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Aristotle - On The Parts Of Animals
Atec Февраль 16 2008 20:01:06
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It is said also that when men in battle are wounded anywhere near
the midriff, they are seen to laugh, owing to the heat produced by the
wound. This may possibly be the case. At any rate it is a statement
made by much more credible persons than those who tell the story of
the human head, how it speaks after it is cut off. For so some assert,
and even call in Homer to support them, representing him as alluding
to this when he wrote, 'His head still speaking rolled into the dust,'
instead of 'The head of the speaker'. So fully was the possibility
of such an occurrence accepted in Caria, that one of that country
was actually brought to trial under the following circumstances. The
priest of Zeus Hoplosmios had been murdered; but as yet it had not
been ascertained who was the assassin; when certain persons asserted
that they had heard the murdered man's head, which had been severed
from the body, repeat several times the words, 'Cercidas slew man on
mam.' Search was thereupon made and a man of those parts who bore
the name of Cercidas hunted out and put upon his trial. But it is
impossible that any one should utter a word when the windpipe is
severed and no motion any longer derived from the lung. Moreover,
among the Barbarians, where heads are chopped off with great rapidity,
nothing of the kind has ever yet occurred. Why, again, does not the
like occur in the case of other animals than man? For that none of
them should laugh, when their midriff is wounded, is but what one
would expect; for no animal but man ever laughs
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