Crocotta

Ctesias, physician to Artaxerxes Mnemon in the fourth century b.c., made use of Persian sources to compile a description of India, a work of incalculable value if we are curious as to how Persians under Artaxerxes Mnemon imagined India. In Chapter 32, he gives an account of the cynolycus, or dog-wolf, from which Pliny seems to have evolved his Crocotta. Pliny writes (VIII, 3o) that the Crocotta is ‘an animal which looks as though it had been produced by the coupling of the wolf and the dog, for it can break anything with its teeth, and instantly on swallowing it digest it with the stomach He goes on to describe another Indian animal, the Leucrocotta, as follows: a wild beast of great swiftness, the size of the wild ass, with the legs of a stag, the neck, tail, and breast of a lion, the head of a badger, a cloven hoof, the mouth slit up as far as the ears, and one continuous bone instead of teeth; it is said, too, that this animal can imitate the human voice.

Later authorities seem to feel that Pliny’s Leucrocotta is a cumbersome blend of the Indian antelope and the hyena. All of these animals Pliny has fit into an Ethiopian landscape, where he also lodges a wild bull with convenient movable horns, a hide as hard as flint, and hair turned contrariwise.