Both the translation and the notes of this and the following essays have benefited immeasurably from an exhaustive criticism generously given them by Professor Alfred C. Andrews of the University of Miami, Florida. He has in fact supplied a number of valuable notes and also the Appendix, a classified zoological index. It must be understood, however, that any errors remaining are to be attributed solely to the editor.Since our text was formed and our translation and notes composed a year or more before the appearance of the new Teubner edition, almost no new references have been added which are not purely textual. The curious reader is referred to Hubert’s wealth of illustration to supplement our contributions.
The dialogue is no. 147 in the catalogue of Lamprias. According to this document Plutarch wrote another work (no. 135) on the same subject: Do Beasts Possess Reason? But no. 127, Περὶ ζώλων ἀλόγων ποιητικός, is probably the same as our Gryllus, the following dialogue in this edition.
Abbreviations used in citing Modern Authors
Brands = J. P. J. M. Brands, Grieksche Diernamen, Purmerend, 1935.
Cotte = J. Cotte, Poissons et animaux aquatiques au temps de Pline, Paris, 1945.
Keller = Otto Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, Leipzig, 1909-1913.
Mair = A. W. Mair, Oppian, Colluthus, Tryphiodorus, L.C.L., 1928.
Saint-Denis = E. de Saint-Denis, Le Vocabulaire des animaux marius en latin classique, Paris, 1947.
Schmid = Georg Schmid, Die Fische in Ovids Halieuticon, Philologus, Supplementband xi (1907-1910), pp. 253-350.
Thompson, Aristotle = D’Arcy W. Thompson, The Works of Aristotle, vol. IV, Historia animalium, Oxford, 1910.
Thompson, Birds = D’Arcy W. Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Birds, rev. ed., Oxford, 1936.
Thompson, Fishes = D’Arcy W. Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Fishes, Oxford, 1947.
