dolphins burn with a love for humans. He then included a beautiful eight-line poem with the following sentiment:

“Thus, O dolphin, you hold your joy in an embrace upon your back, While you, fair youth, despise the threats of the sea. Behold, what great faith drove the fish to leave his native depths, And what trust commanded the boy to rely upon the waters? Thus bold Venus mingles the elements, and frantic Love knows nothing of the constraints owed to nature. Alas, how suddenly he who burns even the icy waters Will consume my weeping heart until it is exhausted!”

Furthermore, the female sex has acquired two primary traits from nature. First, according to Socrates, women are teachable in all disciplines and virtues if they are diligently instructed. Second, they have claimed for themselves a certain natural inconstancy and lightness, according to this couplet:

“A feather is light, a pumice stone is light, the breeze is light; but do you see anything lighter than the levity of woman itself?”

We can attest to this all the more when we see women seeking applause in every matter—a manifest sign of vanity. Consequently, there is a great similarity to be found between a woman and a peacock, since a woman often surveys herself with the same strutting pride as a peacock. We should not be surprised, then, by the story of the Leucadian woman who was so beloved by a peacock she raised that when she died, the bird also wished to die by refusing food.

Moreover, not only does nature provide for the species, but "individual nature" (so to speak) also instills wonderful gifts in particular human beings. Sometimes they draw great power from this—even greater than from the species itself. Albertus Magnus assigned this to a certain hidden property or celestial influence, since individuals possess a marvelous energy for acting and being acted upon that is not common to the species, but unique and peculiar to them.

Albertus tells of twins: one had a side whose touch caused all gates to open, while the other caused locked gates to suddenly close. We also know of people who so dreaded mice, cats, or other animals that they would faint at the sight of them. Solinus reports that the full moon harms pregnant women through a kind of antipathy, just as salty foods are often harmful to the fetus; indeed, a pregnant woman who delights in excessively salty things often brings forth a child without fingernails. Similarly, a faculty is impressed from the heavens upon others for healing scrofula or various ulcers, such that a condition which long exhausted a surgeon's hands and could not be cured by any medicine is healed by the mere touch of their saliva. And so we can continue to wonder at and meditate upon other gifts of individuals that by no means flow from the properties of the species.

FOOD

Galen, speaking on the properties of foods, assigned a familiar diet to every kind of animal based on the nature of its entire substance. Thus, just as straw, hay, and barley are suitable for horses and donkeys, and raw meat for lions, he asserted that cooked meat and bread prepared from wheat seeds are appropriate for humans.

It is not without reason, then, that humans are called *artophagoi* in Greek—meaning "bread-eaters"—though they might more accurately be called *opsophagoi*, since no animal craves relishes and culinary delicacies more than man. From this, humans have devised various kinds of breads and cakes, such as the *Coliphium* mentioned in Plautus, *Artolaganus*, *Artoptesia*, *Maza*, the hard bread used by sailors, the *Pythiriae* (which are cheaper, bran-based breads), and even *Nasti* breads made with added raisins. Beyond this, in the prepared magnificence of their feasts, humans make use of the meat of birds, fish, and quadrupeds. Do we not have from Tiraqueau an account of the "Platter of Vitellius," which was decorated with the livers of parrot-fish, and the brains of pheasants and pea-