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Lore of the Unicorn

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Kofi Easterling
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« Reply #15 on: April 23, 2009, 02:00:18 am »

The second attempt to account for the virgin-capture story requires more respectful attention. Professor Leo Wiener of Harvard University points out the striking similarity between the Physiologus account of the antholops or antelope and that of the unicorn. The former, as told in a Latin manuscript of the eleventh century, runs thus: There is an animal called antholops which is so exceedingly fierce that none of the hunters is able to approach him. He has long horns in the shape of a saw with which he can cut down the largest oaks . . . . When he is thirsty he goes to the great river Euphrates and drinks. Now there grow in that place certain soft and pliable branches of the vine [sunt autem ibi virgae viticeae subtiles et molles], and while he is playing about he entangles himself in them by the horn. When he is firmly caught by both horns he cries out with a great voice, because he is unable to escape from the slender branches [virgulis]; and then the hunter, hearing his voice, runs up, finds him bound, and kills him.

    The analogies between this story and that of the unicorn are obvious. The antholops is very fierce and defies the hunters; he is remarkable for the armour of his brow, and this brings about his death; the hunters wait until he is hors de combat before advancing to dispatch him; furthermore, he is caught and held, according to this Latin text of Physiologus, by virgae--in the spelling common in old manuscripts, virge. Professor Wiener believes, if I understand him correctly, that the story of the virgin-capture arose from a misreading, or perhaps a scribe's error, which substituted for virge, "twigs" or "slender branches", the word Virgo, "a virgin". He also thinks that the antholops story itself is a retelling of Aesop's story of the Stag Caught by its Horns in the Forest, and that certain minor details of the unicorn story as told in Physiologus, are of Arabic origin. He sums up thus: "The autalops, after drinking from the Euphrates, goes into the woods and there plays with the branches, virgae . . . . The Physiologus or its source read Virgo instead of virgae, and thus produced the story of the unicorn which plays with its horn in the bosom of the virgo, maiden, and thus is caught. This, then, shows beyond a chance of doubt that the unicorn story arose only after the Arabs came in contact with Latin, which was after 711, and thus the earliest date of the Pbysiologus is established."

    I have spared the reader as much as possible of the amazing involution in Professor Wiener's argument, but I cannot mitigate the surprise he will feel at seeing the virgin disappear, like Daphne, into a tree; I can only ask him to share my own disappointment that after such gigantic labours the mountain of scholarship should bring forth only this ridiculous mouse of an alleged mistranslation. Convinced that the Physiolous as we know it cannot be of earlier date than AD. 711, Professor Wiener is constrained to argue that the narrations of the virgin-capture story in Gregory's Moralia and in Isidore's Etymologiae are interpolations made after that date. He does not mention the fact that the story was told by Saint Eustathius of Antioch almost four hundred years before, nor does he explain how Pope Gelasius could have condemned in the fifth century a work that was not produced until the eighth. The words upon which his argument chiefly rests--"sunt autem ibi virgae viticeae"--are found only in a manuscript of the eleventh century, and this seems to me much too late for our present purposes. I do not believe, therefore, that the Latin phrasing of the antholops story gave the original suggestion for the story of the virgin-capture. There is a considerable difference between a unicorned animal and one with two horns fitted with saw-tooth edges, and Professor Wiener's explanation that the antholops may break off one of his horns in his struggle with the virgae, thereby making himself an artificial unicorn, does not seem to meet the needs of the case. We shall do well to look farther.

    In considering the Syriac version of Physiolous we have found reason to suspect that the emphasis there laid upon sexual attraction indicates some non-Christian influence. A story similar to that in Syriac is found in Arabic literature of the fourteenth century. Al Damiri says that "a virgin or a beautiful girl" is put in the way of the unicorn, and that as soon as he sees her he leaps into her lap making signs for milk, of which he is naturally very fond. After he has been suckled he lies down drunk, as though with wine, and at this moment the hunters rush in and bind him without resistance. This Arabian unicorn has fallen even below the poor creature of Physiologus, for he is captured because he is drunk, and on milk! Equally interesting is the implication that if no virgin is available any beautiful girl will do as well. Now it seems remotely possible that this Arabian version is a degraded form of the Christian story, and that virginity has been subordinated because the Mohammedans are not Mariolaters and have never laid quite the Christian emphasis upon chastity; but it is certainly far more probable that we have here and in the Syriac version the relics of an older story which the Christians of Alexandria shaped to their purpose. The mention of the virgin in the Arabic tale is due, no doubt, to Christian influence, but her presence is so incongruous with the tale itself as to suggest that she has been imported from another form of the story.

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