Caesar and a German Unicorn? May 14, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient , trackback
Karl Shuker has recently put up a post on an ancient cryptoid: the Hercynian Unicorn. KS, always interesting, quotes the work of a German author Markus Bühler (whose work I’ve not read), suggesting that we are dealing with a ‘freak deer’ across the Rhine. However, before conjuring up abberant creatures to explain curious antique references, it is worth going back to the original text: De Bello Gallico 6, 26. Caesar is describing a series of three strange creatures that appear in the Hercynian forests in Germany, essentially an uber version of the Black Forest. We’ll return to the other two curios another day. However, for now drum in the unicorn from left stage.
Est bos cerui figura, cuius a media fronte inter aures unum cornu exsistit excelsius magisque directum his, quae nobis nota sunt, cornibus: ab eius summo sicut palmae ramique late diffunduntur. Eadem est feminae marisque natura, eadem forma magnitudoque cornuum.
There is an ox [bos/ox was a generic Roman word for large four legged mammals, perhaps better translated as quadruped?] of the shape of a stag, between whose ears a horn rises from the middle of the forehead, higher and straighter than those horns which are known to us. From the top of this, branches, like palms, stretch out a considerable distance. The shape of the female and of the male is the, same; the appearance and the size of the horns is the same.
KS talks about Caesar being an eyewitness to the creature. There are two problems with this. First, the passage above, at no point, suggests that the author personally saw this marvel: and Caesar had no problems elsewhere in his writings insisting on his personal authority for knowledge from outside the limes. Then, second, there is actually a minority opinion among classicists that this is a later addition to Caesar’s Gallic Wars (perhaps from manuscript marginalia). Forget then Caesar as an eyewitness. We are likely dealing with information filtered into the war camps of the Romans in northern Gaul, with all the problems that ‘barbarian whispers’ across the Rhine will have involved. Nevertheless the description (such as it is) suggests something more than a ‘freak’: we have here an entire species with reference to male and female.
What animal is being described? Classicist after classicist have lined up to suggest the reindeer, which in ancient times extended far south, beyonds its present rather cramped quarters in the Arctic circle. The reindeer is unique among deer in that females and males both consistently have horns: though female horns are slightly smaller. Most classicists though have gone quickly past the problem that this creature had only one antler! We cannot in good conscience do so. Had Caesar been shown a pair that had been stripped from an animal and then bound together at the root? Had a Roman seen a reindeer in profile? Had a Roman even seen a reindeer (dead or alive) after one of its horns had fallen? Or had Caesar or his informant assimilated a good description of a reindeer to the mythical and confused classical notion of the unicorn? Any other ideas: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Ruth in WA, 29 Apr 2017: Did Caesar even know about unicorns, is that just a translationists concept putting words in Caesar’s mouth? I thought a one horned beast was more of a medieval invention. If you look at a deer, or reindeer even, at a certain angle it would appear to have a single horn with a branching at the top. Especially if the light was bad, the “deer” were moving, or the sighting was merely a glimpse at a distance. That type of deer would have been unfamiliar to the deer he might have seen in Italy and places there, though he might have seen the deer in Britain, of course. Curious. Ruth in WA
Bruce T, 29 Apr 2017: It sounds like a moose antler to me. They’re native to the Baltic region and their antlers would look like a palm. Caesar’s mostly Italian army would have never seen anything like them. If they can thrive in dense woods of eastern Canada and Maine with that set of headgear, they could have done the same in the dense lightly populated forests of N. Germany of that time.
