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represented. Nor yet is the figure generally attributed to the
nereids [Note] at all a fiction; only in them, the portion of the body
that resembles the human figure is still rough all over with
scales. For one of these creatures was seen upon the same
shores, and as it died, its plaintive murmurs were heard even
by the inhabitants at a distance. The legatus of Gaul, [Note] too,
wrote word to the late Emperor Augustus that a considerable
number of nereids had been found dead upon the sea-shore. I
have, too, some distinguished informants of equestrian rank,
who state that they themselves once saw in the ocean of Gades
a sea-man, [Note]
In the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, a subsidence of the ocean left exposed on the shores of an island which faces the province of Lugdunum [Note] as many as three hundred animals or more, all at once, quite marvellous for their varied shapes and enormous size, and no less a number upon the shores of the
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Pliny the Elder, Natural History (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [Plin. Nat.].
