Figurative uses of animal names in Latin and their ... - mura di tutti

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tleinde latior procedit et adversariorum ordines rumpit,
quia a pluribus in unum locum tela mittuntur. Quam rem
milites nominant caput porcinum.^®*
The transfer, as is shown by the synonym cuneus, is due
to the shape, although we may well suppose that the epithet
owed its favor to the pictures it recalled in the minds of
the soldiers, who, as country lads, had seen the destructive
snout plough its way through the earth in search of roots.
ERICIUS, A Hedge-Hog: iransf., A Device Equipped
WITH Spinose Shafts to Repel or
Retard Assailants.
The ericius was a defensive contrivance equipped with
long echinated shafts. While it is not described in (detail
by any Latin author, its structure may easily be imagined
with the aid of a passage in which Sallust makes it the
Lasis of a comparison. He tells how javelins radiated from
an axle in the manner of a military ericius: Saxaque in-
gentia et orbes axe iuncti per pronum incitabantur, axibusque
eminebant in modum ericii militaris veruta binum
pedum. "^
It is of course obvious that the likeness is between the
spines of the animal and the spinose shafts of the device.
This transfer must have appealed to the soldiers, since the
animal, as Pliny shows, is ready, when curled up like a
ball, to ward off its foes: ubi (erinacei) sensere venantem,
contracto et ore pedibusque ac parte omni inferiore, qua
raram et innocuam habent lanuginem, convolvuntur in formam
pilae, ne quid comprehendi possit praeter aculeos.-"'®
Some time later, Cassiodorus draws a lesson from the
hedge-hog, which, thanks to an all-wise nature, is always
under arms, being protected by a countless number of the
sharpest spines : Herinacius . . . est, quem vocamus hericium,
animal omnino timidum, natura providente semper armatum
: cuius cutem in vicem setarum sudes acutissimae densissimaeque
communiunt.^*^
Analogous to the military hedge-hogs, but with a meta-
"*Veg. iii, 19. '"Plin. Nat. viii, 37, $6, (133).
"=8111. apud Non. 555, M. ""/» Psalm. 103, 18.