von Arnim, 4 vols

(Leipzig: Teubner, 1903–24)
 Conventions

[. . .] Square brackets enclose words or phrases that have been added to the
translation for purposes of clarity.

<. . .> Angle brackets enclose conjectures relating to the Latin (and underlying
Greek) text, i.e. additions to the transmitted text deriving from parallel sources
and editorial conjecture, and transposition of words or phrases. Accompanying
notes provide further details.

(. . .) Round brackets, besides being used for ordinary parentheses, contain

transliterated Greek words.
 Acknowledgements

The present translations have been made possible by generous and imaginative funding
from the following sources: the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of
Research Programs, an independent federal agency of the USA; the Leverhulme Trust; the
British Academy; the Jowett Copyright Trustees; the Royal Society (UK); Centro
Internazionale A. Beltrame di Storia dello Spazio e del Tempo (Padua); Mario Mignucci;
Liverpool University; the Leventis Foundation; the Arts and Humanities Research Council;
Gresham College; the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust; the Henry Brown Trust; Mr and Mrs
N. Egon; the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO/GW); The Ashdown
Trust; the Lorne Thyssen Research Fund for Ancient World Topics at Wolfson College,
Oxford; Dr Victoria Solomonides, the Cultural Attaché of the Greek Embassy in London; and
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The editors wish to thank
Alan C. Bowen, Nathan Gilbert, Péter Lautner, Vivian Nutton, Fritz Pedersen, David
Robertson, Mossman Roueché, Lauren Tee, and Stephen White for their comments and
contributions of drafts; David Robertson for preparing the indexes; John Sellars for
preparing the volume for press; and Alice Wright, Commissioning Editor at Bloomsbury
Academic, for her diligence in seeing each volume of the series to press.
 Introduction

Richard Sorabji

The sixth century diffusion of Greek Neoplatonism

The Answers to King Khosroes written by Priscian of the Athenian Neoplatonist

school and delivered in 531 CE in Persia represent almost the first Greek
Philosophy written for another culture. King Khosroes I of Persia lost no time
in inviting the Athenians, since 531 was the first year of his reign. But it must
have been around the same time that Sergius of Resh’aina (died 536), bilingual
in Greek and Syriac, introduced into Syriac the teaching of the other great
Greek Neoplatonist school of Alexandria, where he is thought to have studied.
He wrote in Syriac two commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories, each with
introductory material. This was only the start of a continuing diffusion.1

Priscian and the Athenian philosophers’ refuge with

King Khosroes in Persia

The main controversy about Simplicius’ fellow-Athenian, Priscian, has been

about whether he is the author of the commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul
which is ascribed to Simplicius. I have given my own affirmative opinion in the
introduction to the new edition of Aristotle Transformed.2 The commentary on
On the Soul and Priscian’s Paraphrase of Theophrastus on Sense Perception were
discussed as part of that controversy. The present book is the third extant work
of Priscian’s to be translated in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series:
his Answers to King Khosroes.
Priscian was a member of the Athenian Neoplatonist school, when the
Christian emperor Justinian put an end to its pagan teaching in 529.3 This
would have been seen as devastating for a body that saw itself as preserving for
2 Introduction

the elect a unified Greek pagan philosophical position; it would not have been
seen as a welcome opportunity for research leave. Priscian was one of the seven
Athenians, including three known philosophers, who accepted the refuge
offered at Ctesiphon by King Khosroes I (c. 501–578 CE), the king of Persia, in
531, the first year of his reign. Priscian recorded his replies given to Khosroes’
questions about philosophy and science. The façade of Khosroes’ palace at
Ctesiphon, a little south of the later city of Baghdad, was still standing at the
end of the 2003–2010 invasion of Iraq, although surrounded by military
operations.

Khosroes’ interest in Greek philosophy and

freedom of discussion

The Greek historian Agathias, who records in his Histories the Athenians’ visit
to Persia, was unsympathetic to the Athenian philosophers and contemptuous
of Khosroes, including his intellectual ambitions, although Michel Tardieu has
collected references in languages other than Greek to a large number of other
intellectuals who were welcomed by Khosroes.4 The religion of the empire,
says Agathias, was not pleasing to the Athenians and they were forbidden by
law to act in public because they did not conform to the established religion
(Histories 2.30.3–4). If Khosroes were praised for wanting to get a taste of
arguments and to take pleasure in the associated doctrine, he could be regarded
as superior to the rest of the barbarians (2.28.5). But how could it be supposed
that he had understood Aristotle and Plato’s Phaedo, Gorgias, Timaeus, and
Parmenides translated into an uncultivated (agrios) and totally uncivilised
(amousotatos) language, especially when he had been brought up in the most
barbarous way of life which paid attention to battles (2.28.2–4)? Agathias
admits Khosroes’ brilliant generalship and indomitable spirit in battle (2.32.5),
but sets no value whatever on the contrast between Justinian’s intolerance of
the Athenian philosophers and Khosroes’ tolerance of different religions and
beliefs. Michel Tardieu has pointed out that in his autobiography, Khosroes
said that he had never turned away anyone for being of a different religion or
people, and conjectures that his wife may have been Christian. Moreover,
Khosroes’ own writing shows him keen to learn the laws of other peoples.5 His
 Introduction 3

dedication to the Athenian philosophers is shown by his remarkably making

it a condition of the peace treaty of 532 with Justinian that Justinian allow the
Athenian philosophers back to his territory to live the rest of their lives in
peace, without fear, and without having to change their traditional religious
beliefs (2.31.3). Khosroes, soon after the peace treaty of 532, received another
philosopher, Uranius, who got himself into the train of Justinian’s ambassador
to Persia (2.29.9). The man, declared a charlatan by Agathias, was admittedly a
Pyrrhonian sceptic (2.29.7) of the kind that the Athenian Neoplatonists would
themselves have considered no philosopher at all, because sceptics of this kind
avoided believing in anything, even the existence of philosophy, and therefore
had the reputation of mere controversialists. But Khosroes for his part arranged
inter-­religious debates between him and Zoroastrian priests on such substantial
subjects as the eternity or otherwise of the universe, the analysis of coming
into existence, nature and whether one should posit a single first principle
(arkhê, 2.29.11), and humbly regarded himself as a pupil (2.32.2). He held
other debates too, one between a Nestorian and a monophysite Christian about
their disagreements (Agathias 2.29.11).6 Khosroes’ cosmopolitanism is shown
also by the dedications of another philosopher, Paul of Persia. Paul continued
the Greek tradition, culminating in Ammonius in Alexandria, of writing
introductions to Philosophy and to Aristotelian logic and he addressed two
such writings in Middle Persian to Khosroes. His work had enduring influence
being translated quickly into Syriac in the sixth century and via Syriac 400
years later in the tenth century into Arabic, where it influenced Muslim and
Christian philosophers alike writing in Arabic. Paul was a Christian at the time
he instructed Khosroes in philosophy, but a thirteenth century Christian
Syrian source, Barhebraeus, says that, on failing to become Metropolitan
Bishop of Persia, Paul converted to Zoroastrianism.7 If that is so, it is a further
mark of cosmopolitanism that a Christian in Khosroes’ circle could explain
pagan Greek philosophy to the Persian king in Persian, and then convert to
Zoroastrianism.
According to Agathias’ Histories 2.30.3, the Athenians had thought they
were going to the land of Plato’s philosopher-­king, where justice would reign,
and they became restive through finding that Khosroes was not the ideal ruler
of the ideal country they had imagined. There were in fact different criteria for
being a philosopher-­king, as witnessed for example in the earlier controversy
4 Introduction

after 355 CE between the Greek commentator Themistius and his former
pupil who was to become emperor, Julian the Apostate, in Constantinople.8 But
the record of Priscian’s ten answers suggests a different reason for Athenian
restiveness. Khosroes’ questions start in the first chapter with the human soul,
a very good starting topic for the Athenian philosophers, and one on which
Priscian was an expert, if he wrote the commentary on Aristotle On the Soul.
But from there they would like to go upwards to the divine human intellect, to
the Platonic Ideas which the intellect contemplates, and eventually to the
supreme divinity not describable in words. But as a practical ruler, Khosroes
wanted to move downwards to such topics of practical interest as the physiology
of sleep, prophecy through dreams, astronomy and climate, medicines, the
tides, meteorology, the biological effects of different locations, the reasons for
harmful animals, and the origin of winds. This was the very opposite direction
from that in which the Athenians believed one ought to go. Priscian found a
little home ground with the soul as prophetic because divine and separable
and with an account anticipating Leibniz of the arrangements of Providence
concerning dangerous animals. But on the whole, despite the many scientific
books he consulted, he was less well informed.

The Athenians’ move from Khosroes in Ctesiphon

Part of the Athenians’ desire to move on from Ctesiphon will have been due to
the focus on questions about the physical world, which may suggest that they
had not had forewarning of the questions. If the questions were not sent to
Athens by Khosroes in advance and the answers prepared before they left,
either they will have brought their library with them, or just possibly they will
have written up the answers after they left and sent them back to Khosroes for
translation into Persian, since we know that Simplicius at least (whether or not
Priscian) wrote after they left, drawing on some extensive library. Agathias’
reasons for their ’all going home and saying goodbye to the barbarian’s
hospitality’ (2.31.2), included Khosroes not understanding any of the higher
(aiputera) things because he did not even share their beliefs (doxa), presumably
about theological matters (3.31.1). But here Agathias is again going too far,
because although Khosroes was soon afterwards to regard himself as a humble
 Introduction 5

pupil of Uranius, he did get that visiting sceptic to debate higher matters, about
the eternity of the world and a supreme principle, as well as about nature and
coming into being, so he was not uninterested. It is not impossible that he had
learnt about the higher matters from earlier talks with the Athenians, not
included in what Priscian was commissioned to answer.
As to where the Athenians went after they left Khosroes in Ctesiphon, it is
hard to speak for all of them. But Ilsetraut Hadot has supported the hypothesis of
Michel Tardieu that Simplicius at least, whose commentaries on Aristotle were
written after Ctesiphon, did his writing in Carrhae, later called Harrān, which is
just north of modern Syria into the territory of modern Turkey. Certainly that
would be a safe place from which to retreat back into Persia from Justinian’s
distant capital. But her best argument, I believe, for endorsing Harrān in particular
is that Simplicius speaks in his commentary on Aristotle On the Heavens
525,101–13 of having experienced (epeirathên) boats that float on inflated animal
bladders. He would have seen these in Ctesiphon, but actually trying one out
would have most easily been done about forty kilometers away from Harrān on
the River Aboras. Although evidence has not been found for a continuous school
in Harrān right up to the ninth century when the mathematician Thābit Ibn
Qurra moved from there to Baghdad, and the tenth century when there is an
Arabic report of a Platonist school there and al-Fārābī is said to have moved to
Harrān,9 continuity is not, I think, necessary. Even in Athens the Platonist and
Aristotelian schools had disappeared and been re-­founded from time to time.
But the earlier tradition in a site can recommend it as a site for refounding. So if
Simplicius did set up a school, or use an existing library, his memory could have
helped to encourage re-­establishment even after discontinuities.

The need for retrotranslation back to the original Greek

from the surviving Latin translation

Priscian’s record of his answers to Khosroes’ questions is fascinating, revealing,

but tantalising. The sixth century Greek, from which a Persian translation was
presumably made for Khosroes, is lost. What survives is a Latin translation,10
perhaps of the ninth century, whose translator understood properly neither
the Greek nor the philosophy and science. A literal translation into English
6 Introduction

could only preserve intact the unintelligibility of the Latin. What turned out
often to be needed was a retrotranslation, conjecturing what the original Greek
could have been, and a translation into English based at least partly on that.
I am indebted to the outstanding scholars who brought their knowledge of
Greek, handwritten manuscripts, philosophy, and science to bear. Handwriting
is important because the introduction of cursive script between the time of
Priscian and his Latin translator would induce new types of miscopying.
To offer some examples of the Latin failing to provide a satisfactory
translation of the Greek, sometimes it may have taken the wrong sense of an
ambiguous Greek expression. For instance, in Chapter 7, it may have been the
conjectured Greek euporos which is translated as opulens (rich), instead of in
terms of its other meaning: easy to pass through, 79,26. Chapter 6 alone
exemplifies a great variety of problem cases. It may have been the conjectured
Greek akhanês which has been translated as silentium (silence), instead of
gaping, 74,15. It may have been the conjectured Greek logos which was taken
as verbum (word) instead of ratio (system), 73,3. Sometimes a Greek expression
may have been divided up wrongly into horous (limits), instead of ho rhous
(the flow), 72,3. In other cases, the Latin text contains a gap which needs to be
filled by some conjectured Greek words, 74,2; 76,12. Decisions on whether the
Latin needs to be emended by conjecture about the original Greek often turn
on the Latin not making the best available sense, or any sense at all. But
alternatively, if the Latin presents Priscian as citing a known earlier work of
Greek philosophy or science, we may have access to the Greek terminology
of that earlier Greek work, to serve as a control. The most extreme case of the
Latin making no sense at all may come in Chapter 6, 74,1–6, where the editor
of the Latin text in 1886, the outstanding Ingram Bywater, followed by another
major scholar Ian Kidd,11 gave up as hopeless the attempt to get sense out of
the text even by emendation, although our contributors, Stephen White and
Donald Russell, both made an attempt.
Bywater, the first editor after Duebnen’s transcription from a single codex,
offered a large number of retrotranslations at the foot of the page, coupled with
an index of conjectured Greek terms, and with the provision of conjectured
Greek terms also against his index of Latin terms. Our translators have often
found his proposals useful, although also offering their own alternatives.
Further retroversions were suggested by Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, in her
 Introduction 7

article of 1977, ‘ “Les solutions ad Chosroem” de Priscianus Lydus et Jean Scot’,

a title she used to endorse the suggestion of J. Quicherat in 1853, but rejected
by some other scholars, that the Latin translator was John Scotus Eriugena.12
The scholars cited found the barbarous Latin with its neologisms unworthy of
Eriugena. But she explained this by saying that Eriugena would have been
constrained by the attempt to translate the Greek literally word for word, and
therefore to coin neologisms when Latin had no exact equivalent. I do not
think that that accounts for the types of mistake in the Latin to be illustrated
below, because this regularly involves not merely poor style but actual
unintelligibility, and I would hope that Eriugena was not responsible for this.
One consideration in choosing a retroversion is philosophical: which
retroversion would supply a doctrine that Priscian would have been at all likely
to endorse or ascribe to another philosopher? The editor also checked whether
he understood the revised translation by composing an introductory note
giving an account of the doctrine of each chapter, except for Chapter 1, for
which Carlos Steel provided the introductory note.

Who was responsible for the unintelligibilities in the Latin?

Often it has become clear that unintelligibilities were due to the Latin translator.
This is perhaps clearest in cases where the original Greek word was ambiguous,
and the Latin translator took the wrong sense. Examples are offered in the notes
on Chapter 7, at 79,26 concerning the Latin opulentissima, on Chapter 1, at
48,31–2, figurativa and on Chapter 6, at 69,20, expectare. Sometimes the Latin is
itself meaningless because it has followed a grammatical construction which
exists in Greek, but not in Latin, although Latin had a perfectly good alternative
construction for expressing the point, so that following the Greek did not
constitute a necessary coinage. Examples are given in the notes on Chapter 1 at
48,7 and Chapter 4, at 67,30. Altogether, the notes supply many examples. But is
Priscian himself never the source of unintelligibility? This is easiest to test in
cases where Priscian is following closely extensive passages from Aristotle, his
most extensive source in some chapters, but suddenly appears to diverge in a way
that produces very little sense. One example is offered in the note on Chapter 10,
at 100,10: the explanation that Aristotle gives of why the north and south winds
8 Introduction

are dominant is offered in this chapter as an explanation of something entirely

different, that winds are constituted by a dry exhalation, but it is obscure how it
could possibly explain that. In general, the subject of winds and meteorology
seems a little unfamiliar to him. At 100,14–15, he seems to misunderstand
Aristotle Meteor. 361a24–5 by suggesting that the entire air follows the path of
the winds, instead of the entire air and the winds below it following the path of
the heavens.
There is a third possibility illustrated at Chapter 7, 80,24–5, but I think it less
likely. Priscian is following Aristotle’s definitions of fluid and dry which
contrast the fluid as lacking a boundary of its own, but easily receiving a
boundary from non-­fluid, with the dry which easily supplies its own boundary,
but is otherwise hard to bound (dushoriston, On Coming-­to-Be and Passing-
Away 329b30–2). The Latin substitutes infinitum (unbounded) for hard to
bound. Why? – cannot the dry be bounded by a river? It is just possible that
Aristotle’s Greek had been miscopied either by Priscian or by a predecessor.
But it is like the inaccuracy of the Latin translator not to distinguish hard to
bound from unbounded, and I think the great majority of the unintelligibilities
have been introduced by him.

The contributors to overcoming the unintelligibilities

of the Latin

Dealing with the unintelligibilities has been a matter of team work. Pamela
Huby began by writing a literal translation of the entire Latin text and supplying
footnotes for the whole. She is the only scholar in the team, apart from the
general editor, who has looked at every part. Her version received from the
fellow scholars named below comments designed in the normal way for this
series to suggest improvements for the final revision.13 No progress would have
been made without her first version. But the very literalness revealed that the
Latin was not in itself sufficiently intelligible. At least two more things were
needed. One was specialist knowledge of the ancient science increasingly
central to chapters after the first. On astronomy and climate, specialist
knowledge was provided by Alan Bowen, with further comments by Fritz
Pedersen, and by Donald Russell who checked the original sources used by
 Introduction 9

Priscian. Knowledge of ancient medicine was supplied by Vivian Nutton for

the chapters on medicines and on such harmful animals as poisonous snakes.
Stephen White supplied comments on theories of the tides and his article on
that subject, cited in the notes, was of the greatest value. Malcolm Wilson
provided his expertise on the winds. Concerning the opening chapter on
the human soul, as seen by Priscian, Carlos Steel lent his most particular
expertise.
The input from history of science left a good proportion of the literal
translation standing, but more was still required. It was Carlos Steel who first
rightly emphasised that besides scholarship in the history of science something
more was needed: retrotranslation, or retroversion to the original Greek. This
calls for a rare kind of skill, but Pamela Huby had already taken account of a
good number of retroversions suggested by Ingram Bywater. Steel, who was
highly experienced in retroversion, worked on Priscian’s preface and his
Chapter 1. Sten Ebbesen worked on Chapters 5, 8, and 9, and provided a list of
suggested retroversions for these and for parts of other chapters. David
Langslow had already provided an independent version of Chapter 9, but,
reassuringly, it usually agreed with Ebbesen’s, and the two versions were
collated, retaining Langslow’s choice of words to a considerable extent, with a
third decision called for only on some of the occasions when the versions
diverged. Langslow and on Chapter 10 Malcolm Wilson were well aware of the
need for some retroversion. Donald Russell re-­translated the best part of five
chapters (2, 3, 4, 6, and 7), and added many retroversions, even where Bywater
had given up, as well as other emendations, leaving to the general editor only
the second half of Chapter 7, where Priscian’s use of Aristotle supplied a
sufficient guide to the original Greek. By working in person with Russell, the
editor had the privilege of learning a great deal. The resulting retroversions
and emendations could in the future help with a new edition, and that was the
original reason for drawing attention to the contributions of the translator of
each chapter, and, with the help of initials, to some contributions by others.

Notes

1 I have sketched a little more of it in the Introduction to Richard Sorabji, ed.,

Aristotle Re-Interpreted (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
10 Introduction

2 See Richard Sorabji, ed., Aristotle Transformed, 2nd edn (London: Bloomsbury,
2016), pp. xxxii–xxxiii.
3 For overviews of Priscian, including discussion of the Answers to King Khosroes,
see F. A. J. De Haas, ‘Priscian of Lydia and Pseudo-Simplicius on the Soul’, in
L. P. Gerson, ed., The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, 2 vols
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), vol. 2, pp. 756–63, and Matthias
Perkams, ‘Priscien de Lydie’, in R. Goulet, ed., Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques
(Paris: CNRS, 1989–), vol. 5b, pp. 1514–21.
4 Michel Tardieu, ‘Chosroes’, in R. Goulet, ed., Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques
(Paris: CNRS, 1989–), vol. 2, pp. 309–18. See also Joel. T. Walker, ‘The Limits of
Late Antiquity: Philosophy between Rome and Iran’, The Ancient World 33 (2002),
45–69.
5 Michel Tardieu, ‘Chosroes’, pp. 311, 312, 317. Freedom of religious belief and
freedom of speech are two further subjects, the latter with concessions about
moral limits to personal abuse, discussed by the earlier commentator Themistius,
as cited in the Introduction to Aristotle Re-Interpreted.
6 Michel Tardieu, ‘Chosroes’, p. 312.
7 Ibid., p. 315.
8 Simon Swain, Themistius, Julian and Greek Political Theory under Rome
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Cf. Riccardo Chiaradonna, ‘La
Lettera a Temistio di Giuliano Imperatore e il dibattiyo filosofico nel IV secolo’, in
A. Marcone, ed., L’imperatore Giuliano: Realtà storica e rappresentazione (Florence:
Le Monnier, 2015), pp. 149–71, and the Introduction to Aristotle Re-Interpreted.
9 Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-­aʿyān, ed. I. Abbas, 8 vols (Beirut: Dār S.ādir, 1977),
vol. 5, § 706, pp. 153–7. I owe this reference to Michael Chase.
10 Edited by I. Bywater in Prisciani Lydi quae extant Metaphrasis in Theophrastum et
Solutionum ad Chosroem liber, Supplementum Aristotelicum 1.2 (Berlin: Reimer,
1886).
11 I. G. Kidd, Posidonius III: The Translation of the Fragments (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 292 (fr. 219 Edelstein-Kidd).
12 In Jean Scot Èrigène et l’Histoire de la Philosophie, Colloques internationaux du
CNRS, no. 561 (Paris: CNRS, 1977), pp. 145–60.
13 The editor thanks for comments on chs 1–3, pp. 42–63, Péter Lautner; for the same
on chs 4–6, pp. 63–76, David Robertson; for chs 4–5, pp. 63–9, Nathan Gilbert; for
chs 7–9, pp. 77–98, Mossman Roueché; and for ch. 10, pp. 98–104, Lauren Tee.

Postscript on Khosroes. For his acquiring from India the Pancatantra or Five Tales, in
a style like Aesop’s, and getting them translated from Sanskrit, see Audrey Truschke,
Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court, Columbia University Press and
Penguin India, 2016, p. 10, n. 28.
 Priscian
Answers to King Khosroes of Persia

Translation
 Priscian the Philosopher’s
Answers to Problems Raised by Khosroes,
King of the Persians

[Preface]
Translated by Carlos Steel with notes by Carlos Steel,
unless otherwise specified1

Since there are many and different problems raised in the question, and 41,5
each chapter offers different occasions2 for inquiry, it is necessary, having
distinguished [the problems], one by one, to connect in a similar way suitable
answers to the questions, and to apply to them as far as possible precise3 and
valid proofs extracted from books of the ancients. We will use brief and concise
language, in such a way that neither should a lengthy flow trouble the [reader], 10
nor should it leave out4 any of the issues needing to be discussed insofar as
they are in our power and relevant to the present occasion.5 Therefore, for
those who want to correct what has been written, or to acquire an understanding
of what is right and good in it,6 it may become easy to gather from which
books these arguments have been composed, by summing up7 where we have 15
read8 the ancients.9
Arguments have been taken and developed from Plato’s Timaeus and
Phaedo and Phaedrus and Republic and other appropriate dialogues, and from
the works10 of Aristotle On Physics and On Heaven11 and On Coming-­to-Be and
Passing-Away and from the Meteorology; likewise also from the works On Sleep 42,1
and Dreams, and from those that are written as it were in the form of dialogues
On Philosophy and On the Worlds.12 Again Theophrastus has offered for the
questions raised numerous remarkable resources13 from his Natural History
and his Physics and from what he says On Sleep and Dreams and likely On 5
Harmful Bites and On Winds and On Ways and Customs and Habitats.14
 14 Translation

Hippocrates too contributes to it 15 with his On Air, Places and Waters. We have
also taken useful material from Strabo’s Geography;16 and from Albinus’17
10 Outline of the Platonic Doctrines from Gaius’ Lecture Notes; further too from
Geminus’ commentary on Posidonius’ work on Meteorology; and from
Ptolemy’s Geography on the [terrestrial] latitudes,18 and from his Astronomical
works, if we found something useful in it; and from Marcianus’ Periêgêsis19 and
from Arrianus’ Meteora;20 from Didymus, the writer on Aristotle and his
doctrines,21 and from Dorotheus’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics.22 And
15 Theodotus is appreciated for offering us from his collection of notes of
Ammonius’23 lectures many useful resources,24 and Porphyry from his Various
Questions,25 and Iamblichus in his writing On the Soul,26 and Alexander and
Themistius in their commentaries on Aristotle; the great Plotinus also, and
Proclus who composed on all [subjects] different monographs and above
20 all On the Three Arguments, by which Plato Demonstrates the Immortality of
the Soul.27
This is the first question, made up of many parts, where [the king] says the
following:
 Chapter 1

[About the Soul, and Especially the Human]

Translated by Carlos Steel

Introductory note
Khosroes raises three different questions about the soul: (1) what is the nature
of the soul (answer on 43,18–49,36); (2) is it one and the same in all bodies, or
is it different? and if it is different, how to explain the differences in the soul?
(answer on 50,1–24); (3) how are body and soul connected with one another
(answer on 50,25–52,12). The first question receives the most articulated
answer. Priscian distinguishes in his argumentation four sections, as announced
on 43,19–21: ‘For those who gratefully follow the views of the ancient
authorities no way of argumentation would be needed <to show> that the
rational soul is (1) a substance that is (2) incorporeal and (3) incorruptible and
(4) separable from the body, with which it is naturally conjoined.’ The first
section is found on 43,21–44,14; the second on 44,15–28; the fourth on 44,29–
46,29; the third on 47,1–49,36. As Priscian announces, he will follow in this
chapter ‘the views of ancient authorities’. As a matter of fact, almost nothing is
original in this chapter, which is a summarizing compilation of three
Neoplatonic authorities mentioned in his preface: (1) Porphyry’s Miscellaneous
Questions, (2) Iamblichus’ treatise On the Soul, (3) Proclus’ monograph On the
Three Arguments by which Plato Demonstrates the Immortality of the Soul. In
47,1–49,36 Priscian closely follows Proclus, as can be demonstrated through
parallels in the Arabic transmission of this lost treatise. In 50,25–52,22 on the
union of soul and body without confusion, he follows Porphyry’s Miscellaneous
Questions, as is clear from parallels with Nemesius’ treatise On Human Nature.
Section 44,15–28 may come from the same source, as parallels with Calcidius
show; moreover it presupposes the same distinctions of mixture as made in
16 Translation

50,25–51,9. It is more difficult to delineate the extracts adopted from Iamblichus’

treatise On the Soul, as we have no parallels here. If, however, we remove the
sections that must be attributed to Porphyry and Proclus, there remain two
possible sections that may come from Iamblichus: (1) the argumentation that
the soul is separable from the body (44,29–46,29) and (2) the discussion on
how differences among human souls can be explained (50,1–23). The first
section contains a long argument to demonstrate that the soul’s substance is
separated from the body starting from an analysis of the activity of philosophy,
which makes us separate the soul from the body, as described in the Phaedo.28
This is a kind of argument related to the praise of philosophy in Iamblichus’
Protrepticus. Moreover, one finds a reference to such an argument in Priscian’s
Commentary On the Soul, which has Iamblichus’ treatise as its mean inspiration.
Some additional arguments for the separate nature of the soul, such as dreams
and visions, also point to Iamblichus, who was strongly interested in these
phenomena (see parallels in De Mysteriis). All this indicates that Priscian may
depend on Iamblichus in this section. Regarding the second problem (on the
differences between souls), it is difficult to attribute it to a particular author.
The question whether every soul is of the same species or not is raised by
Aristotle at the beginning of On the Soul (402b1). In his commentary on this
passage Priscian writes: ‘He judges the issue worthy of enquiry because of
those who introduce the differentia in composites from matter and not from
the form’ (12,5–6 trans. Urmson). According to Priscian the divergence in
species must come from ‘different forms or from the different principles (logoi)
within one single form’ (14–15). However, the question discussed in this
treatise is not about differences between souls of different kinds of animals
(lions, horses), but about differences between individuals sharing the same
nature. Interestingly, this question is discussed at length in Chapter 8, which
starts from a summary of the conclusion we reach in Chapter 1 (see 88,23–9 to
be compared with 50,1–23). The close connection between both chapters may
indicate that the author had himself a particular interest in this question, and
that this section is his own contribution. All in all, the reader of this chapter
remains frustrated seeing how little original the author has to say himself
about the soul (which is surprising given the fact that he is most probably the
author of the De Anima commentary attributed to Simplicius). However, he
has preserved important texts on the soul of post-Plotinian Platonists. CS
 Translation 17

First, what is the nature of the soul, and is it one and the same in all bodies, or 42,25
is it different? And does the difference in shape of bodies of each living being
come from a difference of the soul,29 or does a difference in the soul come from
a difference in the body? For if, as it seems, the soul,30 and especially the human 43,1
soul, is homogenously shaped by one character,31 nevertheless each [person] is
different from another, and they are not similar to one another.32 But then we
ought also to know from what cause a difference in the soul comes. For if the 5
body alters the soul, and for this reason every soul differs from every other, the
body clearly rules the soul. But if the soul alters the body, and a difference of
shape comes from that same cause, it is obvious that the soul is the ruler of the
body. But if each is altered on account of their mixture, it is evident that the
mixture is better than each, and it remains to be seen what the mixture is, and 10
how body and soul are mixed.
These questions having been posed, we must first enquire about the soul,
whether it is a substance, and self-­subsistent, and not allotted to be in something
else; and, if that has been demonstrated, whether it is incorporeal and simple
and without composition and indissoluble and33 uniform; it is necessarily 15
connected with these attributes that the soul is immortal and incorruptible
and that it cannot perish and is separated from bodies; or one should attribute
to the soul the opposite properties.

Whether the soul is a substance or an accident?

For those who gratefully follow the views of the ancient authorities no way of
argumentation would be needed [to show] that the rational soul is a substance 20
that is incorporeal and incorruptible and separate from the body, with which
it is naturally conjoined. However, as questions keep exciting those who believe
the argument about it, as they have heard it many times in like manner, we
ought nevertheless to demonstrate that the soul is a self-­subsistent substance
as follows.34 It is characteristic of a substance that is self-­subsistent, I mean 25
an individual and singular substance, that, while it remains the same and
numerically one,35 it is capable of receiving contraries in accordance with its
change in quality.36 Thus bodies are receptive of white and black, health and 44,1
sickness, and receive contraries in turns; and the soul too is receptive of
 18 Translation

contraries in turns, justice I mean and intemperance, prudence and imprudence,

in short, virtue and vice. Hence it is evident that the soul, which is capable of
5 change through contraries, and is receptive of them by subsisting, is a substance
that subsists by itself. As it is receptive of these things by subsisting, it is a self-­
subsisting substance and not a quality: for it would neither subsist by itself, if
it were a quality, but [it would] exist in substances; nor would it become quality,
if it were receptive of contrary qualities, without subsisting first by itself. The
10 fact of being receptive of contraries indicates that the soul is a substance. And
it is the property of an individual substance, not to admit within itself [degrees
of] more and less.37 Through this [argument] in short and through many other
[arguments] the rational soul has been shown clearly to be a substance
subsisting by itself. That it is incorporeal, must be shown from the following.

15 That the soul is incorporeal38

[If] the soul [is corporeal], it is either juxtaposed (1) to the animal being
animated by it, or it is mixed (2) with it, or fused together (3) with it.39 (1) If it
is juxtaposed as it were touching, the animal may not be animated as a whole;
for it is impossible for a body as a whole to be juxtaposed to a body as a whole;
but the whole animal is animated; the soul is therefore not juxtaposed to it, and
20 for this reason it is not a body. (2) If it is mixed, the soul will not longer be one
thing, but something divided and made of parts; however, the soul must be one
thing; it is therefore not mixed.40 (3) If it is fused together with it, the whole
body will pass through the whole body; but this is impossible; for there will be
25 two bodies in the same thing. And so it is neither juxtaposed nor mixed nor
fused together: and necessarily it is also not a body, but it passes through [the
body it animates] as an incorporeal substance. It is indeed a property of what
is incorporeal to pass through the whole body.

30 That the soul is separate from the body and turned to itself

These are our answers to show that the soul is incorporeal. But if someone41
were to bring in objections taken from [a consideration of] the irrational soul
 Translation 19

and the animation of other [i.e. non rational] animals, that is their endelekheia, 45,1
as they [i.e. the Peripatetics] are accustomed to call it, and argue that even in
[these animals] life pervades the whole body and makes it moving, he should
understand the difference between a separate soul and one that is not separate.
The irrational soul does not subsist without a body, nor does it act by itself, but
it brings into the body some sort of thing: a connatural spirit42 ministering to 5
take care of the body, or a natural heat,43 as some people call it, that is
subordinated to it to make the body move and nourish and change. But of the
rational soul we say that it is separate, and if this has been demonstrated, we
can show from there that the soul is an incorporeal substance,44 having 10
assumed before that, if a soul has an activity without body, it certainly will have
its substance separate.45
If 46 then virtue is a property of the rational soul, through which it rules over
the irrational soul and governs life; and if it is proper to [virtue] to be an
accurate47 knowledge of things that are, that is to say, of divine and intelligible
beings48 – for through both [i.e. virtue and knowledge] philosophers are 15
worthy both in contemplation and in action – and if to philosophize is nothing
other than to have a life pure and uncontaminated with matter and an unerring
knowledge of things that truly are; and if to know the things that are without
first knowing oneself is impossible; and if it is necessary that those who know
themselves have an incorporeal nature that is appropriately related to that 20
which is to be known – for there is no body that is capable of knowing itself
or of being turned at all to itself 49 – and if it belongs to everything that
knows to be turned to what is known, and if it belongs for that reason to
what knows itself to have an activity of knowledge turned to itself: thus it is
clear that the soul has necessarily a separate being.50 <This is also evident>51 25
from the fact that it purifies itself from the things we desire: for how would
the soul ever have a virtue that purifies it of bodily passions, if it had its
being located in a body? For no purification would want a corruption to
come upon what has been purified, while it is a removal of alien things,
which are against nature.52 If therefore the soul in doing philosophy is released 30
from bodily chains,53 it is clear thus also that it is by nature different from the
body. For it is impossible for what is inseparable from matter to become
unaffected by matter, since no being has an activity superior to its own
substance.
 20 Translation

From both arguments54 it is clear that doing philosophy shows that we are
35 both incorporeal and separated from matter: incorporeal through our
46, 1 capacity of knowing, separated from matter through our way of life according
to virtue, and through both the soul is shown to live a life bodiless and separated
from bodies. Let us sum up in the following way: a soul that engages in
philosophy both knows itself and the things that are before itself and are
separate from bodies; everything that knows itself and things that are
5 separate from bodies, through knowing itself is [shown to be] incorporeal,
but through knowing what is separate from bodies is [shown to be] separate:
therefore the soul that engages in philosophy is both incorporeal and separate
from bodies, and consequently it is neither dissolved nor does it perish with
bodies. And so since everything that knows separate things and itself, is
10 identical [with what it knows]55 and turned to itself, it is absolutely separate.56
For it cannot have the same activity with the body, since the latter is not at
all turned to itself. Thus it is obvious: the rational soul is separate as being
turned to itself.
And through many other arguments it is shown that the soul has activities
separate from the body, as when some [visions] appear in sleep57 about the
future and what is absolutely uncertain,58 and also the fact that, [even] when
15 the body is awake, there come to the soul illuminations of divine actions as if
it were familiar with them, and prophecies of future events needing nothing of
sense or of bodily phantasms, but the soul projects from within itself 59 an
activity which is its own and entirely separate from the body.60 If then the soul
is separate from the body both in its substance and in its intellectual activities,
20 it follows necessarily from this that it is without composition and simple and
uniform, for the composition of bodies is from matter and form, that is a
mixture resulting from the combination of elements, whereas an incorporeal
substance is situated beyond these and, while it is in itself uniform and by
essence not mixed with other things, it is rightly61 [considered] incorruptible.
25 For if everything that is composite is dissoluble, and what is dissoluble is
also corruptible, it remains that the soul, which is not composite, is neither
dissoluble nor corruptible, but incorruptible as simple; and from the necessity
of this [argument] [it follows] that it is also immortal. And some who were
engaged in these matters came to the same conclusion with different
arguments.62
 Translation 21

[Three closely connected arguments about the soul]63 47,1

There are three closely connected arguments for the soul’s immortality and
incorruptibility. The first64 is taken from the activity of the soul and runs as
follows: the soul always imparts life to any body in which it is present; all that
always imparts life is incapable of receiving the contrary of life; for if it always 5
imparts it, it always has it by essence and by nature; none, however, of the
things that truly are,65 can receive that which is capable of destroying a property
inherent in it66 by essence and connatural to it; but a contrary is necessarily
corruptive of its contrary; the soul therefore will never receive the contrary of 10
that which it always imparts, life. But the contrary of life is death: the soul
therefore does not receive death; and for this reason it is immortal.
One of the wise men of the past, I mean the great Plotinus,67 adds even an a
fortiori argument: if the soul cannot even receive back the very life it imparts,
a fortiori it can not receive the contrary of life, namely death. For since it has 15
the cause of this life connaturally, it does not need the life it gives to the body,
as this is only a shadow of the life it has by its essence. No cause, indeed, needs
its effect, because it always possesses powers superior to those which it bestows
upon the effect. Fire, too, cannot receive back the heat it bestows upon the
objects heated by it (for it has heat as connatural property) and for this reason 20
still much less can it receive the cold, which is, also by its heaviness, contrary to
its connatural heat. And in general, everything which always gives whatsoever
form will receive neither what it gives nor its contrary.
As for the second argument,68 let us first accept the following premise: 25
whatever is not destroyed by its own evil, cannot possibly be destroyed by the
evil of something else. For when its own good is present, it cannot destroy it
(because what comes from what holds it together, is what preserves it69), nor
can the intermediate, which is neither good nor bad [destroy it].70 What
remains to say is this: the only cause that can destroy a thing is its own evil. We 30
must also agree to the following: a vice of the soul is worse than the death of
the body; now the vices of the soul are ignorance,71 intemperance, injustice,
cowardice, and the like; but a soul that suffers from these vices is not destroyed 48,1
by them, nor do they exhaust its life, as is the case with corruptible bodies, but
the irrational part is even more alive and sustained by these vices, whereas the
rational part remains likewise alive in itself, though, owing to its ignorance,
 22 Translation

5 it has a diminished knowledge of the things that are. Thus, those who have
every kind of vice, far from being weakened by it, rather seem to be excited72
by themselves and more easily stirred to actions than those contrary to them.73
Thus, the vices of the soul do not destroy it; but whatever is not destroyed by
its own evil is indestructible. It follows that the soul is indestructible.
10 The third [argument] derives its illuminating74 demonstrative force from
causality.75 Self-­movement is shown to be the cause of immortality for souls,
as it exists in them by virtue of their essence and is as it were the efficient
cause of immortality. That the soul is moved by itself must be proved as follows:
the soul is both life, in that it gives life to others, and alive throughout itself,
15 in that it acts upon itself and turns to itself. For what bestows life on others,
lives first through itself. Insofar as it is life, it imparts movement (for this is
proper to all life, to impart movement in any way), and insofar as it is alive,
it is in movement. For everything that participates in life, is in movement in
virtue of its being alive. On these two accounts, then, the soul has been proved
20 to be moving as well as moved, and both as a whole, so that throughout itself
it is living as well as life. For because its activity is identical with its essence, it
is entirely76 activity, acting first upon itself and permeating as a whole itself
as a whole, because it is itself that which is moved by itself and acting [upon
itself]. And thus one activity is at the same time both: it acts upon itself
25 and it is a cause of movement for others. First it moves itself; for separate
causes77 are first causes of themselves, and only thus of the things that are
caused. The soul, therefore, having vital movement, at the same time imparts
movement by being life and is in movement by being alive. Now what moves
itself and is moved by itself, is the purely self-­moved, and this is only found
30 in incorporeal and separate essences, such as the soul; the soul, indeed, is
truly self-­moved, but it imparts to the participating body an appearance
of self-­moved life.78 Thus, the specific character79 and as it were the
definition of the soul is self-­movement, inasmuch as it exists by itself and
knows by itself.
49,1 We can sum up as follows: whatever participates in soul is alive; whatever is
alive participates in a movement of its own; therefore whatever participates in
soul participates in a movement of its own. But since it belongs to the definition
of the soul to impart its own movement to those things to which it is present,
and since everything that brings about a certain form is itself primarily what it
 Translation 23

imparts to the things that participate in it, it follows that the soul is primarily 5
moved by itself. We say this of the rational soul only, for the irrational [soul],
which has as it were the appearance of self-­movement, is moved by itself
together with something else [namely the body] and not through itself. For if
it were moved by itself through itself, without needing the body for moving
itself, it would have a substance separate from body, just as it would have a 10
separate activity. For whatever acts without a body is also separate from the
body, lest the not separate would have an activity superior to its substance.
So the irrational soul is not moved by itself through itself, but together with
the body. The rational soul, then, has been proved to be moved by itself both
on the ground that it moves itself and on the ground that it is moved in itself.80 15
And let its specific character and as it were its definition be: a self-­moving
hypostasis.81
Now the soul is moved and moves by thinking and considering and
believing.82 In fact, a movement moved by itself is none of the passive
movements, since they are proper of things moved by something else, whereas
self-­movement is of an incorporeal being. To be sure, the rational soul too 20
moves with corporeal movements, but not in the manner of a body, but these
too in the manner of self-­movement, such as coming to be and passing away,
increase and decrease, change and locomotion.83 Thus, the soul seems to ‘come
to be’ when it proceeds from that which is not, i.e. from sensible things, toward
that which [truly] is, through knowledge and reception of better and intelligible 25
things. It seems also to partake in ‘passing away’ when it is transferred from
that which is to that which is not: for being weakened it loses the knowledge of
the better and by surrendering to the pollution of the body84 it seems on this
account to partake in passing away. Further we say that ‘the eye of the soul’,85
when ‘nourished’86 by the good and the beautiful and the wise, is ‘increased’,
while it ‘is diminished’87 by the evil, the ugly and contraries like these. And it 30
also subject to ‘change’, when it is qualitatively altered through vice and virtue.
It has also ‘locomotion’: for at some time, when on earth, it is bound to the
body, because it is connatural to it; then again, when it is estranged from
the body, it returns to its ordained abode. Thus it performs also the movements
of the body while being moved by itself. It follows then that self-­movement88
is both complete and self-­sufficient, because it needs only itself, not anything 35
else, to move.
 24 Translation

50,1 [Differences among the souls]

With these reasons showing that the soul is incorporeal and simple, who could
admit a difference <in essence> among the souls that exist in bodies? For what
kind of otherness would come about in a being that is simple and lacks quality
5 with respect to its essence? Therefore, of souls that are, as being moved through
themselves, undifferentiated in essence with respect to each other, there rightly
is a difference in qualities:89 the one is known from virtue, the other from vice,
and for that reason some souls will receive greater honour from God, and
other souls evil by holding back [from them] what is better.90
10 The shapes of bodies get their difference not from the rational soul, but
from their parents and from the inequalities of places and atmospheres.91 This
is shown clearly to be the case in other animals and in general in those things
that are subject to generation and corruption, as the constitution of bodies is
different according to external or even connatural causes.92 Neither therefore
15 does the soul alter the body into different shapes, nor is it itself altered by the
body, as it is superior to all change because of its own simplicity. For in all
animals the shape of each is the same by nature, like the shape of man or horse
or lion or others, and it will never depart from its uniformity or its connatural
character.93 The qualities however alter individually the particular differences,
20 from which the [individuals] are recognized,94 just as men differ among
themselves, and each other animate or inanimate thing. In this way the mixture
of composites is somehow the cause of a different quality in bodies.

[In what way is the soul joined to the body and

through what kind of conjunction?]

25 From that point we must also bring in the remainder of the question: in what
way is the soul with the body, and through what kind of union or mixture or
composition or again some other form of joint nature?95 We see that every
51,1 being that is received into the substance of a single thing, it may be of an
animal or a body, is first transformed and destroyed by something else, so as to
be joined to [constitute] the substance of one single thing. For it is not possible
to understand how it could be preserved without destruction and yet at the
 Translation 25

same time be joined to [constitute] the substance of one single thing. For
[only] if things are destroyed when being united, do they produce one
substance. But if they can be preserved, even if that may escape our notice, they 5
are apparently not connaturally united into one substance, as is the case with a
mixture of wine and water. For an oily sponge may drive out pure water from
the mixture, and papyrus likewise.96 For this reason one should believe that
they97 are connected with each other, but are not united connaturally. This then
is wonderful in the case of the soul, how the same thing is both mixed with 10
something else, like those things [which are united by] being conjointly
destroyed, and remains preserving its own essence, like those things which are
posited side by side.98 For this is the nature of incorporeal things: the mixture
of those things which are immaterial is not achieved with their destruction,
but they fill throughout without hindrance everything that is suitable to receive
them, and they pass through the whole without being corrupted by one
another, and they remain unmixed and are not conjointly destroyed. For an 15
incorporeal being is capable of unifying itself into indivisibility and of unifying
whatever body it is present to into a temperate mixture, as a result of which the
parts of that body too are united with one another. It remains therefore united
without confusion.99 And for this reason it has an indivisible nature, but it is
divided through its connatural relation to the body. In the case of things which
give light, as a lantern set in position, it is only the light that affects in some way 20
the air,100 but the fire itself is kept inside the candleholder. Different is the case
of life that is by essence life and incorporeal: the animated body is illuminated
by it, yet [life] is not mingled to one thing, like fire [inside the candleholder],
but it is everywhere in the body,101 not as one thing in another fitted together
through juxtaposition, but it is united without confusion, and is diffused 25
throughout the whole, remaining indeed most perfectly incorruptible as
incorporeal. But if some people102 do not accept that such a unity of mixed
things can come about in the case of bodies, yet show that the thing itself,
mixture, exists, it is not impossible [that such a mixture comes about in
incorporeal beings]. However, because the soul is incorporeal, it cannot be
affected by the ills which enter by being subservient to bodies in mixtures. For
incorporeal beings are united with bodies and yet remain without confusion, 30
and are made one with another being and yet preserve their unity through
themselves. And yet they direct those things in which they are to an activity
 26 Translation

corresponding to them: just as the sun turns air into light and fire warms the
52,1 things nearest to it; light, however, is united with air, like those things which are
destroyed together, and yet remains not confused with it. For this reason the
activity of incorporeal things too has its being and its strength in itself, easily
filling completely those things which are suited to receive it. For it is not the
case that, as a flame is ignited on a wick,103 so the soul is in a body, but it is
5 united [to the body] as a flame attached to it, though it remains separate as a
number side by side with a number, and is not added like things touching, for
it lacks size. Nor is it enclosed as in a bag; for it is more than a measure. But the
soul is a unity ineffable to reason and imagination, [which operate] on the level
of sense perception; only intelligence can perceive it. For the creator of this
10 universe, who made also the intellectual beings – that is, the nature of the
things that received from him the occasions [of their existence]104 – created
also the soul for each body and united it to that [body] to give it light and life.
That the soul is united [to the body] is made clear by their being affected
together; but that they are not destroyed together [in this unity] is shown by
the separation that occurs through sleep. For at the moment of sleep] the soul
15 returns rightly into itself and the body and the vital function in the body is
diminished to the level of a vapour, like a flame hidden in ashes.105 Therefore
incorporeal things, being united both to bodies and, according to the same
ratio, to other incorporeal things, can both be mixed with them and separated.
For that reason the mixture, which does not occur in a corporeal manner, but
by way of shared affection and similitude, is an inclination106 [towards the
20 body]. In fact, one may consider inclination as a mixture107 (as in the case of
things that are not joined together because of distance [there may be an
inclination to one another]), but it is not a corruption of the substance.
Therefore the soul is mixed with the body, while preserving its substance and
activity incorruptible.
 Chapter 2

[On Sleep]
108

Translated by Donald Russell

with notes by Donald Russell, Richard Sorabji,
and Pamela Huby

Introductory note
On Sleep. Preliminary questions for later: (i) Is soul both active in some
respects and inactive in others during sleep, or are there two souls, one active,
one inactive? (ii) Is sleep connected with hot or cold?
Ancient philosophical views (Aristotle’s). (1) The sensory: sleep and waking
belong to sense, and hence to both soul and body. They belong to the common
sense organ, the heart, not to the separate organs of the special senses. But
sleep is not a privation (pace Aristotle?), because it is provided by nature to
preserve animals, by giving rest from motion and from troubles, and its
pleasurability confirms its naturalness.
(2) The nutritive: sleep is a loss of sensibility, but not of nutritive activity,
which Aristotle shows to be a distinct activity of body and soul, which is
needed by other powers of the soul, but does not need sense in order to operate.
Causes of sleep include: ingested food, and the fluidity and warmth which
arise from food and from other causes. Warm vapour rising via veins from
food to the head is there cooled by the brain and crowded, and so descends,
making head and eyelids droop, and cools the heat around the heart, creating
pressure on that organ enough to suppress sense-­perception. But as regards
nutrition, fluidity and warmth take the place of (antiperistasis in Aristotle)
their opposites, and digestion during sleep relieves the weight of the meal,
sending purified blood upwards and turbid blood downwards. Digestion is
aided by blood and heat being concentrated at the centre during sleep, while
the outer parts become cooler.
 28 Translation

Another cause of sleep is fatigue from exertion, or certain illnesses,

producing an undigested residue (suntêgma) which similarly rises up, cools
and descends.
Return to preliminary question (ii) We can now see that both heat and cold
play a role, heat in causing the rise of fluid, cold in causing the cooling descent,
with the result of a concentration of heat at the centre. There are other effects.
Bodies are heavier, blood sluggish, breathing heavier, which are all a matter of
pneuma. Psychological differences include images replacing sense perception,
but without understanding of them, though truths may be more easily
recognized. It is the loss of heat in the extremities which reduces the amount
of pneuma there, resulting in heaviness and inertness. The coldness there
also makes the extremities stiffer and the blood there thicker. In the interior,
by contrast, digestion is aided by sleep through heat and pneuma being
concentrated. Side effects are external pallor from loss of heat in the blood,
and sweat from concentration of interior heat causing evaporation. The
concentration of heat and pneuma also dissolves fluids there and encourages
relaxing as a result of dreams. Again, not only is digestion during sleep
connected with a hot interior and cold extremities, but we become more
intelligent after sleep and intelligence is connected with cooling, as is the body
after sleep. In sum, sleep partakes of both hot and cold.
Preliminary question (i): our answers have not required sleep to involve
either two souls, one active, the other inactive, or a corresponding division of
one soul.
Priscian had been on his home ground in discussing the soul in Chapter 1,
but his extant works do not elsewhere examine sleep or dreams in detail, and
he may have had to get up this subject for King Khosroes from scratch, making
considerable use of Aristotle. The chapter’s organisation looks a bit hurried.
RRKS

52,25 The second chapter of Questions is about sleep and its nature, and whether its
occurrence implies a single or a double soul; also whether sleep is hot or cold.
53,1 The chapter runs as follows.
And this also: what is sleep and of what nature? What is it (to sleep and what
is it) to be awake? For since, when humans are asleep, at the actual time of going
to sleep there appears to be in the body a soul which is active in some of its parts
 Translation 29

and quiescent and inactive in others, and since also it is a feature of inactivity 5
not to feel or know anything or be aware of the actions of feet or hands, whereas
the role of activity is breathing in and out, seeing visions, dreams and phantasms,
digesting and making the body at ease, [the person] seems at the same time to
have, as it were, a double soul, because in some respects he seems very close to
one dead, and in other respects to a living person. And how, if this were so, is it 10
possible for one half of the soul to be alive and awake and active, and the other
half to be mortal, comatose, and inactive? But if in the human body there are
not single souls but double souls, how is it possible for there to be two souls in
one body? For if there can be two souls in one body, then so [equally] (tam)109 it 15
is obvious that one of them is separate from the other and that they differ in
activity: one will be comatose, slack, and inactive, the other always awake and
acting, breathing in and out, digesting, and making the body at ease; if this is
so,110 it is clear that the one differs from the other both in nature and in activity.
And if the activity of one soul proves its presence in the body, so [equally] 20
(tam)111 one should ask whether [this other soul] will be present in the body
during the time of its activity or outside it, seeing that the time of activity is
proof of its dwelling in the body, and its time of idleness proves the opposite.
Together with this, we also have to consider whether sleep is hot or cold. If it 25
is hot, why does it slake thirst and increase fluidity? If it is cold, why does it
digest food and warm the body and permit sweating? And if sleep is of one
single nature, why does it have two mutually opposite effects? If it is of double
nature – hot and cold – we must ask what parts are of heat, and what of cold. We 30
must also explain why, when sleep naturally relaxes the body, it performs some
action more strongly (ualidius)112 – as, for example, the stomach being
strengthened, it digests food more abundantly. We have thus to discuss whether,
if the sleep relaxes the whole body, it therefore at the same time relaxes and 54,1
softens the stomach, or not; and if it does relax it, why does it digest food more
abundantly? And if it does not relax it, how is it that it relaxes the whole body,
but not the stomach?
We must113 also put together what has been often said, and in many places, 5
by philosophers of old114 and discuss whether sleep is something undergone by
the soul or by the body, or by both in common. This last is true,115 because
[sleep] is produced in relation to sense, and sense in something common to a
body which has a soul. Sleep, in a way, is an immobility and bondage of sense, 10
 30 Translation

whereas waking is its relaxation and release. So if sleep is something undergone

by the sensitive part [of the soul] and [if] there is in this both a special sense-­
organ and a common kind which, covering all the senses, offers the sense-­
organs themselves appropriate powers; and [if] also we say that the primary
(and dominant)116 sense-­organ, which provides a kind of material (pneuma)117
15 is in the heart,118 from which comes the origin of motion and the [five] special
senses,119 [then] it is manifest that our undergoing of sleeping and waking is
naturally brought about in this.
We should not say that sleep is a privation of waking,120 as illness is of health
or blindness of vision, and the like – because things which are brought about
20 by privation are contrary to nature, damaging, and diminishing the essence
and activity of things which are in accordance with nature, and sleep, being
55,1 invented by nature for the preservation121 of the living being, is no less
according to nature, and [no less] a causal factor in acting because of nature,
than is waking. And if rest is beneficial for any being accustomed to be in
motion but not strong enough to bear motion continuously and for ever
(because it would be destroyed if it did not forget its troubles), sleep is therefore
5 useful and necessary for its preservation; it is therefore also natural. For if it is
necessary for an animal to exist and be preserved according to its own nature,
waking and sleep will both cooperate naturally with one another for its
preservation. Sleep is also shown to be natural in another way, by being
accompanied by pleasure and causing neither hurt nor dismay, as privation of
10 normal states do. Nothing which is contrary to nature is causative of
preservation for nature, or [causative] pleasurably and usefully as are things
which are in accordance with nature.
Sleep therefore is a sort of natural insensibility and something undergone
by soul and body in common, because the motions of the dominant sense are
also common to soul and body. It is also manifest that the nutritive122 can be
15 separated from the aforesaid [perceptual] parts of the soul, as agreed, in bodies
which have a soul; and that this [i.e. the nutritive part] can be outside the
others, as in plants; and [also that] none of the senses and the other powers
connected with the soul which came to be123 in the body can function without
the nutritive part. Hence it is pretty124 clear that when the senses are quiescent
in sleep, sleep operates with the nutritive part of the soul, not needing for this
20 any motion of the sense-­organs.
 Translation 31

The cause of sleep in animals is food coming in from outside,125 and

an excess of the fluid and the hot inside arising from certain causes. For
from such food [i.e. food from outside] present in the receptive areas, a
vapour126 develops, which passes into the veins and is thence carried to the 25
head. For it is necessary that what is pushed up is pushed up [only] so far, 56,1
and then returns and changes course. Moreover, what is hot in any animal
tends to rise to the upper parts and there it befalls that matter which has
become heavy in accumulating turns back of its own accord, is carried
downwards and chills the heat which is around the heart. Sleep is induced 5
when such chilling takes place. For the vapours from fluid, spreading to fill the
upper parts around the brain, into which they gather – and which is the coldest
thing of all in the body127 – weigh down the head and the eyelids and make [the
individual] sleep. But when they have flowed back and, in returning, have
driven that heat into the heart itself, then the abundance of fluid food cools the 10
heat which surrounds the heart (just as a quantity of logs piled on a fire cools
the fire) and so prepares for sleep. For sleep is produced when bodily matter is
raised by heat through the veins to the head; but when it is overcome [i.e.
cannot rise more] and weighed down by its own abundance, it is driven back
again and flowing downwards in a mass causes the natural heat of the heart to
become weaker. 15
When digestion has taken place, sleep too has a rest. For sleep happens as
long as the blood remains unseparated after a meal, but when the blood
is separated128 and the purer part is located in the higher regions, while the
more turbid part affects the lower, the animal gets up, freed of the weight of
the meal.
What causes going to sleep is therefore the massed pressure129 from
corporeal matter, raised upwards by the natural heat, upon the primary (and 20
dominant) sense-­organ.130 For sleep is a failure of the primary sense-­organ to
have strength to operate according to its proper heat – a feature necessarily
coming to131 belong to the animal for its preservation because rest preserves it.
But just as taking in food produces sleep by the abundance of fluid, so also 57,1
does a residue132 formed inside as a result of fatigue or illness; for something
like undigested food is drawn off after [heavy] labour, unless there is an
abundance of cold, such as those illnesses produce which [themselves] arise
from excess of hot and fluid. So if some such undigested food swells up with 5
 32 Translation

heat and is [then] driven down in a mass and cools its heat, sleep is the result;
for in that case too there is the same rise and subsequent reflux of fluids.
Going to sleep is therefore a cooling, yet the causal factors of sleeping are
hot, because sleep is a kind of concentration and natural pressure133 of inner
heat.134
10 Some bodily things135 happen to people asleep because of this: bodies
become heavier, more full of fluid and colder, and then are nothing but the
likeness of bodies; there is no flow of blood, other than a slighter and more
sluggish one; breathing in and out also are heavier than when awake – which
are assuredly matters of pneuma;136 dreaming and remembering without any
15 sense137 or understanding of the images: sleepers also are more contemplative
and more able to discover truth than the wakeful.138 The bodies of sleepers
become heavier because of rest. There is a sort of failure of pneuma in the
limbs because the heat is concentrated in the inner parts; for pneuma and heat
make the body tense, whereas fluid and heaviness go with its inertness, so long
20 as there is nothing to make it lighter. For it is pneuma and heat inflating the
whole body that make it lighter.
For the same reason, people become colder when asleep, for, as heat leaves
them and is collected in the internal parts, the external parts are necessarily
cooled, and so become stiffer, and the blood therefore becomes thicker. The
consequence is that food is more easily digested and that people given to
25 sleeping come to have a thicker body, because heat, when compressed and
accumulating wholly in the lower parts, digests [food] easily and quickly, so
that their bodies are better able to be nourished and are fatter; for this is not
counteracted by any sensation in waking hours. Pneuma produces a motion of
the food if it works with its natural force. So [unnaturally] disturbed sleep is
not sufficient to ensure digestion.139
58,1 People are paler when asleep, because the blood collects in the inner parts
[of the body]; for it is heat in the blood that produces an increase of good
complexion (formositas).140 For this reason, people also sweat more when
asleep, because there has been a cooling of their external parts, while the heat,
5 concentrated inside in one place, quickly dissolves the flesh and makes more
evaporation; when the evaporation of the fluid is released, and sweat comes
out,141 not all over the body, but around the chest and neck and head. The feet
are hot in sleepers; for the inner heat also attacks what is down below.
 Translation 33

There is also a relaxation coming from dreams, when the fluid is similarly
dissolved by the inner heat; for the pneuma, in sleeping persons, is not extended 10
over the whole body but relaxes what is left over [i.e. the parts it does not now
reach]. These dreams occur differently according to age, nature, times, and
seasons, and indeed also from reasons of locality, and in many other ways
which it is not necessary to enumerate now, since the point at issue has been
proved, namely that, for sleep, hot fluid has to be present and be accumulated
in the body, from which the food is easily digested. 15
Whether sleep is to be taken as hot or cold may be understood from the
following [consideration]. It is hot in virtue of its nourishing and digesting; but
if it makes [the bodily extremities] become cold, it would have to be regarded
as very cold – [as it would also] from the consideration that we become more
intelligent when we rise from sleep, but less so as time proceeds: for
understanding comes from cooling and slackening from heat. Sleep is also 20
seen to be cold in view of the fact that the body is even more chilled in the time
after sleep. However, one should say equally that, just as sleep itself is divided
into some parts derived from the hot (the inner parts) and others derived
from the cold (the outer parts), such too is the nature which should be
attributed to it. 25
All these many things said about the nature of sleep demonstrate that there
is neither a double soul (an inactive and an active) bound up with sleeping
animals, nor yet a single soul divided down the middle into these two [i.e.
active and inactive].
On this basis, the third heading will be discussed. It goes as follows.
 Chapter 3

[On Dreams as a Source of Prophecy]

142

Translated by Donald Russell

with notes by Donald Russell, Pamela Huby,
and Richard Sorabji

Introductory note
This chapter is about dreams as a source of prophecy and it draws heavily on
Aristotle’s treatment, although it emerges increasingly that, as a Neoplatonist,
Priscian in 531 CE has a very different view from Aristotle’s eight and a half
centuries earlier. Priscian starts by agreeing with Aristotle’s On Dreams that
a dream is a phantasma, which I believe to be a mental image, and that it is
derived from earlier wakeful perceptions. There is a tendency in Priscian to
think of a phantasma as only a visual image, and he goes on to suggest that
dreams can involve more than this: a sense of taste, touch, or hearing and of
activity such as eating. This is a useful correction to the more static account
of dreams.
Priscian also turns to Aristotle’s very rationalistic account in On
Divination through Sleep of whether dreams enable one to prophesy, and
if so, whether this is through communication from God. He approves
Aristotle’s view that a dream can be a sign and consequence of something
that has already happened, like a medical symptom which was crowded
out from direct attention during wakefulness, but is recognized during the
quiet of sleep and thus enables one to foresee possible future illness. He
also agrees with Aristotle that a dream can suggest and inspire future
courses of action, and thus foreshadow the future in a second way. He
agrees finally with Aristotle that dreams may be merely coincidentally
followed by what was dreamt. But whereas Aristotle stops here, Priscian goes
on and wants to say, contrary to Aristotle, that in sleep the soul is divine and
 Translation 35

is separated from the body, even though it is naturally constituted for union
with the body.
Priscian adapts an idea found in the Stoic Hierocles around 100 CE, that
even in sleep we retain self-­perception of our bodies (sunaisthêsis in Greek – a
word literally rendered in our Latin as consensus). We pull blankets over
limbs exposed to the cold, the miser clutches tight his purse, the drunkard
his bottle, and the hero Heracles his club. Priscian agrees about the blankets
and replaces the purse, bottle, and club by saying that, while still asleep, we
can withdraw our finger from a thief trying to remove a finger ring. But
whereas Hierocles was trying to illustrate how animals more generally have
self-­perception of their bodies even in sleep, Priscian infers the opposite:
the soul is absent from the body during sleep, but darts back in, if some
blow or clamour befalls us, and addresses the damaged part. He holds that
perception (sensus) of one’s finger or limbs is normally absent in sleep (63,7–
8), and so are ordinary seeing, hearing, tasting and perceptions in general
(59,10–17; 60,3; 62,12). He could be exploiting Aristotle’s admission in On
Dreams 462,19–25, that people who dimly perceive a real cockcrow or lamp
light are not dreaming or asleep. But agreement with Aristotle goes no further
than dreamers being aware only of images. What Priscian infers next goes
much further.
If the soul in dreams, he claims, is so far separated from one’s finger, limbs
and body, perhaps in dreamless sleep it can be further separated, so as to
receive messages for the intellect from the gods. He adds that perhaps Aristotle
and some of his school believe this, but it is the very antithesis of Aristotle.
RRKS.

And then this: what is a vision (visio, Greek horama)143 and how does it come 59,3
about? And, if it is awareness on the part of the soul, do gods or daimones
manifest it to the soul? For if it is the soul’s awareness, why, when the soul itself
is in a period of a kind of ignorance and insensibility, it is stronger and more 5
potent concerning things which are in the future (some say some prophecies
come about in this way) whereas in the waking state, the soul’s awareness has
no such assuredness about the future and does not prophesy? And if a vision
comes from the soul’s awareness, why [on the one hand] is there awareness in
a dream as if of hearing, and seeing and the sense of taste – for it does happen 10
Another random document with
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whether he has ever seen the dog, and, if so, he will probably know
who the owner is. And all this information comes at a glance!
The children love basking in the sand; and spend hours playing
with the glistening white and red drifts so plentiful in central and
northern Australia. Little mounds are built, upon which they sit to
defy the others to topple them; and oblong holes are scratched, into
which some of the younger are laid and almost completely covered
with sand. When the buried ones presently throw the sand from their
bodies, the rest of the players scamper off with a hullabaloo and tell
their elders the Kurdaitcha (devil-devil) is coming.
Along the north coast of Australia, the mud-banks of the tidal rivers
are a great source of amusement. When the water recedes during
the heat of day, the young folk make for the blue mud-banks to
indulge in sport and play. Mud-sliding is usually the first item of the
programme. Taking a long run over the firmer ground, the performers
reach the mud-bank with considerable velocity, and in consequence
of this, they slide over the slimy surface in much the same style as
our children in the Old Country do over the ice. They maintain their
balance with their arms. The sliding is effected either singly or in long
chains they form by joining hands. They endeavour to make their
slide reach the water, which, if they are successful, they enter with
no end of splashing and shrieking “Ai! Ai! Ai!”
Another method often tried is to run and then take the “slide” lying
upon chest and belly. As one is sliding this way, he turns his body
round its long axis and eventually disappears into the water. To the
observer a child sliding in this way looks deceptively like a stranded
dugong or other big fish endeavouring to make back to water.
Occasionally one of the sporters breaks the monotony of the game
by negotiating the “slide” with his stern. Or he may bring along a
small oblong sheet of bark, upon which he sits or kneels and propels
himself along with his foot. In modern language this toy might be
called a “mud-scooter.”
On Cambridge Gulf the girls have evolved yet another variety of
this sport. One lies flat on the mud, face downward, whilst another
stands behind her. The one lying now places her arms forwards and
holds the palms of her hands together; at the same time she bends
her legs to a rectangle in the knees, and keeping them together she
holds them rigid in that position. Now the girl standing behind seizes
the legs of the one on the mud at about the ankles and pushes the
human sleigh along the “slide.” As a special favour a piccaninny
might be allowed to take a seat upon the sliding girl’s back.
In the same district the boys delight in carrying each other pick-a-
back to the brink of the softest mud, to precipitate the rider
backwards into the slush or into the water.
To break the monotony, the children place themselves in a row,
each with a number of flattish pebbles previously collected on the dry
land, and take it turn about to pelt the surface of the water at a very
sharp angle in order to make the stone ricochet as many times as
possible.
A new game is begun by the girls stamping the water with their
feet, as at a corroboree; the boys are preparing for a sham-fight.
They cover the whole of their body, including the hair, with thick mud,
which they maintain is the same as the ochre the warriors apply to
their bodies when on the war-path. They pick sides and stand face to
face on a bank, about half a chain apart. Upon a given signal they
commence bombarding each other with mud-balls! One is reminded
of the snowballing feats of European school children. The lads
endeavour to dodge the mud-balls thrown by their adversaries with
as little movement as possible, by just contorting the figure or lifting a
limb to allow a missile to fly harmlessly by. Much gesticulation takes
place during the friendly combat, and often does one hear an excited
“Ai! Ai!” announcing the fact that a player has effected a narrow
escape. The climax, however, is not reached until a hit is recorded,
and a ball, too carefully aimed, spatters the body of a neglectful
opponent. When the game is over, all participants rest for a while
upon the surface of the muddy bank, then dive into the water and
wash the slush from their heated bodies.
At Kurrekapinnya Soakage in the Ayers Ranges the bare, inclined
surface of a granitic outcrop is utilized by the children for
tobogganing. The same track has been in use for so long that the
“slide” has become remarkably smooth from the constant wear. The
tobogganer gathers a bundle of rushes at the soakage and makes
for the top of the outcrop. There he places the bundle upon the
polished “slide,” sits upon it, and starts himself moving down the
slope. Considerable speed is attained by the time he reaches the
bottom of the rock, whence he shoots into the sand adjacent to it.
The performance is repeated over and over again.
The Victoria River tribes arrange competitions among the boys in
tree-climbing, the lads being required to clamber up a number of
selected trees, and down again, in the quickest time possible.
On Bathurst Island a favourite amusement of the younger folk on a
breezy day is to collect the light globular seed-heads of the “spring
rolling grass” (Spinifex hirsutis), that grow on every sandhill near the
coast, and take them to the beach to release them on the hardened
sand. Driven along by the wind, these seeds travel over the surface
at no mean pace. Allowing them to gain a fair start, the children bolt
after them, endeavouring to overtake them and pick them up from
the ground while dashing past at full speed in “cow-boy” fashion.
In the same locality the children assemble on the beach and
compete in running and long jumping.
The Arunndta and Dieri children collect the dry tussocks of the
“roly poly” (Salsola kali) upon a windy day and take them to a big
clay pan. There they liberate them, and, as the wind whips them over
the level ground, the youthful gang makes after them with toy spear
or boomerang, each endeavouring to either stake a tussock with the
first-named weapon or shatter it with the latter.
In the Fowler’s Bay district the tussock is replaced by an artificial
target, such as a ball of fur-string, which is rolled over the surface by
an elder.
The Arunndta boys on the Finke River cut discs out of the bark of
eucalyptus trees, which they roll over the hard ground and chase
with toy spears. In the same district I have seen the bark disc
replaced by an iron ring the boys had been given by a teamster; this
was carefully kept in one of the huts and only produced when the
lads were at liberty and felt inclined “to tilt at the ring.”

PLATE X

1. A juvenile “blonde,” Aluridja tribe.

2. Ponga-Ponga gin carrying pet opossum on her head while on the march.

A modification of the game was observed in the Humbert River

district, Northern Territory. Two parties, of about half-a-dozen each in
number, take up positions opposite each other and about a chain or
chain and a half apart. A circular piece of thick green bark is thrown
overarm by a member of one party swiftly towards the other, so that
it strikes the ground a little distance in front of the latter and rolls
along the ground past them. The waiting party stand in a row, with
their spears poised, and each in succession rushes forward to pierce
the rolling disc by hurling his missile at it. If one is successful the fact
is immediately announced by loud cheering. Then one of the party,
who have thrown, returns the disc in a similar way to the opposite
side whilst several of his fellows collect the spears for the next turn.
Thus the players are alternately “active” and “passive.” Special short
wooden spears are used, about five feet long, pointed at one end.
The disc is shaped out of an irregular piece of bark by biting off the
angular points until a more or less circular piece is obtained. Men
and youths play for hours at a time at this game, which they call
“gorri”; and even children are tolerated by them, although the last-
named are often growled at and told to keep out of the way (Plate
XIII, 1).
A kind of hand-ball is practised on Bathurst Island. The seeds of
the Zamia (Cycas media) take the place of a small ball. Two lads
stand facing each other and hit the seed to and fro with the palms of
their hands, after the style of a modern game of tennis. On the
Victoria River, the children made similar use of the green seed
capsules of the cotton-tree.
In the Meda district of north-western Australia, players at the same
game employed flat pieces of wood resembling cricket bats, the balls
being fashioned out of the woody fruits of the Pandanus.
Catch-ball is played by the children of all Australian tribes. The
“balls” might consist of anything; the Arunndta of the Finke River
country use the seeds of the Macrozamia Macdonnelli, the natives of
Melville and Bathurst Island Zamia and Pandanus seeds, the
Larrekiya of Port Darwin small bags stuffed with fur, the scrotum of a
kangaroo being often used for the purpose. It is surprising, however,
that despite the quickness of their eyes and the keenness of their
sight, the natives, as a rule, are very backward at catching with their
hands any object which is thrown at them.
The boys of the Arunndta and Aluridja tribes construct a small
cylindrical stick sharpened at both ends, which they lay on the
ground; then, with a longer stick held in the right hand, they strike
one end of it, to make it bounce into the air, and, as it rises, hit it with
considerable force. Competitions are held to see who can, by this
method, drive the small object farthest. The game is much the same
as our familiar “tip-cat.”
 From Sunday Island I have already recorded a peculiar type of
throwing contest, which the girls were indulging in at the time of our
visit. Two rows of seven or eight each were standing a couple of
chains apart, and, whilst facing one another, were bombarding their
opponents with consolidated cakes of cow-dung. The missiles were
thrown with considerable skill, even by the smallest girls, due
allowance being made for the curvature in flight. It was part of the
game to dodge the flying bodies, and, whenever a hit was recorded,
a triumphant cheer would ring from the opposite side. In rushing
wildly about the space, the light calico skirts of the playing damsels
would fly high in the air, exposing their slender limbs beneath. In
their eagerness to hit, and avoid being hit, they repeatedly
exclaimed: “Arre minya, arre minya.” Some of the more experienced
throwers showed their proficiency by using flat slabs of stone in lieu
of the cakes of dung.
The games we generally refer to as “hide-and-seek” are known to
the tribes of Australia. In one game a number of persons hide behind
bushes and boulders and are sought by one or more children; in
another an article is hidden by one and looked for by the rest of the
party. The players endeavour to mislead the “seeker” by obliterating
their tracks and substituting them by all sorts of “back-to-front,”
“devil-devil,” and other deceptive tracks. When a “find” is made there
is a loud, jubilant cry; and the “hider,” unless he can escape in time,
is pommelled by the “seeker”; the players do not, however, run back
to a crease or “home,” as we do in the European game.
Once one considers toys supplied by adults for the special benefit
of children, the question resolves itself into an analysis of endless
possibilities of creation achieved by the happy combination of
inventive mimicry and lucid interpretation. It would be as futile to
attempt an exhaustive discussion upon so big a subject as it would
be to even try to describe all the artificial objects one classes as
toys, however crude they might appear, which are manufactured for
the purpose of entertaining and instructing the child. And, indeed, the
young folks themselves are neither idle nor behindhand in
augmenting the collection of playthings supplied by others.
 Most of these articles are, however, made on the spur of an
impulse and serve their purpose just for the time being.
One of the favourite occupations of the children of all Australian
tribes is to build small brushwood shelters and wurlies for
themselves to sit and talk in like grown-ups. Occasionally they
occupy these miniature domiciles as “father and mother,” but more
often as “father” or “mother,” with a number of “children” to “look
after.”
When the “children” are not available as living playmates,
inanimate objects, such as stone, bits of wood, leaves and flowers,
are selected to take the “children’s” place. These receive names and
are placed in a row before the “foster parent,” who talks to them and
frequently changes them about. But the best part of the game is
when one of the “children” is supposed to misbehave itself, and in
consequence must receive a good flogging with a stick, kept handy
for that purpose. At other times one of the objects is taken up,
nursed, and spoken to most affectionately.
Here then we have the idea of the doll, simple though it be. But
after all, simplicity in method, so far as the training of children is
concerned, is perhaps the readiest means of stimulating the
imitative, and with it the creative, force which Nature has endowed
them with.
The doll is usually just a plain stick or stone, with perhaps some
distinguishing feature upon it, like a knob at one end which
represents the head. Occasionally it is painted with red ochre. Dr. W.
E. Roth found that on the Tully River in Queensland a forked stick is
chosen so as to permit the child fixing it on its neck like a mother
carrying her baby, with its lower limbs dangling over the shoulders.
Imaginary fireless cooking is also a pastime the little girls never
tire of. A shallow hole is scooped, into which a few handfuls of cold
ashes are thrown; this represents the fireplace. Upon the ashes is
laid a pebble, a leaf, or any other article which they make up their
minds to “cook.” Having covered it with sand in the orthodox way, the
girls sit and talk, whilst they make themselves believe the dish is in
course of preparation. They invite each other to the prospective
feast, each explaining what she is cooking; one might have a
wallaby, another a lizard, and still another a yam.
Quite apart from accompanying their mothers on the regular
hunting expeditions, the little boys often go out alone. They carry toy
weapons, with which they say they are going to slay a kangaroo or
anything else happening to come their way. In the Fitzroy River
district the young hunters collect, or cut out of a gum-tree butt,
several pieces of bark, dry or fresh, and shy these into the crown of
a boabab (Brachychiton Gregorii), hoping to fell a nut or two. If they
are successful, they proudly return to camp with their spoil and
obtain permission to roast it at the fireside. The small bark missiles
are looked upon by the boys as quite equivalent to the “kaili”
(boomerangs) of their fathers; and there is no doubt they can throw
them with greater skill. I have seen the little fellows stalk a flock of
foraging cockatoo and, when within range, fling several of the toy
weapons into the birds as they are rising; invariably one or two birds
are brought to fall.
 PLATE XI

Rocking a child to sleep.

“On Sunday Island the bark food-carrier, there known as “oladda,” is used as a
cradle; one might often see a busy mother, attending to duties which occupy her
hands, putting her child to sleep by simultaneously rocking the receptacle
containing it with her foot.”

The trimmed stalks of bullrushes and reeds make excellent toy

spears, which are thrown with the heavier end pointing forwards and
the thinner end poised against the index finger of the right hand.
With these “weapons” the lads have both mock fights and mock
hunts. In the latter case, one or two of their number act the part of
either a hopping kangaroo or a strutting emu and, by clever
movements of the body, endeavour to evade the weapons of the
hunting gang.
One of the favourite pastimes of young and old among the Kukata
is to play at “emu.” The players take a stick, about three feet long,
and tie a bundle of grass, brushwood, or feathers to one end of it, to
represent the neck and the head. The performer clasps this stick
with both hands and holds it erect in front of him; then he bends his
body forwards from the hips, whilst other persons cover him with
skins, and tie a tussock of grass over his stern to indicate the tail.
The actor next begins to walk around, as truly as possible imitating
the actions of the bird he is representing. As he walks, he nods his
“head,” while some of the children scamper round him in great
excitement, others flee from him shrieking with terror. After a while
he stops short, turns his head and shakes his body, finally running
away in a zig-zag course. As he runs, he frequently imitates the
peculiar deep note of the old emu and occasionally the shrill
whistling cry of the young. A most amusing little incident, which I saw
in connection with this game, happened near Mount Eba. A man,
fully rigged as an emu, was entertaining the camp with some very
clever, bird-like antics, when suddenly a vicious mongrel darted at
the performer from a wurlie he was passing. The “emu,” without any
deliberation at all, dropped its head, scampered across the ground,
hotly pursued by the dog, and, in its terror, climbed the nearest tree.
The King Sound men construct miniature “kaili,” barely an inch in
length, and practically straight, which they project, before the
admiring eyes of their juvenile audience, by using their fingers only.
The little toy is held between the second and third phalanges of the
left index finger, so that a good half of its length projects above the
hand. The inner tip of the right index finger is pressed strongly
against the outer surface of the left thumb and suddenly allowed to
slip over the top edge and strike the projecting part of the toy. The
little slab of wood is jerked into the air, whirls through space in a
parabolic curve, and, when well managed, returns to the hand of the
projector. The children often try this feat, but, with the exception of a
rare fluke, never succeed; in fact, it is not every adult man who can
do it.
 On Sunday Island, small models of the raft (“kaloa”), locally used,
are made for the children to play with. These toys are exact replicas
of the craft described in a subsequent chapter and are neatly
constructed in every detail.
A kind of dart is made by the children in the Northern Kimberleys
of Western Australia out of the root ends of grass seed-stalks, six to
eight inches long. These are held, one at a time, between the palms
of the hands parallel to, and between, the middle fingers, beyond
which they project but a fraction of an inch. In this position the hands
are turned so that the fingers point towards the body. Then taking
careful aim at an object, the child throws its hands vigorously
forwards, at the same instant opening them and shooting the dart in
the desired direction.
Among the Dieri, Yantowannta, and Ngameni, principally, and to a
less extent among the Arunndta, Aluridja, and Kukata, a playing stick
is found which is commonly known by the name of “kukerra.”
Although a toy, the men only were observed to use it, not only to
amuse the children, but for the benefit of the whole camp. The
kukerra is a slender, club-shaped stick made out of the Mulga. Its
length is about three feet six inches, of which the thickened end
occupies something like nine inches; the head, i.e. the swollen
portion, is up to an inch or slightly more in diameter, whilst the “stick”
is not thicker than an ordinary lead pencil; each end terminates in a
blunt point. The Dieri kukerras are lighter and more slender than the
Arunndta or Aluridja. The playing stick is seized at its thin end and,
swinging it with a straight arm, it is made to strike a bush or tussock
in front of the thrower; whence it bounds through the air in an
inclined position, and, after striking the ground, glides along the
surface in a snake-like manner.
Natives are fond of spinning any suitable objects which fall into
their hands; small pebbles, gall-nuts, and the larger varieties of
conical and bell-shaped eucalyptus fruits are all made to spin upon a
level surface just to amuse the children. The Yantowannta,
Wongkanguru, and other tribes of the Cooper Creek region are very
clever at moulding tops out of clay, with real pegs, upon which the
toys revolve. These tops are undoubtedly an indigenous invention.
The spinning is usually accomplished by rubbing the toy between the
palms of both hands.
Skipping is indulged in by little boys and girls alike. A long vine is
used by the Wogaits on the Daly River, which is swung to and fro like
a pendulum by two of the players, whilst others jump over the line as
it passes beneath them. The “rope” is not swung overhead.
At Engoordina, Arunndta children and women were noticed to
entertain the tribe by artful tricks with an endless piece of string. By
an intricate method of inter-looping and threading, a long cord, tied
together at its ends, so as to form a complete ring, is transformed
into different patterns of squares, triangles, and circles, the
composite groups of which are intended to represent different natural
objects. The string is held at different points, according to the
complexity of the design, by the fingers, toes, and mouth of the
performer; occasionally, indeed, the services of an assistant are
required to support the pattern whilst it is being constructed. The
more elaborate articles when completed resemble a loosely netted
or knitted fabric, the plainer are more after the style of a few loops or
meshes lightly held together. Some of the designs bear a
recognizable resemblance to the objects they are intended to
represent (e.g. birds, animals, men, etc.), others appear to be (to the
European at any rate) rather far-fetched. Very often a complicated-
looking design can be instantly reduced to the original piece of string
by simply pulling one of its component loops or ends.
Dr. W. E. Roth has very ably described a series of such figures,
made with one or two endless strings, which he found to be
commonly constructed throughout north Queensland, where the
tribes play a game resembling the European “cratch-cradle.”
Children are not allowed to attend many tribal ceremonies;
consequently one does not often see them with their bodies
decorated or ornamented. There are occasions, however, when their
presence is tolerated, such as, for instance, at receptions to relatives
who are returning from a fight or long hunting expedition. White earth
or kaolin is invariably used for beautifying the appearance, it being
maintained that it is unwise to apply much red, the token of blood, to
the body of one who has not sacrificed some of his blood during the
course of such ceremonies as will elevate him to the status of the
tribe’s manhood. The kaolin is applied in the form of a thick paste in
a series of thin lines. On Sunday Island these lines pass from the
centre of the shoulder, on either side, diagonally to and along the
breast-bone; and horizontally across the thighs and forearms. The
face has a smear of white straight down the nose, and two semi-
circular lines, which enclose the mouth and converge to a point
opposite the ear on either side. The child in addition wears a belt of
twisted human hair-string, from which pends a pearl shell ornament;
it might also carry a plume of white cockatoo feathers in its hair.
There are slight variations in the patterns and designs chosen for
child-decoration both in the same tribal group and among different
tribes, but no matter what part of Australia is considered, the effect
completed is decidedly less elaborate than the complex and ornate
colour schemes seen in the ceremonial displays of performing men.
The children take no active part in such proceedings, but usually
walk or stand about at points where they do not interfere with the
proceedings in general. There is no objection to the child carrying
one of the boomerangs of its father, but under no conditions is it
permitted to handle a spear-thrower.
Children are early accustomed to discipline and obedience. They
are not required to obey any but their individual fathers, tribal fathers,
and tribal uncles. They need not pay heed to the orders of their
contemporaries, but only to the word of such as they consider “grew
them,” that is, men of a previous generation to themselves. Women
need not be obeyed by law, but, with the knowledge and sanction of
a father, a mother can chastise and punish a child as much as she
pleases. The father reserves the right to interfere at any moment.
The little girls accompany their mothers whenever collecting
rambles are undertaken. They receive instructions in the methods of
locating and gathering grubs, lizards, seeds, and roots; and during
this time they are required to daily handle the yam-stick in the correct
manner as shown them by their seniors. Subsequently they are
taught how to clean, cook, and prepare the meals to be placed
before the men.
 The boys are early in life schooled in the practices of carpentry, so
far as they are applied to the making and shaping of domestic
utensils and weapons with the few crude implements at their
disposal.
Further, they are instructed in the knacks and arts of handling and
throwing weapons of chase, attack, and defence. The lads take to
this instruction enthusiastically. For instance, whilst being taught the
art of boomerang-throwing, one might daily see a youngster, even in
the absence of his master, posing in the attitude demonstrated to
him, without actually letting the piece of wood, which answers the
purpose of a weapon, go out of his hand (Plate XIV, 1).
Boys are not allowed to handle real boomerangs, spears, or
shields before they have undergone the first initiation ceremony. If
they did so, the offence would be looked upon as an insult to the
dignity of the men who have qualified and are thus entitled to the
privilege of carrying such weapons on parade. The offence is in fact,
on a point of decorum, similar to the case of a fellow in the “rank and
file” wearing the sword or insignia of his superior officer.
When, at a later stage, the elder boys of the Northern Kimberleys
of Western Australia become well-skilled in throwing, sham-fights are
arranged. Pieces of bark are broken from the mangroves, out of
which the combatants make missiles resembling straight
boomerangs. Sides are picked under the supervision of the men and
the signal given to start. In a moment the air becomes alive with the
whirr and buzz of the flying pieces of wood, which the youths throw
straight at one another. Often severe gashes and wounds are
inflicted upon the bodies of the “fighters,” but such are taken in good
faith and looked upon as being part of the game.
As a means of self-defence and protection against such throwing-
sticks and the small toy-spears previously mentioned, the Arunndta
construct for their boys light bark shields. A piece of green bark is cut
out of the butt of a eucalyptus, oblong-oval in shape and about two
feet long and six inches wide. Two holes are cut in the central line of
this piece, about six inches from either end, and through them two or
three fairly stout, green twigs are stuck, from the under, concave
surface, to form a handle. The points of these twigs stick out from
the top surface, some two inches, but they are left to prevent the
ends of the handle from slipping out. The bark is then bent in the
required shield-shape and dried over a slow fire or in hot ashes
(Plate XIV, 1).
The girls, too, are encouraged to indulge in stick-practice to
prepare them for the “kutturu” duels they will have to take part in, in
later years. The principal mark is the foot, which each alternately
tries to strike, while the other is “on guard” with her stick. At other
times they stand face to face, with the palms of their hands pressed
tightly together. Presently one voluntarily bows her head, when the
other immediately gives her a severe crack over the scalp with the
small finger side of her hands. Then the other has a turn; and the
process may be repeated. The object of this strange procedure is to
“harden” the head in anticipation of the real blows it will receive in
time to come. To make the performance appear genuine, the girl,
whose turn it is to strike, may be heard to feign a curse: “Atutnia,
arrelinjerrai!”
The child’s mind is early imbued with the importance of hardening
the body and nerve against pain, and thereby making the system
less susceptible to the hardships of life, which they know to be
inevitable.
The system of personal mutilation, described in a subsequent
chapter, has to a certain extent been evolved for a similar reason.
Camp life brings many little accidents with it, but the Spartan
principles which are cultivated lead to an almost complete ignorance
of the existence of pain as might be brought about by small cuts or
burns. Just for the sake of competitive amusement, the boys of the
Kukata tribe take a live coal from the fire and lay it upon the naked
skin of their forearm. A red-hot coal, about the size of a pea, is
usually selected for the purpose and momentarily “cooled” or
“blackened” by covering it with a handful of sand. The black coal is
then placed upon the forearm at any suitable spot and touched with
the red-hot point of a firestick. The coal on the arm immediately turns
red again and in that condition is allowed to remain there until it falls
to white ash. The first effect is naturally to raise a blister, but this is
soon burnt through and the raw skin is exposed, upon which the coal
gently fizzles. Whilst this is going on, the boy is seen to bite his lips
together and to clinch the fist of the suffering arm, as if to suppress
the pain. The lesion will, of course, leave a permanent scar. Some of
the lads have many of such marks upon both arms, and they seem
quite proud of them.
In the camps of any of the tribal groups throughout Australia, who
are still enjoying an uncontaminated life, one might see captive birds
and animals temporarily tethered or kept for the amusement of
children. Such are usually brought home by the men returning from
their hunting expeditions. A young wallaby, for instance, is let go on
an open flat and all the children set after it. They are not allowed to
hurl stones or sticks after the fleeing game, but must retake it alive
by the use of their hands only. Although it is against the rules to
harm a captured animal, it is a curious circumstance that a native,
even if grown up, invariably forgets to feed it, although entertaining
the idea of keeping it alive. Occasionally, however, it happens that a
creature survives and looks after its own needs; in this case the
animal or bird becomes a real pet and is not made the object of
children’s coursing matches any more.
The King Sound natives catch the small ring-tailed opossums,
which live in the mangroves, and hand them to their children. The
Ponga-Ponga gins become very attached to these marsupial pets,
which they carry about with them on their days’ outings planted in
the locks of their hair. The opossums seem quite contented to abide
there whilst their mistresses are on the march and hang on by
means of their claws and tail (Plate X, 2). Occasionally one might
even see an affectionate gin suckling her pet at her breast.
On Sunday Island several cockatoos were kept by a fishing party
in their camp not far from shore. The birds had their flight feathers
pulled and were allowed to roam about the country in search of food.
The cockatoos seemed to regard the huts as their home, to which
they invariably returned; they had, moreover, picked up many
phrases of the aboriginal tongue.
 Although the native animals and birds of Australia have always
been, and still are, the daily object of aboriginal chase, it is a
remarkable fact that great friendships are made between the hunter
and his would-be prey when the latter is in captivity. Indeed, the
instinctive fear of an animal or bird is ever so much greater when a
white man approaches than when a native does. I have seen cases
where semi-wild cockatoos, magpies, and other birds have allowed
themselves to be handled by natives without much concern, but the
moment a European attempted to do likewise, the bird would
become unmanageable, terrified, and vicious. Partly domesticated
birds seem to have a predilection for perching themselves upon the
legs of their native masters when the latter are sitting or lying on the
ground. Talking of instinct reminds me of the occasions I took
aborigines to the Zoological Gardens to see the favourite attraction,
viz. the “monkey-wurlie.” Whilst European visitors were coming and
going, the apes would appear unconcerned, phlegmatic, and blasé;
but the moment the dark-skinned people arrived, the animals would
instantly become electrified and bounce towards the iron bars, which
they seized and shook frantically. The natives, on the other hand,
would evince no fear, but endeavoured to edge as close as possible
to the monkeys, although they had never seen one before. The
monkeys, in appreciation of the coloured visitors’ benignity, would
grin, wink their eyes, and make guttural noises.
At the time of my visit to the Forrest River Mission Station, a
tethered monkey was kept on the premises. The natives regarded it
as a real “little man,” and many of them, especially the children, were
on excellent terms with it, but this could not be said of some of the
old men. The monkey and the children were inseparable, and usually
at play; but occasionally disputes arose which always ended in an
open tussle, during which hands, teeth, and finger-nails were used.
Although young humanity did not always fare best, the monkey
would never take a mean advantage nor resort to extreme tactics.
When it found itself victorious, it would jump triumphantly on to its
perch and cry “Arre Arre.”
 CHAPTER XII
THE DAY’S MARCH

Orders of the day—Selection of camp site—Feminine water carriers—Great

variety of bark vessels—Skin water-bag—Bailers and drinking cups—Natural
water supplies—Water-bearing trees—Modes of drinking.

“When another sun will come, and when he is still a piccaninny,

Punya umberri (everybody) will walk to the big stone (hill), lying in
the gum-trees, where Kuddoguddogu (a landmark) holds up the
clouds of the Pindanol’s country. Narrawiddi and Wetninnya will carry
my angamma (bark-wrap with small personal belongings), and all
other women will take many naramarragam (bark food-carriers) and
fill them with yams on the way. Plenty water sits upon the ground.
The men will run the kangaroo’s track with me.”
Upon an order like this from one of the old men, the following
day’s itinerary is cast. Brief though it seems, it is sufficient because,
although the chances of the coming expedition might widely
separate the members of the group, they keep in constant touch with
each other by signs and signals best known to themselves.
The site for a camping ground is thus always selected by one of
the old men in authority. Preference is given, other things being
equal, to a spot near to a natural water supply. There are, of course,
numerous occasions when there is no water available. When, for
instance, the natives are hunting in the sandhills during a good
season, they either carry water with them for miles, or rely on the
succulent parakylia and other water-holding plants.
It falls to the lot of the women to carry water upon such occasions.
The fluid is contained in bark carriers of different designs, which they
either skilfully balance upon their heads or carry under their arms.
The water is kept from splashing over the sides, in the first place by
the naturally graceful gait of the women; but, at the same time, an
intentional addition of twigs and branchlets further checks any undue
movement of the fluid which might be produced in the vessel during
the march.
The Dieri, Yantowannta, Ngameni, Arunndta, Aluridja,
Wongapitcha, and other central Australian tribes use shield or
trough-shaped carriers cut out of the bark of the eucalyptus, shaped
and hardened over the fire. The shield type is flat, with more or less
open ends; the trough type has higher sides and ends, and is
therefore more capacious. There is, however, no hard and fast
division between the two. The surfaces of these are either smooth or
longitudinally grooved with a stone scraper. The largest were
observed on Cooper’s Creek, measuring three feet in length, one
foot in width, and five inches in depth, while those of the Arunndta
and Aluridja are not quite so long and wide, but they may be deeper.
The utensils go by different names, according to tribe and locality;
three of the most commonly heard are “mika,” “pitchi,” and
“cooleman.” In addition to taking the place of water-holders, they are
also used as food-carriers.
North of the MacDonnell Ranges, similar articles are cut out of
solid wood, usually the Northern Territory Beantree (Erythrina
vespertilio).
The Warramunga and Kaitish (or Kaitidji) tribes in addition make
large canoe-shaped carriers out of similar material. Two varieties are
met with. The first is more or less flat-bottomed with steeply inclined
sides coming to a sharp edge at each end; the second is uniformly
curved, shield-like, with all its sides standing at about the same level
at the open end. The former is grooved longitudinally on the outside
surface only, the inside being left in the rough; the latter is finely
grooved on the inner, as well as the outer surfaces. Both types are
generally painted over with red ochre. It is a decidedly laborious job
to remove the wood, which originally fills the inside of this carrier, a
fact which will be realized when one considers that it has all to be
done by burning with live coals, and gouging and scraping with stone
implements.
 The Sunday Islanders take a rectangular sheet of bark of the
woolly-butt eucalyptus, fold both ends for a distance of three or four
inches, into pleats (like a concertina), and stitch them together with
split cane. The utensil is used throughout the north-west coast as far
as Cambridge Gulf.
On Bathurst and Melville Islands similar structures are made out of
the bark of the paper-bark tree (Melaleuca). An oblong piece is bent
upon itself lengthwise, both its ends folded, as in the previous case,
and kept together by binding with cane or by spiking with short
wooden pegs.
The same pattern, slightly modified here and there, is found along
the shores and islands of the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Cape York
Peninsula. We might say, therefore, that it occurs throughout the
entire length of the north coast of Australia.
Another type, perhaps more food than water-carrier, is common on
Melville and Bathurst Islands; it is made of a single piece of the
“stringy-bark” eucalypt. An oblong sheet, say a good yard long and
nearly half as wide, is freshly cut and folded transversely at its
centre. The edges of both sides are pared down, laid flat, one over
the other, and sewn or laced together with plain or “run-on” stitches.
A row of slanting and overlapping stitches is often inserted along the
open edge a short distance down; and occasionally part of the same
edge may be cross-hemstitched and plastered with beeswax; the
object of these stitches is to prevent the bark tearing along the fibres.
The mouth of the carrier is nearly circular, or at any rate oval.
Ordinarily the bark is left in its raw condition, but upon special
occasions elaborate designs, consisting of circles, and other figures,
with cross-hatched line-patterns, are drawn on the outer surfaces in
red, yellow, white, and black.
An article is in use locally among the Worora at Port George IV,
which perhaps interests us most on account of its similarity to the
orthodox water-carrier employed by ourselves, viz. the bucket. What
makes the fact more interesting still is that this unique type of water-
vessel is found in a locality, than which even at the present time
none other is further remote from civilization. The bark-bucket of the