History of Monsters. 433

# The Birth of Foreign Heads in the Offspring of Beasts

In exploring and examining this section, we believe it is worthwhile to consider every category of quadruped—namely the solid-hoofed, the cloven-hoofed, and those with toes—since we find monsters of this type among all of them. Regarding the solid-hoofed, Plutarch recounts in his *Symposium* that he was shown the offspring of a mare which, except for its head, mirrored the form of a horse, while the head itself featured a human face. A more recent example of a horse-like monster is one that, according to Lycosthenes, was born in the territory of Verona in the year 1254. This occurred at the same time as the fierce battle at Mount Altinum, where the combined forces of the Florentines and Pisans clashed. At that time, a foal was born from a mare with a human head; hearing its murmuring or crying, a local countryman ran to the scene. Stunned by the strange sight, he immediately drew his sword and cut off the monster's head. When the shepherd was later brought to judgment and questioned about the origin of this monstrous birth and why he had killed it, he testified that he had done so out of sheer horror and revulsion. This monstrous horse is shown in Figure I.

Schenck, in his work on monsters, records two separate accounts of this monstrous horse—one following the account of Ambroise Paré and the other based on Lycosthenes—though we believe both refer to the same event. Mussato, the Paduan historian, also mentions a foal with a monstrous face born in the territory of Verona. When the countryman in whose hut it was born saw it, he killed the monster at once and fixed its head to the point of a stake for passersby to see. We believe this monster does not differ from the one already described, even though they were recorded at different times.

Turning now to the family of cloven-hoofed animals, we first encounter Aristotle, who recorded in his *History of Animals* the birth of a boy with the head of a ram, and a calf with the head of a boy. Albertus Magnus also mentions a cow in a certain village that gave birth to a calf with a human face. Furthermore, according to Fincelius, in the village of Kleisdorf not far from Bamberg, a cow gave birth to a monster with four calf’s feet, a beard on its chin, human ears, and a small amount of hair. We also find the case of a calf discovered in the fields of the town of Bitterfeld in the year 1547. It had human eyes, nostrils, and ears, and a shaven crown, but its mouth, chest, and front legs were those of a calf. Its hind legs were human and shorter, ending partly in calf hooves and partly in human fingers that hung down separately beneath the hooves. Caspar Peucer described this monster in his *Teratoscopia*, as it appears in the accompanying Figure II.

Lycosthenes also records in his history that this occurred in the aforementioned year. Yet an even more recent birth of this kind of monster is recounted by Fincelius, which happened in the Pomeranian village of Rossow, near Pasewalk, in the year 1555. This involved a calf with a smooth, round head like an ape, a hairy chin, and a protruding tongue.

In this same family, there have been sheep that gave birth to lambs with foreign heads. Titus Livy records that in Frusino, in the year of the world 3766, a lamb was born with a pig's head. Similarly, Julius Obsequens notes that in the year of the world 3861, during the consulship of C. Marius and Q. Lutatius, two lambs were born in Lucania with horse-like feet; one of these also bore the head of an ape.