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The Classical Rhinoceros

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

William Gowers
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Abstract

By the term ‘classical rhinoceros’ I mean the rhinoceros which was known to the Greek and Roman world during the five and a half centuries between 300 B.C. and A.D. 250, which was shown from time to time at Alexandria under the Ptolemies and later on appeared regularly in the arena at Rome taking part in fights with other beasts and with men. Although the Indian rhinoceros seems occasionally to have been exhibited at Rome, at any rate in the early years of the Empire, I believe that the rhinoceros usually shown there came from Africa, and I have tried to analyse such evidence as is available to show firstly what species it was and secondly what part of Africa it came from.

There are, of course, two quite distinct kinds of African rhinoceros, the square-mouthed and the prehensile-lipped, popularly known respectively as the White and the Black Rhinoceros. Until recently their scientific names were Rhinoceros simus and Rhinoceros bicornis, but systematists have now separated them into two genera, calling the former Ceratotherium simum and the latter Diceros bicornis ; denying to both the title of Rhinoceros which they reserve for the Indian rhinoceros and its near Asiatic relatives. For the sake of simplicity and brevity I shall retain the old names and call them simus and bicornis.

The popular misnomers of ‘white’ and ‘black’ are a legacy from the South African Dutch of the 17th century, who called simus ‘wit renaster’ and bicornis ‘zwart renaster’. They were not very particular about exact shades of colour and probably meant no more than that one species usually appeared much lighter than the other. The natural colour of both appears much the same to an observer a little distance away. The hide of simus may be slightly lighter. Perhaps the most accurate definition is given by Roosevelt and Heller who say that the true colour of simus is smoke-grey while that of bicornis is dark clove-brown.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 24 , Issue 94 , June 1950 , pp. 61 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1950

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References

1 Theodore Roosevelt and E. Heller, Game Animals of Africa (1915), p. 670, see also Herbert Lang, ‘The White Rhinoceros of the Belgian Congo’, N.Y. Zool. Bulletin, July 1920, p. 75.

2 Capt. (later Sir W.) Cornwallis Harris, Portraits of Game and Wild Animals (1840), p, 98.

3 H. A. Winkler, Rock Drawings of Southern Upper Egypt (1938), vol. 1, p. 21 and pl. XX and XXI.

4 Paolo Graziosi, L’Arte Rupestre della Libya (1941) vol. 11, pl. 134a.

5 W. B. Emery, The Tomb of Hor-Aha (Saqqara Excavations 1939), p. 72.

6 G. A. Reisner, Excavations at Kerma (Harvard African Studies, 1923), vol. VI, pl. 53a. M. Hilzheimer, Zeitschr. f. Aegyptische Sprache, vol. 69 (1931), p. 72.

7 Sir R. Mond and O. Myers, The Temple of Armant (1940), p. 25, pl. 8 and 103.

8 Pseudo-Callisthenes, Hist. Alex Magni III, 18 (ed. W. Kroll, Berlin, 1926).

9 S. A. Huzzayin, The Place of Egypt in Prehistory (1941), p. 285, thinks there was in Saharan latitudes, in the 1st millennium B.C. until early A.D. a phase of increased rainfall which may be equated with Leakey’s Nakuran wet phase. This, if so, would slow up the southerly retreat of simus.

10 L. Lavauden, Faune des Colonies Françaises (1933-4), p. 420. Lavauden also records that in 1927 there were stored in Khartum, in transit from Wadai, no less than 150 simus horns. Major W. R. Barker, lately Game Warden in the Sudan, corroborates.

11 L. S. B. Leakey, Stone Age Africa (1936), ch. VIII, fig. 27.

12 Th. von Heuglin, Reise in das Gebiet des Weissen Nil (1869), p. 361. Simus could not have travelled due south from E. Kordofan ; the Bahr-al-Ghazal would have prevented it.

In 1825 a pair of simus horns had been brought to England by Major Denham from the vicinity of Chad, but they were not then recognised as simus, which was believed to exist only in South Africa, where it had been ‘discovered’ and named by Burchell some 10 years earlier.

13 J. P. Peters and H. Thiersch, The Painted Tombs of Merissa (1903), (Palestine Exploration Fund).

14 Agatharchides, De Mari Erythraeo (P. 71), in C. F. Mueller’s Geographi Graeci Minores (1856), vol. 1.

15 Op. cit., p. 98. Modern records show that the front horn of simus is on the average nearly four times as long as the rear horn while in bicornis it is a little less than twice as long. I am inclined to think that since simus has been confined to semi-forest country it does not develop such long front horns as it did when it lived on the open plains.

16 E. L. Trouessart, ‘Le Rhinoceros blanc du Soudan’, Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. (1909), p. 198 ; quoting Fresnel (C. R. del’Ac. des Sciences Paris, 1848), t XXVI, p. 281.

17 F. C. Selous, ‘The South African Rhinoceroses’, P.Z.S., 1881, p. 725.

18 Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographia Christiana, XI, 441, edit. E. O. Winstedt (1909). He says he watched a rhino from a safe distance and made a careful drawing from a specimen (stuffed) in the King’s palace at Axum. This must have been lost as the picture in the 13th century ‘Laurentian’ MS cannot have been drawn by Cosmas or anyone who had seen a rhino. His description gives it two horns and a hide rather like an elephant. It is (Africans generally are terrified of bicornis but not afraid of simus.) It is possible that both species co-existed in Eritrea in Ptolemaic times and that by Cosmas’ day simus had been exterminated there.

19 Otto Keller, Die Antike Tierwelt (1909), p. 387.

20 E. H. Warmington, Commerce Between the Roman Empire and India (1928), p. 151 and note p. 360.

21 G. Jennison, Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome (1937), p. 34.

22 M. I. Rostovtsev, Sylloge Tesserarum Plumbearum (St. Petersburg, 1903). A good example of a rhinoceros with one horn which is clearly rinitis is no. 486, tab. IV, 7.

23 G. E. Rizzo, Pittura Ellenistica Romana (1929), pl. 188, 189.

24 B. M. C. Domitian no. 333. An interesting feature of this coin is the sphere or disk on top of the head between the ears.

25 B.M.C. Cat. Roman Empire, vol. 11, p. 411 and pl. 31, 17.

26 B.M.C. Hadrian, no. 835.

27 Agatharchides’ original description of the African rhinoceros, copied by Pliny, who very likely had never seen one, became the standard description and was used by e.g. Dio Cassius and Aelian long after the second horn had been shown on coins.

28 F. R. Rodd (now Lord Rennell), People of the Veil, p. 318. Seventeen centuries after Maternus’ expedition simus was still common some four or five hundred miles south of Tibesti.

29 The Gulf of Suez and the canal to the Nile seem not to have been used, at any rate by north-bound craft.

30 The persistence of bicornis is illustrated by the fact that when it was found necessary recently to eliminate it from an area of some 600 square miles of dense bush, which was required for native settlement not much more than 100 miles from the capital of Kenya Colony, not less than 1000 rhinoceros had to be killed.

31 There may be at most 2000 simus still alive in Africa, of which about half are believed to be in the Bahr-al-Ghazal province of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.