Pliny the Elder. Bestiary. Bestiary Aragones. Architecture, stone, Romanesque Gothic Renaissance painting sculpture nature.

Fibula Iron Age of the Provincial museum of Zaragoza

Silver zoomorphic fibula
Iron age 1,8 x 2,9 cm
Provincial museum of Zaragoza
Photography J. Garrido

At the beginning of the 1st century AD, the naturalist Gaius Pliny Secundo (called Pliny the Elder, to differentiate him from his nephew Pliny the Younger, politician, writer and orator) wrote a great work, the Natural History , divided into 37 books, where he writes about geography, countries and peoples of the earth, plants, animals, minerals, with their properties, medicines and other elements, important monuments, famous people, or about artists, their works and techniques.
More than scientific observations, these are popular traditions and superstitions that would influence both medieval and Renaissance literature such as The Physiologus, The Bestiaries, The Etymologies of San Isidoro, the Alberto Magno Codex, Hortus Sanitatis, etc.

The work is successfully transmitted from period to period, not lacking the added comments that in many cases increase the fantastic descriptions attributed to this species.

During the Renaissance, it would be one of the most popular books in the press, naturally accompanied by comments such as those by Hernolao Barbaro, in 1492, or that of Nicolás Leoniceno in 1526.
In Spain Alcalá began this work with the comments of Francisco López de Villalobos in 1524, in Valencia Juan Andrés Strancy, and in Salamanca Francisco Hernán Núñez, el Pinciano, began the translation into Spanish that did not finish until 1544, but which will be used by Gerónimo de Huerta, who managed to produce the first Spanish translation with commentaries, made in Madrid by the royal printer Luis Sánchez, in 1624.

Some sample snippets:

(Book VII, cap.II)
India and the land of Ethiopia are greatly full of wonderful things ...
They say (if this can be believed) that under a fig tree there can be three companies
of people on horseback ... The philosophers of India, called Gymnosophists, from the
sunrise to sunset they are always steady, looking at him without moving their eyes,
alternately placed on one foot above the boiling sands.
On Mount Milo there are men with their feet turned upside down and they have eight toes on each foot, according to Megastenes. In many other mountains there are men who have heads like dogs, who dress in the skins of beasts and instead of talking they bark, ...
of these Ctesias writes that there were more than one hundred and twenty thousand when he wrote ...
He also writes that there are certain men called Monoscelos, who have but
one leg and they are very light in jumping, and these same by another name are called Sciopodes,
Because when the sun is great they put themselves on the ground and with their feet they shade the whole body.
They live not far from the Troglodytes.
Then to the west there are men without heads and their eyes on their shoulders.
In the Subsolano mountains of India (called the Catardulos region) there are Satyrs,
which are very fast ...
Pygmies, which are no longer than three feet ...
These, Homer writes, who are fatigued by cranes; it is fame that in the spring
They put themselves on horseback on rams or goats and armed with arrows with all their army they go down to the sea
and destroy the eggs and the children of the cranes ...
Aristotle says that the Pygmies live in caves and in caves, in all the others
things agree with all the other writers ...
These things and others like it produces the nature of the generation of men, which for
she is a game and for us a miracle ...
But let's start from here to discuss some things that are more true in man.

...

Oters informations

Ample your information on Aragon

If you want Ample your information on Aragon you can begin crossing some books.

Also Aragon enjoys a diverse and varied Nature where passing by plants, animals, or landscapes we can arrive at a fantastic bestiario that lives in its monuments.

The information will not be complete without a stroll by its three provinces: Zaragoza, Teruel and Huesca ans us varied Regions, with shutdown in some of its spectacular landscapes like Ordesa or the Moncayo or by opposition in the valle of the Ebro.

The "Naturaleza de Aragon" project is an extension of the Aragón project is like that, and tries to collect and relate all possible types of documentary information about Aragon: texts, books, articles, maps, illustrations, photographs, narrations, etc., and proceed to its publication and diffusion.

Pliny the Elder. Bestiary.

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Pliny the Elder. Bestiary. Bestiary Aragones.

Background of the Bestiaries

Some sample snippets:

Oters informations

Ample your information on Aragon