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PROLEGOMENA OF ULISSE ALDROVANDI,

PHILOSOPHER

AND PATRICIAN OF BOLOGNA,

TO THE BOOKS ON BISULCATE

QUADRUPEDS:

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Those things which are bifid are bisulcate.
Which animals divide the hoof.
How many kinds of bisulcates there are; which animals ruminate.
Whence rumination is named.
What the rumen is; what the ruma is.
What rumare is.
Book 15, chapter 18.
The Ruminal fig tree.
The goddess Rumina.

A large decorative drop-cap 'D' within a square frame. The background depicts a figure surrounded by foliage.A whole volume has already dealt with the solipeds (τοῖς μώνυχοις). To these Aristotle opposes the dichela (τὰ διχηλὰ), whose feet are split into two hoofs, wherefore they are also called dichela, as if bifid or bipartite; the Latins, signifying the same by a similar reasoning, call them bisulca [bisulcate or cloven-hoofed], although sometimes this word is used more broadly, namely for everything that is divided into two points, in which manner Pliny spoke of a "bisulcate tail," Columella of "bisulcate branches" of trees, and Plautus of a "bisulcate tongue." Moreover, we read in the Holy Scriptures that this kind of quadruped properly "divides the hoof"; for although the multifid animals, such as the hare, the dog, the lion, and others of that kind, have feet divided into toes, they are not said to "divide the hoof," nor indeed even the camel, which otherwise Aristotle reckoned among the bisulcates, because its hoofs are not divided in the same way as those of oxen, sheep, and goats. I find two kinds of bisulcates, one aquatic, the other terrestrial. Of the aquatic ones, I have thus far known only the hippopotamus. Of the terrestrial ones, some are armed with horns, others lack horns: all the horned ones ruminate; of those not horned, only the camel does. If, therefore, I shall have first spoken certain things concerning rumination and horns, lest we be forced to repeat the same things too often, I think no one will turn it to a fault.

Now, to ruminate is to regurgitate fodder once swallowed back to the mouth, which Apuleius called rumigare, Pliny and Quintilian remandere, and the Greeks μηρυκάζειν [merykazein], or μηρυκίσασθαι [merykisasthai] from μηρύειν [meryein], which is to turn over or revolve; whence also some Latins seem to have named "rumination" not from the place to which the food is returned, but from which it is pushed back up to the mouth, namely from the rumen, which, as Festus says, is the place in the belly where the food is sent down and from which it is returned: and by a trope it is also used for the stomach itself. Hence that saying of Pomponius in The Brothel, as the same Nonius cites:

I make little of rumor, as long as there is a rumen to fill:

On the contrary, Servius derives "rumination" from ruma, which he says is the more prominent part of the neck to which the swallowed food is recalled by certain animals; and Festus does not disagree with him when he says that the ancients said rumare for ruminare, and since ruma was said by the ancients for the breast, from which even today lambs are called subrumi, that is, those who are still kept under the breast, as Perottus says. In the same way, the rumen [or rumis] itself was called the breast, as Pliny most clearly teaches us when he says: “A fig tree is cultivated in the Roman Forum and Comitium, sacred because of the lightning-strikes buried there, called [Ruminalis] in memory of her who was the nurse of Romulus and of Remus the founder, because under it the she-wolf was found offering her rumis to the infants; for so they used to call the breast.” For which reason the fig tree itself was also called Ruminalis; Ovid testifies to this in the Fasti:

There was a tree, the remains stay; and that which is now called
The Romulean fig, was the Rumal fig.

From this was named the goddess Rumina or Rumia, who presided over suckling children, and Ruminus Jupiter, because...