H. makes another mention of flying snakes in the context of the Arabians harvesting frankincense (how serendipitously seasonal!). Now, all of the methods he describes by which the Arabians obtain spices (frankincense, myrrh, cassia, cinnamon and ledanon) are a bit wacky, so I rather doubt that H. could have believed them (he makes no comments [...]
My tentative conclusion is that Herodotus’ “winged serpents” are cobras. He never actually says they can fly (the word is like ours - it can just mean to move fast), and he describes their wings as more like a bat than anything else.
They can’t have been locusts. He describes seeing their bones and backbones, and [...]
When Herodotus is describing the crocodile, he mentions that it doesn’t eat in the four winter months. Now I thought, since I’ve come accross this fact more than once, that this is nowadays common knowledge, but apparently not. I wonder if it’s ever been used as an example of H’s wobbly zoology.
In fact, I think [...]