History of Monsters 39

...three cubits high, who reproduce in their fifth year and reach old age by their eighth. A tiny race of men is also found on a certain island in the East, which is entirely a gold mine; Argensola freely asserts that these are true Pygmies. The diversity of the locations inhabited by these dwarves should not cause us to doubt the truth of the history, for by that same logic we could argue that the nation of Giants was a fable.

Furthermore, such mannikins have been seen in nearly every age. Mark Antony is said to have possessed a dwarf named Sisyphus, who was under two feet tall and possessed a lively wit. According to Pliny, Canopas was a favorite of Julia, the granddaughter of Augustus, and stood only two feet and a palm high. Moreover, Augustus exhibited a young boy named Lucius, born of a respectable family, who was less than two feet in stature. Nicephorus mentions a person born in Egypt of incredibly short stature and claims to have seen such a person in his own time; this child was born to a small woman and was so tiny that he resembled a partridge, yet he possessed the wisdom of a great man, though he did not live past his twenty-fifth year. Recently, as the Jesuit Eusebius testifies, a well-formed little man was seen in Spain; he already had a beard at seven years old, possessed his full strength at ten, and fathered a son. What is more, only six years ago here in Bologna, we saw a dwarf only thirty inches tall belonging to the illustrious and excellent Duke Charles de Créquy. We keep a life-sized portrait of him in the Museum of the Illustrious Senate of Bologna, bearing this inscription: "Michael Magnanus, forty-one years old, born in the town of the Baron of Sessonagio in Dauphiné near Grenoble; dwarf to the most illustrious and excellent Lord Charles de Créquy, Peer and Marshal of France, Viceroy of Dauphiné, and Ambassador of the Most Christian King Louis XIII of France and Navarre to the most holy Urban VIII for the oath of obedience in the year 1634."

The most illustrious Knight Ferdinando Cospi keeps two others at his home, very similar in stature and formed with an elegant constitution of limbs.

On the other hand, several notable authors have denied the existence of Pygmies. First, Albertus Magnus allows that they exist but considers them a species of man-like beast; this opinion seems to conform to Aristotelian doctrine, for while the Philosopher granted the existence of Pygmies, he did not openly assert they were human. Perhaps bolstered by this reasoning, Suessanus claimed that Pygmies are not men because they do not participate in the perfect use of reason, and he further argued this because they lack religion—whereas, according to Plato, religion is proper to every human being and to humans alone. It does not matter that Pygmies were mentioned by Ezekiel, as some have come to the conclusion that he understood them to be massive men, called "Pygmies" because they were measured by the cubit rather than the foot. Saint Jerome interprets Pygmies as "boxers," since in Greek *pygme* signifies a fist or a struggle. Or, in the opinion of others, men living in high towers were called Pygmies because, when seen from a distance, they appeared no larger than a cubit; this is an opinion by no means to be dismissed. Scaliger, among other authors, denies the existence of Pygmies solely on the grounds that they are not seen today, but this argument seems of no value, as it has already been abundantly proved that Giants once existed who are no longer found now. Cardano embraced a better opinion, placing Pygmies among the species of apes. This is supported by Marco Polo in his Indian history, where he wrote that an island called Basman is occupied by a multitude of apes. Hunters in those regions catch many of them, shave off their hair (leaving only the beard and pubic hair intact), dry them in wooden boxes, and season them with camphor to sell to merchants, who later travel about displaying them as if they were Pygmies. Anyone wishing to see more on Pygmies may turn to the twentieth book of my *Ornithology*, where the battle of the Cranes and Pygmies is discussed.

At the end of this category, we place those distinguished by being composed of both sexes, which includes Androgynes, or Hermaphrodites. Indeed, the word "Androgyne," or "Androgy-