34 Ulisse Aldrovandi

was first discovered; for when a certain Thessalian king commanded his guards to set out and retrieve some cattle that had been driven wild by gadflies, they immediately ran to perform the task. However, since their own running speed was insufficient, they mounted horses. With the remarkable swiftness of these steeds, they pursued and overtook the cattle, using goads to drive them back to their enclosures. Because these guards were seen either moving at such great velocity or leaning down from their horses to drink from the River Peneus, they gave rise to the fable that they were "Centaurs."

Indeed, they were called Centaurs from the Greek *apo tou kentein tous taurous*, because they chased the cattle with goads. And although a Centaur is said to have encountered Saint Anthony while he was wandering through the desert, we nevertheless gather from the teaching of Saint Jerome in his *Life of Anthony* that this was a demon who wished to mock the saint with such a form—especially as Saint Chrysostom, in his commentary on the third chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians, taught that Hippocentaurs were fictional monsters.

If Centaurs were to be named for their equine hindquarters, then surely the people living on islands a three-day voyage from the Scythian coast should properly be called Centaurs; for they are said to be endowed with horse-like feet and are thus named Hippopodes, as appears in the figure mentioned above.

Although others have written that some creatures have the legs of a donkey and are called *Onosceloi* (as the term *onoskelos* is defined as having donkey legs), this is considered a type of demon. According to Rhodiginus, the *Onoscelos* is a kind of demon named for its asinine legs. In my opinion, one should not exclude from the category of Centaurs those creatures made of a human body with a single horse leg (if such things truly exist), about which Lycosthenes records the following: Portuguese sailors, halfway on their journey to Calicut where the North Star can no longer be seen, discovered on a certain island men equipped with two arms and hands on their right side, donkey ears, human faces, thick hair around their private parts, a right leg of a horse, and the other of a human, just as the figure above shows. These people run like stags and are cruel and mindless; their women are similar but with smaller ears, and they are said to give birth twice every year—unless, as I suspect, Lycosthenes has recorded things that depart entirely from the path of truth.

The penultimate difference in human form presents itself to us in the scale of stature—specifically, giants and pygmies—which a certain poet noted when he sang: "Monsters, the Giant, and the hand—two opposite forms: a man, a massive Giant, and a hollow dwarf of a man."

Since some people hold the unshakable opinion that giants never existed, we have determined this view to be false. Thus, although many of the ancients believed that no one could exceed a height of seven feet (which they attest was the height of Hercules), Pliny nevertheless reported that a man named Gabbara, brought from Arabia, grew to a height of nine feet and nine inches. This is confirmed by Solinus, who writes that the Sythotae Ethiopians grow to twelve feet, and elsewhere that certain peoples of India are so large they can easily mount elephants.

Onesicritus states that in parts of India where there are no shadows, the height of men is five cubits and two palms. Furthermore, Olaus Magnus places such men even in Northern regions, especially in the Kingdom of the Helsings who are subjects of the King of the Swedes.

He mentions a giant nine cubits tall, who was accompanied by twelve fellow soldiers of tall stature. Indeed, he recounts that within living memory, there were individuals like these in the provinces of Sweden and Gothia, bolstered with such strength that they could easily carry a horse or an ox for several furlongs, and could knock an armed rider to the ground with remarkable agility. For this reason, Virgil, writing of Turnus, says:

"A massive ancient stone lay on the field, placed as a boundary-marker for the land to settle disputes over the fields; twelve picked men of such bodies as the earth now produces could scarcely heave it onto their shoulders. But he, snatching it up with a powerful hand, hurled it at his enemy."

From the movement of such an immense rock, we can infer the size and strength of this man. What, then, shall be said of the Emperor Maurice, who, according to Pliny, used his wife’s bracelet as a finger-brace-