Some Medieval Impressions of the Ostrich

matter which the modern versifier treats with wit and levity, the anatomy, physical appearance, mental capacity, and behavior of animals and birds, was considered by medieval men as the proper province of the moralists, who could draw from this rich field important lessons for human beings. Many of the tales they told derive ultimately, of course, from the Aesopian corpus, perhaps by way of the Latin version of Phaedrus or the later reworkings of Babrius, Avianus, and the so-called pseudo-Romulus. Frequently the medieval writers present this material not as fables, but as natural history, in bestiaries which were chiefly the outgrowth of the Latin translation of the fourth-century Greek work known as Physiologus. In general, the commonplace birds and animals appear as they do in the old stories, but the unusual creatures challenged the imagination of the writers, and one finds some original descriptions and some singular lessons to be learned from them. Among the unfamiliar creatures, few stimulated curiosity more than the ostrich. Tacitus's dictum, "The unknown always passes for the marvellous" (Agricola, 30), seems particularly applicable to the ostrich as treated by the men of the Middle Ages. Since very few people in Europe had seen an ostrich, writers were obliged to depend upon the descriptions given in Pliny, Isidore of Seville, and Physiologus, their most easily accessible sources. The Greek name for the creature, struthiocamelus (bird-camel), indicates that what chiefly