Agamemnon is compared to a bull, Sarpedon and Patroclus in deadly
combat to two vultures, and Diomed and Ulysses pursue Dolon as two fleet
hounds chase a hare. All these were evidently intended to be most
poetical, if not elevating similes; their dignity would have been lost
could they possibly have been regarded as humorous.

Simonides of Amorgos in the seventh century B.C., is remarkable
for this kind of illustration. After some lamentations about human life,
he observes that nothing is better than a good wife, or worse than a bad
one, and he proceeds to compare women to various animals. He is also
evidently very serious over the subject, and regards it as no joke at
all. Perhaps there was also something to be said on the other side, for
he remarks that a gadding wife cannot be cured, even if you "knock out
her teeth with a stone." He likens them to pigs and polecats, horses
and apes; and only praises the descendant of the bee. In a passage
undoubtedly of early date, and attributed to Xenophanes, the founder of
the Eleatic school of philosophy, (540-500) the writer enumerates the
various ways, in which other animals are superior to man. "If by the
will of God there were an equality and community in life, so that the
herald of the Olympian games should not only call men to the contest,
but also bid all animals to come, no man would carry off a prize; for
in the long race the horse would be the best; the hare would win the
short race; the deer would be best in the double race. No man's
fleetness would count for anything, and no one since Hercules would seem
to have been stronger than the elephant or lion; the bull would carry
off the crown in striking, and the ass in kicking, and history would
record that an ass conquered men in wrestling and boxing."

But the light in which the lower animals were regarded, produced other
fanciful combinations. Not only were men given the attributes of