their bodily appearance, but otherwise they are human, and they go dressed in the skins of beasts; they are just, and harm not men; they cannot speak, but roar, yet they understand the language of the Indians; they live by hunting, being swift of foot, and they cook their game not by fire, but by tearing it into fragments and drying it in the sun; they keep goats and sheep, and drink the milk. The naturalist concludes by saying that he mentions these fitly among the irrational animals, because they have not articu- late, distinct, and human language.[1] This last suggestive remark well states the old prevalent notion that barbarians have no real language, but are 'speechless,' 'tongueless,' or even mouthless.[2] Another monstrous people of wide celebrity are Pliny's Blemmyæ, said to be headless, and accordingly to have their mouths and eyes in their breasts creatures over whom Prester John reigned in Asia, who dwelt far and wide in South American forests, and who to our mediæval ancestors were as real as the cannibals with whom Othello couples them: —
'The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.'
If, however, we look in dictionaries for the Acephali, we may find not actual headless monsters, but heretics so called because their original head or founder was not known; and when the kingless Turkoman hordes say of themselves 'We are a people without a head,' the metaphor is even more plain and natural.[3] Moslem legend tells of the
1 Ælian, iv. 46; Plin. vi. 35; vii. 2. See for other versions, Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1191; vol. v. p. 901; Cranz, p. 267; Lane, 'Thousand and One Nights,' vol. iii. pp. 36, 94, 97, 305; Davis, 'Carthage,' p. 230; Latham, 'Descr. Eth.' vol. ii. p. 83.
2 Plin. v. 8; vi. 24, 35; vii. 2; Mela, iii. 9; Herberstein in Hakluyt, vol. i. p. 593; Latham, 'Descr. Eth.' vol. i. p. 483; Davis, l.c.; see 'Early Hist. of Mankind,' p. 77.
3 Plin. v. 8; Lane, vol. i. p. 33; vol. ii. p. 377; vol. iii. p. 81; Eisenmenger, vol. ii. p. 559; Mandeville, p. 243; Raleigh in Hakluyt, vol. iii. pp. 652, 665; Humboldt and Bonpland, vol. v. p. 176; Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1285; vol. v. p. 901; Isidor. Hispal. s.v. 'Acephali;' Vambéry, p. 310, see p. 436.
