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A conundrum of cats: Pards and their relatives in Byzantium
Nicholas, Nick
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Autumn 1999; 40, 3; ProQuest
pg. 253

A Conundrum of Cats: Pards 
and their Relatives in Byzantium 

Nick Nicholas 

T
HE GREEK TERM 1tUpOO<; or 1tUpOaAl<; (the "pard") is 
routinely rendered as "leopard" in Classical diction­
aries, while Byzantine dictionaries, considering it to have 

the same meaning in that period, do not define the words 
distinctly at alP Recent examples with reference to Byzantine 
texts include Jeffreys' edition of Digenes Akrites and the Oxford 
Dictionary of Byzantium. 2 However, it is apparent that in 
Byzantium, the animal referred to by those terms was primarily 
understood to be the cheetah, rather than the leopard. It is also 
apparent that towards the end of Byzantium, some confusion 
had re-arisen as to the precise nature of the "pard." In what 
follows, we consider characteristic references in Byzantine and 
post-Byzantine literature to the pard, and variants of the pard 
-the A£61tapoo<;/A£OV't61tapoo<; "lion-pard" / "leopard" and 
the lw't61tapoo<; "cat-pard." 

The Classical Pard 
The confusion in our interpretation of ancient names for great 

cats3 is understandable, given that such confusion has persisted 

I Classical dictionaries: e.g. LSJ; A. Bailly, Dictionnaire Grec-Fran~ais, 16th 
ed. (1894) ("panthere ou leopard"). Byzantme dictionaries: e.g. Lampe (1961); 
E. A. Sophoc1es, Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (New York 
1900). 

2 E. M. Jeffreys, Digenes Akrites (Oxford 1997) 319; A. Kazhdan, liPan tech­
nes, Constantine," ODByz III (1991) 1572. 

3 In the following I use II great cats" to include the cheetah, though properly it 
belongs to a distinct genus (Acionyx, rather than Panthera). The folfowmg are 
cited by authors' names: A. Denis, Cats of the World (London 1964); R. L. Eaton, 

Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 40 (1999) 253-298 
© 2001 GRBS 



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254 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

into modem times. For example, the word "panther" survives in 
popular parlance to this day, and was until the twentieth 
century thought to be a distinct species of great cat.4 However, 
modern zoology has determined that the panther and the 
leopard are in fact the same species (Panthera pardus), with no 
good salient distinction between the two, and with the black 
panther merely a melanistic leopard.5 Other than consistently 
naming black exemplars of the species "black panthers," there 
was a consistent muddle between panthers and leopards by 
early modem naturalists: 

Instead, the visiting explorers and sportsmen rapidly accepted 
and confirmed that there did appear to be two leopard-like 
beasts, and these visitors soon adopted the local distinguishing 
criteria-normally size of the individual animal, and some­
times very different habits. It was rarely that these visitors 
adopted the local names, since their culture already provided 
them with two alternatives, Leopard and Panther ... Unfor­
tunately the Western sportsman or early naturalist was not at 
all consistent. In some parts of the huge Leopard range he 
applied the term Panther to the larger specimens, in other parts 
he reserved this name for the smaller (Turnbull-Kemp 14). 

So the leopard and the panther are the same animal; and 
when the Latin pardus is glossed in the OLD as "a large spotted 
animal of the genus Felidae, a leopard or panther," the same 
animal is meant, and may be safely glossed as "leopard." This 
is also reflected in the leopard's scientific name; though its 

The Cheetah: The Biology, Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species (New 
York 1974); V. H. Heptner and A. A. Sludskii, Mammals of the Soviet Union III 
Carnivores (Feloidea) (Washington 1992 [1972]); E. Miller, "Description d'une 
chasse a l'once par un ecrivain byzantin du XII' siec1e de notre ere," Annuaire 
de l' Association pour l' encouragement des etudes grecques 6 (1872) 28-52; P. 
Turnbull-Kemp, The Leopard (London 1967); N. Wrogemann, Cheetah under the 
Sun GohannesDurg 1975) . 

4 As I have been reminded by an anonymous reviewer, the confusion persists; 
in the United States, for example, panther is used to refer to quite disparate 
felines, such as the mountain lion (Felis concolor) and even the bobcat (Felis 
rufus). 

5 Turnbull-Kemp 29-30; Denis 38. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 255 

genus has varied over the generations, it has always been iden­
tified with the pard (Turnbull-Kemp 16-17): Linnaeus' original 
Felis pardus, Panthera pardus (1816), Pardus panthera (1868). 

50 one can assume by default that when an ancient author is 
speaking of a "pard," he is referring to a leopard. This is the 
case, for example, in Rackham's Loeb translation of the locus 
classicus referring to feline hybrids, in Pliny: 

Sexual passion is strong in this species, with its consequence of 
quarrelsomeness in the males; this is most observed in Africa, 
where the shortage of water makes the animals flock to the few 
rivers. There are consequently many varieties of hybrids in that 
country, either violence or lust mating the males with the 
females of each species indiscriminately. This is indeed the 
origin of the common saying of Greece that Africa is always pro­
ducing some novelty. A lion detects intercourse with a leopard 
[pardi] in the case of an adulterous mate by scent, and concen­
trates his entire strength on her chastisement; consequently this 
guilty stain is washed away in a stream, or else she keeps her 
distance when accompanying him (Plin. HN 8.43-44). 

The same holds for Greek. Like Latin, Greek uses two terms to 
refer to the pard, 1tuv81lP and 1tUpOaAt<;/1tUpoo<;; the first term 
need not detain us here, and the identity of panther and pard­
at most different races of leopard-is assumed by modern 
zoologists.6 The 1tUpOaAl<; is first mentioned in the Iliad, as a 
ferocious beast (17.20), and its pelt is described as "dappled" 
(10.30). References to both properties persist in ancient Greek 
literature-e.g. Aesop Fable 12 on the pard's pelt, or Plato 
Laches 196E on the proverbial repute of the pard as a brave 
beast. It is especially frequent for the pard to be mentioned 
together with the bear, the lion, or the boar, as an exemplar of a 
wild beast.7 50 ostensibly the Greek pard was a leopard, and 
that is how 1tUP()UA1<; is glossed in the 1940 L5J. 

6This identity was already posited by Bartholomeus Anglicus in the 
thirteenth century: "The perde varieth not fro the pantera, but the pantera hath 
moo white speckes" (cited in T. H. White, The Book of Beasts [London 1954]13). 

7 Od. 4.457, Semonides 14, PI. Lach. 196E, Xen. Cyr. 1.4.7, 1.6.28, Callisthenes 
FGrHist 124 T 18a. 



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256 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

The form 7t(Xpoo<; is not attested before I A.D., and is recorded 
in LSI as "a later form of 1tapOaAt<;."8 The first definite instance 
of 1tapOo<; is in Aelian N.A. 1.31 (II-III A.D.; once, against 31 
instances of 1tapOaAt<; in his corpus). The works containing the 
"contemporary" instances of 1tapOo<; associated with Apol­
lonius of Tyana (I A.D .; Apotel. 1377, De horis 7.177.24)9 and 
Alexander of Aphrodisias (II-III A.D.; Probl. 3.17.11) are known 
to be spurious, and their actual date of authorship is unknown; 
so they need not be considered. 

There is a second candidate to identify the pard with, 
however: the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus). We know from con­
temporary vases that Classical Athenians kept cheetahs as 
pets,10 and the cheetah is in its gross physiognomy similar to a 
leopard, though of a lankier buildY Though I do not pursue the 
issue in any greater detail here, there is reason to suspect that 
the ancient Greeks called any spotted great cat either panther or 
pard (n:av811P, 1tapOaAt<;), without any further refinement. This 
conflation is reflected in modern lexicography; the English word 
cheetah is not even to be found as a gloss in LSJP The earlier 
Intermediate Liddell-Scott (1899), however, still hedges its bets 

8H. Frisk, Griechisches Etymologisches Worterbuch (Heidelberg 1970) s.v. 
1tUpOCXAlI;, characterises the Latin pardus as a reverse formation from 1tap­
ocxAt<;, and suspects that ltUpoo<; itself might be a loan back from Latin. 

9 Bibliographical information on post-Classical works is given at the end of 
the paper. 

10 A. Ashmead, "Greek Cats," Expedition 20.3 (1977-78) 38-47. D. Engels, 
Classical Cats: The Rise and Fall of the Sacred Cat (London 1999) 174-175, 
points out that many such felines assumed to be cheetahs are probably domestic 
cats, although he agrees that tame cheetahs would have been widespread in 
Athens. 

\ 1 Engels (supra n.10) 58 sees in Sophocles' Trackers (fr.314.303 Radt) a 
reference to cheetahs. Anne Mahoney, in her on-line translation for the Perseus 
Project (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/), translates "Was it like a cat, or 
rather a leopard?" (w<; CXlEAoupo<; ElICaO"at 1tECPUICEV f\ "tw<; 1tOpOCXAlC;;): the 
Chorus is trymg to guess the animal Cyllene is describing, which turns out to be 
a tortoise. So this reference is not necessarily to a domestic great cat: leopards 
were quite well known in Classical Greece. 

I 2 Using the Perseus Project's reverse dictionary: http://www.perseus.tufts. 
edu/ cgi-hin/ enggreek?lang=greek. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 257 

with the gloss "the pard, whether leopard, panther, or ounce"­
where ounce is an obsolete term for "cheetah."l3 

There is some evidence to suggest that the ancient Greeks 
understood the cheetah, as well as the leopard, to be a pard. In 
Byzantium, this evidence becomes overwhelming, and is con­
sidered in some detail below. 

The Classical Leo-Pard 

If the 7tap8o~ is a leopard, then what was the animal named 
by the ancients as a leo-pard? The ancients certainly thought it 
was a distinct (though lesser) beast; they may have unneces­
sarily differentiated leopards into pards and panthers, but it is 

confusing to find the A.eoV't67tap8o~ in its sundry guises (leopar­
dalis/leopardus(A,E67tap8o~/A.eov't67tapoo~) defined as a leopard 
as well (as is done in the OLD and LSJ). Turnbull-Kemp (150) 
suspects the original "lion-pard" was a cheetah or a lion cub: 

It is still hard to understand how this gross confusion between 
variants of the Leopard could have crept into bestiaries, 
although fairly modern zoologists were equally muddle-pated. 
As noted earlier, it is possible that Cheetahs (slimmer, more 
lightly-built, and with solid-not eye-like spots) might have 
been considered inferior to large specimens of the real Leopard. 
Again clumsy and rather oaf-like lion cubs, with their dim spots 
and frequent stupidity, might have been thought to have been 
inferior adult animals-and, in primitive captivity, they may 
have stood little chance of survival to a maturity which would 
have disproved the assumption that they were already adult. 
In defence of the early authors and naturalists it does seem 

13In contemporary usage, ounce is used to refer to the snow leopard (Panthera 
uncia). However, the Oxford English Dictionary (s.v. ounce II) lists as its 
primary definition" A name originally given to the common lynx, afterwards 
extended to other species, and still sometimes applied in America to the Canada 
lynx and other species. From 16th c. applied to various other small or moderate­
sized feline beasts, vaguely identified." (Turnbull-Kemp [68] concurs that "in 
historical times it [ounce] has been applied to many of the cat-like animals, and 
its use is hardly to be recommended.") In particular, the OED adds, as an 
obsolete definition of ounce, "Applied to the Cheetah or Hunting Leopard, this 
being at first confounded with the ounce of Buffon" (that is, the snow leopard, 
identified as a distinct species by Buffon in 1761). 



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258 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

probable that, side-by-side, a full-grown male forest Leopard, a 
small female Leopard, a well and solid-spotted Leopard cub, a 
Cheetah, and a strongly spotted Lion cub would give rise to all 
kinds of confusion and might lead to descriptions of five distinct 
animals. Such descriptions could be passed about by word of 
mouth, or be drawn up from the crumbling wells of fragmentary 
documents written in ill-understood language. 

Denis also identifies both the ancient leo-pard and the 
panther with the cheetah; Sterndale only the former.14 Sterndale 
further identifies the "leopard" of Habbakuk (1:8: "their horses 
also are swifter than the leopards," LXX 1tap<>a.AElC;) with the 
cheetah-"for the pard [Felis pardus := leopard] is not a swift 
animal, whereas the speed of the other [Felis jubata := cheetah] is 
well known." Sterndale believes the notion of the leo-pard as a 
hybrid originated because the cheetah has a short mane. IS Since 
the cheetah is known not to breed readily in captivity, the 
ancients may have devised the notion that the cheetah origin­
ates only in miscegenation, and considered it akin to the mule: 
"The ancients considered the cheetah as a bastard originating in 
the crossing of a male panther with a lioness, because it is the 
only feline which does not reproduce in captivity."16 

The word itself appears quite late in Greek: AE61tap<>oc; 
appears first in Ignatius of Antioch (I-II A.D.), and AEoV't61tap­
<>OC; in a version of the Alexander Romance no earlier than V A.D., 

and quite possibly as late as Comnenan Byzantium (XI-XII)P 
The distinction between cheetah and leopard, if that it be, is not 
Classical but Roman: it is a distinction foreign to the Greek 
Classical era. 

14Denis 63; R. A. Sterndale, Natural History of the Mammalia of India and 
Ceylon (New Delhi 1982 [1884]) 175. 

15Sterndale (supra n.14) 176,200; Eaton 22; Heptner/Sludskii 705. 
16 'EYlruKAo1ta{8£ta 'H)"lou (Athens 1959) s.v. 1C'\lVUlA.oUPO<;. 
17A.E61tupoo<;: Ignatius 4.5.1. (The instance ostensibly in the III B.C. scholar 

Aristophanes of Byzantium is actually a citation of the VI A.D. scholar Timothy 
of Gaza, included in Constantine Porphyrogenitus' X A.D. redaction of Ari­
stophanes' zoological writings.) A.EOVt67tupoo<;: Alexander Romance ~ (Paris + 
Messina) 3.29. See discussion on both passages below. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 259 

So we already have an ancient confusion: a 1tapOOC; (and a 
panther) was primarily a leopard, but probably also a cheetah; 
a A£61t<xpooC; was probably a cheetah, but possibly also a lion 
cub. 

The Middle Byzantine Pard 
The words for pard continued in use in Byzantium-both in 

the Classical guise of 1tUpOUAtC;, and the Latin-influenced, col­
loquial form 1tapooc;. But where the pard in antiquity is difficult 
to identify, matters are more straightforward for its Byzantine 
counterpart-though modern scholarship has not always dis­
played awareness of it. 

The 1tUpOUAtC; was extensively used in Byzantium for 
hunting.1s For instance, in the twelfth century Constantine Pan­
technes wrote a description of a hunt using pards. In the century 
before that, Theodore Balsamon says, in his commentary on the 
canon law forbidding the consumption of "strangled meats" 
(1tVtlC1U lCpeu1u; cf Acts 15:29), 

How meats hunted and suffocated by hunting birds, hounds, or 
pards can be eaten by some, I know not. This law should be noted 
by the Latins, who eat strangled meats indifferently.19 

Though 1tUPOUAtC; is accepted as meaning "leopard" in an­
tiquity, Pantechnes and Balsamon are unlikely to be speaking of 
a leopard, which is quite difficult to tame, as specialists re­
peatedly attest. Turnbull reports that 

here the beast shows a radical difference to the true Leopard, 
which has seldom been used for serious and regular hunting 
excursions in company with man.20 

'8Ph. Koukoules, "KUVT]YE'tlK!x EK Tf1~ E1tOXf1~ trov KOllv11vWV Kat twv na­
J...alOAO'Yoov," EpetByz 9 (1932) 3-33 (see 6,12, 27), and Bu~av't\Vrov Bio~ Kat 
noJ...l'tlallo~ (Athens 1947-55) V 413-414. 

19G. A. Rallis and M . Potlis, l:uv'tawa 'twv edoov Kat iEPWV Kavovoov (Ath­
ens 1852-59) II 81. 

2°Turnbull-Kemp 71; see also Denis 42 (leopards), 63 (cheetahs); Stemdale 
(supra n.14) 178. So too the twelfth-century Synan hunter Usama ibn Munqidh, 
An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades, trans!. P. 



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260 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

As a detailed examination of Pantechnes' text makes clear 
(see Appendix), the "hunting leopard," namely the cheetah, is 
meant instead. Cheetahs were widely used in hunting in Asia­
and, in the late Middle Ages, Western Europe as well;21 the first 
attestation of cheetah coursing in Western Europe is in the court 
of Frederick II (1197-1250), where they were referred to as 
leopardi.22 As Pantechnes makes clear, cheetah coursing was 
already well established in Byzantium by that time. 

Indeed, the association of pards and cheetahs was so en­
trenched in Byzantium, that the use of the name "pard" to refer 
to the cheetah was transmitted from Byzantium to Russia. 
While the Russian for leopard was bars until recently, the 
cheetah goes under the name of either gepard or pardus. 23 "The 
first name is bookish, artificial, and borrowed from con­
temporary western languages [French guipard, German Gepard], 
while the second is old Russian and encountered in 
chronicles. "24 Note that the word that entered Russian is the 
vernacular 7tapoo<;, not the learned 7tap8aAl<;. This means that 

K. Hitti (New York 1929) 141: "It is well-nigh impossible to get a leopard to 
become familiar with human beings or to act tamely in their presence"-his 
anecdote about a "tractable" leopard presents an exception that proves the 
rule. 

21 Denis 63; C. H. Pournelle, "The Cheetah-Associate of Aristocracy," 
Zoonooz 37.5 (1964) 3-7. 

22Miller 35-37. Leopardi was also the term Marco Polo used to refer to 
Kublai Khan's cheetahs (Pournelle [supra n.21] 3). Miller distinguishes be­
tween the guepard and the once (Farsi yuz) in his account; there is no reason to 
doubt that both refer to the cheetah. While guepard is Modern French for 
"cheetah," the word once currently refers to the snow leopard (the word is de­
rived from the Latin for "lynx," as luncea > lonce > i'once). However, there is a 
long history of the ounce and the cheetah being conflated, as already noted. As 
for the Farsi yuz, that is glossed by F. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian­
English Dictionary (London 1988 [1892]) s.v., as "A small panther or ounce, 
especially that used in hunting deer, a cheeta" (sic). 

23 Heptner/Sludskii 203. 
24Heptner /Sludskii 702; details of the appearance of the pardus in the chron­

icles, from 964 on, are given at 729-730. As they point out, the Russians could 
have learned of cheetah hunting from the Khazars, Arabs, and Kumans, as well 
as the Byzantines. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 261 

the word was not borrowed as an erudite construction, but 
reflected an everyday reality.25 

None of the references to hunting pards adduced by Kou­
koules in his studies on Byzantine realia dates from before the 
tenth century. The one potential exception is a VI A.D. plate 
depicting an animal on a leash:26 the animal looks as much like 
a mastiff as a cheetah, and is not depicted actually hunting-it 
is likelier to be a participant in circus garnes, and Koukoules is 
careful only to refer to it as a pard led by a 1ta.p8a.A.a.yroyo<; 

"pard-tamer."27 The earliest evidence for the Byzantine use of 
the pard in hunting comes from a X A.D. manuscript illustra­
tion/8 and from Old Russian (which was already using pardus 
in 964). Heptner and Sludskii (728) admittedly claim that "hunt­
ing with cheetahs began to be practiced in southern Europe from 
the fifth century A.D. (Byzantium) and possibly earlier," but do 
not provide any justification for their claim. It is not at all ob­
vious that cheetah-hunting continued uninterrupted through the 
Byzantine Dark Ages, and I have seen nothing to indicate it. 

Cheetah coursing was clearly not an indigenous tradition in 
Byzantium. Miller, in fact, denies that cheetah-coursing was 
known to the ancients at all (33). (Aelian N.A. 6.2-not 13.10, 
as Miller has it-reports only an attempt to tame a 1tap8a.A.u; 

with dubious success.) While Miller says he "does not know" 
whether emperor Manuel Comnenus (1143-1180), a notorious 
hunter, introduced cheetah coursing to Byzantium, he strongly 
hints that it was so (45). Just as the Comnenans had imported 
jousting from the West, the Comnenan or (more likely) the 
preceding Macedonian dynasty may have imported cheetahs 
and coursing from the East. Cheetah coursing was well estab-

25The identity of 1t(XPOClAU; and 1t(XPOO~ is confirmed in Pantechnes, who 
refers to the pard-trainer as both 1tClpOClAClyCJ)y6~ and 7tClp001C6~~. 

26H. Peirce and R. Tyler, Cart byzantin (Paris 1932-34) I pI. 177. 

27Koukoules, BUSClV'tWWY Bio~ V 388. 
2BSeragiio Octateuch: F. Uspenskij, ed., Kanstantinapa/'skij Sera/ 'skij Kadeks 

Vas'miknizhija (Russka.8.,o arxeologicheskago instituta v Konstantinopolje, 
Izvjestij 12 [Munich 19071) PI. XIII no. 40; cf. Koukoules, "KUYTlYe1:\1C!l II 27. 



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262 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

Ii shed in the Middle East, and a twefth-century Syrian hunting 
autobiography (Usiima ibn Munqidh's Book of Exhortations) 
details the use of the cheetah in hunting.29 

At any rate, "cheetah" seems to have been the primary de­
notation of 1t(Xpoo<; through the Comnenan era (XI-XII). This ap­
pears to be confirmed in Byzantius' 1874 dictionary of Modem 
Greek, though the entry is rambling and encyclopaedic enough to 
give a cook's tour of all the sundry Greek names for cats: 

' Pf\oo~, s. Auy~ -UYKO~ Kat. uyyo~ (0), A.UKOnav~p. loup-cervier, 
lynx, rich; guepard (KUp. 'to TOUpK. KapaKOUA.aKl), naV9TlP, napoo~ 

Kat. napOaA.l~ ('to. 'tpia 'tauta Qvo!la'ta OlOOV'tat anpooolOpio't(Jl~ 
ei<; 'tpia O!lo<puf\ !lEV, nA.f\v O!l(Jl<; €'EPOYEVT, sepa). panthere, 9. 
(au'tT, EtVE KUp. i] napOaA.l<; 'troY apxaicov), once (au'to<; dYE 0 
napoo<; 'troY naA.atrov), leopard ('to oeP!la 'tou'tCOY EtVE 'to ropal­

O'tEPOV.) (0) nav~p ('tou 'Aplo'to'tEA.ou<; <paiVE'tUt on dYE 0) adive. 

Pl)oo<; zool. A.uy~, A.UYKO<; or A.uyyo<; (rnasc.), wolf-panther. loup­
cervier, lynx, rich [?]; guepard [cheetah] (lit. the Turkish Kara­
kulak [caracal]), nav9T1P, napoo<; and napouA.t<; (these three 
names are given indiscriminately to three animals of the same 
nature, but of different breeds). panthere (fern .) [panther] (this 
is lit. the ancients' napoaA.t<;), once [cheetah] (this is the napoo<; 
of the old-timers), leopard [leopard] (whose skin is the fairest). 
The nav9T1P (of Aristotle seems to be the) adive [?] .30 

Despite some confusions (the caracal has nothing to do with the 
cheetah, and the adive appears to be a misprint), the distinction 
between "ancients" and "old-timers" (nuAcnwv) seems to in­
dicate awareness of the Byzantine association of pards with 
cheetahs. 

The Late Byzantine Pard 
It is not clear that the Comnenan familiarity with cheetahs 

still held for Palaeologan noblemen (XIII-XV A.D.): none of the 
allusions to hunting pards found by Koukoules dates from after 

29 S upra n.20: 236-238. 
3°5. D. Byzantius, AE~t1(OV "t11t; K1l6' TWCt~ EA.A.l1V\K1)~ O\!lA.EKtO\) ).le6ep).l11-

VE\)).lEvT\~ Ei~ "to apXlllov EA.A.T\V\KOV Kat "to YIlA.A.lKOV 3 (Athens 1874). 



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NICK NICHOLAS 263 

the Fourth Crusade. Pards figure in several vernacular Greek 
texts associated with the Palaeologan era; but none of them 
offers incontrovertible evidence for cheetah coursing as a living 
art during that time. Thus, Digenes Akrites' dowry of cheetahs 
is found in all versions of the eponymous poem except for the 
late Oxford rhymed version: twelve choice pards (1ta.pDOU~), 

proven (Digenes P 361); twelve choice pards (1ta.pDOUt;), most 
proven (Digenes Z 2221); twelve choice leopards (1ta.pDOUt;) from 
Syria (Digenes E 1073);H twelve well-proven hunting leopards 
(Digenes G 4.904 1tapDaAoJ(uvllyoi, "pard-hunters"; so glossed 
also in Trapp's edition [Digenes Z] p.390 as Jagdleopard). The 
reference must therefore date from the poem's archetype-i.e. 
from Comnenan times: it does not provide evidence of anything 
Palaeologan. The pard reappears in Digenes E 1653-and set up 
figures of animals, made of solid gold and silver, lions, leopards and 
eagles, partridges and neraiaes; but there it turns up in a per­
functory listing of statuary, and is exotic enough to keep the 
company of water fairies (vEpa.Da~). 

The other major late evidence for hunting pards in Byzantium 
are the late, vernacular prose versions of the Alexander Romance. 
(The Alexander Romance in its earliest versions dates from late 
antiquity; it was popular in Byzantium, and appeared in 
vernacular prose redactions in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
century.) These versions speak explicitly of pards in conjunction 
with hunting. The late prose references are as follows: 

1. F 56, E 56, V 71, <II 126 describe the booty Alexander was given 
by the Babylonians in Darius' court: "100 lions with silver and 
gold chains, 1,000 pards of the hunt ('t01> KUVl1Yt01», and 500 
Arabian steeds" (F). This passage is absent from the prototype of 
the late prose versions, Alexander Romance E. (VI A.D.). 
2. F 71, V 79 again speaks of Darius' booty: "1,000 hunting 
falcons, 500 lions of the hunt trained, and 1,400 trained pards of 
the hunt." (F; E 71 speaks of "500 lions of the hunt and another 
1,000 trained.") Again, this is extraneous to e. 

31The translation of versions E and G is from Jeffreys, Digenes. 



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264 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

3. F 86, E 86, III 191 refer to Alexander hunting down the One­
Legged Monsters: // And thus his army surrounded the mountain, 
200,000 men, and they released the hounds and the pards, and 
caught some and brought them to Alexander" (F). In E 35.2, 
Alexander encounters the One-Legged Monsters, but does not give 
chase to them. 
4. F 103, E 103, V 82, III 214 describe the booty Alexander took 
from Porus: // And they brought him 10,000 lions, which Porus the 
King hunted, and 20,000 pards and a thousand gold-plated 
whole (E: ready) chariots// (F). V at this point has //10,000 lions 
of the hunt and 20,000 pards"; F has //10,000 lions, which Porus 
used to hunt, and 20,000 hunting pards.// The description is again 
absent from E. 

To these one may add an earlier, Koine instance: 
5. ~ (Paris + Messina) 3.29 has king Candaules of India say //1 
went out to hunt, wishing some entertainment with my wife, 
heading to the countryside, having with me 500 lads with 
leo-pards, hounds, and hawks.// This example is from a rather 
earlier tradition of the romance-dated to IV A.D., and it terms 
the animals leo-pards (A,£Ovto7tapowv) rather than pards. In 
recension a 3.19 and ~ (synoptic) 3.19, the established versions of 
the text at that point, Candaules is heading to perform a ritual 
for the Amazons, and there is no mention of hunting. 

Although references to pards abound throughout the history 
of the Alexander Romance (mainly in the guise of 7tapo<XAt<;), the 

. vernacular redaction in which these references involve hunting, 
and the vernacular name 1tapOOC;, is not any older than the 
thirteenth century-i.e. it is post-Comnenan.32 The hunting-pard 
references are consistently interpolations into the older redac­
tions, E and p. Thus, the addition of hunting pards to these 
redactions is likewise post-Comnenan; it was unknown to the 
early Byzantine redactors of E and the late Roman redactors of 
p, and reflects a worldview informed by the thirteenth century. 
The manuscripts giving the reading in instance (5) date from the 
fifteenth century; the version they transmit is quite old, and the 

32 A. Lolos and V. L. Konstantinopoulos, edd., Pseudo-Kallisthenes: Zwei mit­
telgriechische Prosa-Fassungen des Alexanderromans (Konigstein 1983) I 27. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 265 

telltale mention of falconry suggests Comnenan intervention, but 
post-Comnenan authorship still cannot be ruled out. 

But though the mention of pards (1tapoo<;) is of recent origin 
in the Romance, the text is not consistently clear that the pards 
are hunters rather than hunted. (1) and (5) are obviously about 
cheetahs giving chase; but the other passages show that "of the 
hunt" is ambiguous between "hunting" and "hunted"; it is 
doubtful that lions were trained to hunt, and (4) shows that "of 
the hunt" could mean "hunted," in manuscript V. So the scribes 
may have become confused in their interpolations between 
cheetahs as hunters and leopards as prey. 

Furthermore, the pards are placed in a fabulous domain-the 
courts of Darius and Porus. The Moguls of India were well 
known for their use of cheetahs, and the use of cheetahs in the 
late Alexander Romance is clearly intended as exotic colour; it 
does not mean the redactor had actually ever seen one. Even if 
he had, the origin of the allusion would be close at hand: 
cheetahs were used by the Ottomans for hunting.33 And 
Mitsakis, in his edition of an abridged version of the Romance, 
believes there are enough Turco-Persian words in the late prose 
Romance to suspect its redactor was from Asia Minor-i .e. 
residing in a Turkish rather than Byzantine domain.34 A writer 
in Asia Minor presumably had a better chance of seeing hunting 
cheetahs in the fourteenth or fifteenth century than a writer in 
Constantinople. So although the references to hunting pards 
were clearly inserted into the text after the Comnenan era, the 
Alexander Romance is no more reliable as evidence of Palae­
ologan cheetah coursing: the reference might easily be Ottoman, 
deliberately exotic, or merely a reminiscence of Comnenan times. 

The apparent fading of cheetahs from the Palaeologan scene 

33 A. Pallis, In the Days of the Janissaries (London 1951) 202. 
34 K. Mitsakis, /I ~t"Y1l(H~ 1tepl 'tou 'AA,esavopou K<Xl 'trov MeyaA,WV nOI..Ef:lWV; 

'AVEKOO'tTi 1tei;fi ol<xoKeui] 'tou Bui;<xv'tlVOU Muel(J'top"Il<X'to~ 'tou Mey. 'AA,el.;av­
opou a1tO 'tOY KWOlK<X 236 'tfj~ Movfi~ KOU'tA.OUIlOUOtOtl," Byz. und Neugr. Jahrb. 20 
(1970) 228-301 at 261. 



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266 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

reflected in these texts is curious. The Palaeologans may have 
been too poor to hunt with cheetahs-although then again, if 
Andronicus III (1328-1341) is said to have had 1,500 hounds 
and 1,000 falcons,35 they may not have been. The Palaeologans 
would also not have had access to the regions where the cheetah 
or the leopard were indigenous (southern Anatolia for the 
leopard, Persia for the cheetah)36-though if the imperial coffers 
were full enough, they might just have imported the beasts for 
that purpose, as was taking place in Western Europe around 
that time. Still, it is not as certain for the fourteenth century that 
a Byzantine would have had a cheetah in mind as a pard as it 
would be in the twelfth. 

So hunting pards (cheetahs) are not certain to have still been 
employed by Byzantines in the Palaeologan era. Likewise, 
hunting for pards (whether cheetahs or leopards), though 
attested in Comnenan times,37 is not attested for certain in Late 
Byzantium. The Vita of the Esteemed Donkey (38) has the Donkey 
threaten his adversaries with his master's Lombard (Italian) 
hounds and falcons pursuing bears, boars, lions, and pards 
(1tUpOUA.ot). But lions were already scarce in Byzantine territory 
by Comnenan times,38 and the Vita seems to have been written 

35 Koukoules, Bv(avnvwv Blor; V 394, citing Pseudo-Sphrantzes p.182. 
36 Leopard: Turnbull-Kemp 4. The cheetah certainly was not to be found in 

Thrace, the only region the emperor had access to by that time for recreational 
purposes. TurkIsh tourist offiClals claim there are populations of "Anatolian 
cheetahs" in the Dilek Peninsula National Park near Aydin (http:// 
www.about-turkex..com!aydin.htm). and Sterndale (supra n.14) 200 claims the 
cheetah is found' throughout Asia Minor." However, no other past or present 
authority does so (Eaton 18), and both Wrogemann 115 and Heptner!Sludskii 
712 exclude Asia Minor from their map of the past and present range of the 
animal. Today the Asian cheetah is reported to survive only in scattered 
locations in Iran and Afghanistan; but its extirpation from the Middle East is 
relatively recent (Eaton 19). This means that in all likelihood the Cornnenans 
had to import cheetahs, and would not have found them locally in Asia Minor. 
One wonders, all the same, where the Classical Athenians got their pet cheetahs 
from (Ashmead [supra n.10]), if they had to be sought even baCK then as far 
away as Persia. 

37 Koukoules, "KUVT1'YE'tl1CU" 32-33; e.g. Theodore Prodromus, Historische Ge­
dichte, ed. W. Horander (Vienna 1974) 4.82-83. 

38The European lion was extinct by 100 A.D.; the lion was to be seen in Azer­
baijan and Southern Georgia (Transcaucasia) only up to the tenth century, and 



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NICK NICHOLAS 267 

in Western-held Greece, so that the reference is probably merely 
literary rather than factual. (Italian hounds and falcons are an 
odd mix with lions and leopards.) Significantly, the later Fair 
Tale of the Donkey, the Wolf, and the Fox, in most regards an ex­
pansion of the Vita, omits verse 38. Presumably by 1539, when 
the Fair Tale was published, the hunting of pards had become 
too much of a distant memory even to mention. 

There is one context in which we can be reasonably sure 
Palaeologans remained aware of pards, however. Pseudo­
Codinus' De Officiis, a treatise on court ceremony, seems to have 
been compiled for the most part during the reign of John VI 
Cantacuzene (1347-1354). It speaks of the 1tcxp8o~o.'Y\A.O\, the 
pard-carers, who are entitled to enter and leave the palace on 
horseback (p.287). The work's editor believes "this is an 
allusion to the presentation of animals during the celebrations 
accompanying the imperial wedding." 39 So pards (either 
leopards or cheetahs) were still to be seen on show. 40 And in 

the last lion in Palestine was killed in the thirteenth century. However, lions 
survived in Iran until 1942 (or 1930), and thoul;!;h they were lonl;!; extinct in 
western Asia Minor, they were still to be sighted m easternmost ASla Minor up 
to the mid-nineteenth century (E. R. Ricciuti, The Wild Cats [New York 1979J 
34; Heptner/Sludskii 87, 90; Munqidh (supra n.20) reports frequent run-ins 
with them in Syria). Given the presence of lions on the border with Meso­
potamia and Syria, the Byzantines may still have undertaken lion-hunts in the 
early eleventh century, before the loss of eastern Asia Minor at Mantzikert. By 
the time of the Vita oJ the Esteemed Donkey, of course, lion-hunts were merely a 
fabulous reminiscence. 

HAn alternative manuscript reading, accepted in Du Cange, Glossarium ad 
scriptores mediae et infimae Graecitatis (1688) s.v. and the previous edition of 
the work-I. Bekker, Codini Curopalatae De officialibus Palatii c'politani et de 
officiis magnae ecclesiae liber (Bonn 1839)-is It(lp06~aAAot. Du Cange inter­
prets this as Curatores Pardorum "pard-carers," in the li~ht of 1tapool1uytAOl. 
Bekker interprets it as venatores pardorum "pard-hunters' ; but the annotations 
in his own edition prefer the 1tapoo~uYtA.ot reading. Whether as pard-carers or 
pard-hunters, Ps.-Codinus' testimony shows that pards were still known to 
Palaeologan Byzantines-but would probably not have been seen by most of 
them very often. 

4°Koukoules, Busav1:tVWV BioC; III 253, claims that leopards and other wild 
beasts were on show in Constantinople throughout Byzantium; but he bases 
this on the fact that Baron Waclav Wratislaw of Mitrowitz saw them in 
Constantinople in the 1590s-in affluent Ottoman Constantinople: "We saw 
also, in Constantinople, wild beasts of various nature and form; lynxes and 
wild cats, leopards, bears, and lions, so tame and domesticated, that they are 



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268 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

this instance, the vernacular stem lta.p8- rather than the 
Classical 1ta.p8aA- has been used; the term thus reflects an 
extant fact of life, rather than a literary fiction or conventional 
appellation. 

The evidence suggests that, in the final century of Byzantium, 
hunting pards were known in Byzantium by reputation rather 
than observation; but pards themselves (leopards or cheetahs) 
could still be sighted on occasion in Constantinople. 

The Brave Pard 
The instances of the pard seen until now clearly involve 

hunting and the cheetah; the presence of the vernacular lta.p8o<; 
alongside the learned lta.p8aAt<; show that the pard as cheetah 
was commonly known in Middle Byzantium. There is also evi­
dence, as we have just seen, that the cheetah was not as well 
known in Late Byzantium, becoming an object of hearsay or 
occasional ceremonial sightings, rather than an accustomed 
hunting companion. This would lead to a distorted popular 
perception of the pard. Several mentions of the pard in late 
vernacular Greek literature do indeed point to such distortion. 

For instance, the pard was proverbially brave in Late 
Byzantium. References to the brave pard are frequent in late 
mediaeval vernacular literature: "for I'm the mighty pard, brave 
past measure" (Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds 870, ca 1364); 
"the man invested with the rank of Captain, who has a soul like 
a pard" (Trivolis, Tagiapiera 9, 1520); "Whoever has a heart like 
a pard should not pay attention to a woman's doings, for 
magnanimity calls for virile acts" (Falieros, Words of Counsel 

led up and down the city by chains and ropes" (Vaclav Wratislaw, 
Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz, ed. A. H. Wratislaw 
[London 1862] 70). If Cantacuzene did put on animal shows in Constantinople, 
he may well have been the last Byzantine emperor able to afford to. Whereas 
the Byzantines had pard-keepers, the Ottomans had distinct guilds of both 
leopard-keepers ana lion-keepers: Evliya <;elebi, Narrative of Travels in 
Europe, Asia and Africa in the Seventeenth Century by Evliya Efendf, ed. J. von 
Hammer (New York 1968 [1834]) 1.2205. So the Ottomans had the means to 
import lions, which the late Byzantines do not seem to have done. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 269 

262, 1420s); "he circled like an eagle, mangled like a pard 
(Achilleid N 1398, XV A.D.); "he roared like a lion, growled 
(£110UlCplO£V) like a pard" (AchilIeid a 525, XV A.D.); "he roared 
like a lion, leapt like a pard" (Achilleid 0 560, XV A.D.); "he 
moaned like a pard (!) (ros 1tUpO<XA1S £YOTI'US£v), and roared like 
a lion" (Chronicle of the Tocco 3385, 1420s). 

Such bravery is a characteristic of the leopard, but not the 
rather more docile cheetahY The cheetah in the wild is not 
particularly effective in warding off other predators, and is 
liable to be driven off even by vultures.42 As for its behaviour in 
captivity, Constantine Pantechnes paints a convincing portrait 
of the cheetah cowering before the admonitions of its tamer (see 
Appendix). The proverbial identification of the pard as brave, 
if the cheetah is still meant, certainly shows that the Late 
Byzantines had no experience of the behaviour of cheetahs in 
the wild or in the hunt. Even the reference to the cheetah's 
growling is suspect. Pantechnes was aware that the cheetah 
produced "something like a roar" (see Appendix): rather than 
roar like the great cats proper, the cheetah normally chirps or 
purrs (Wrogemann 7). For the author of the Achilleid to mention 
the pard's vocalization in the same breath as the lion's can only 
mean he could not have had a real cheetah in mind. 

What is far likelier as an explanation is that the pard was 
once more being associated with the leopard. Since hunting 
cheetahs would seem to have no longer been commonplace in 
Byzantium, once again the pard became an exotic wild cat. In 
that case, it would have been as likely to refer to the leopard as 
the cheetah.43 Neither was by this stage native to Byzantine 

41 Pournelle (supra n.21) 5: "rather mild-natured and fairly easily tamed 
when captured young." 

42Eaton 124-125; Wrogemann 46-49, 104-106. 
41The conflation of the two seems to have already been in place in antiquity, 

as discussed above, and indeed may never have been effaced. Contemporary 
Arabs, by contrast, routinely made the distinction; Munqidh (supra n.20) 141, 
for instance, can tell that a "Frank" is trying to sell him a leopard [namirJ, 
passing it off as a cheetah lfahdl. 



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270 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

territory, but the leopard at least is still indigenous to southern 
Anatolia (Turnbull-Kemp 4), and the Ottomans were using leop­
ard skins-the Ottoman emir Orhan sent John VI Cantacuzene 
(1347-1354) presents including horses, hounds, and leopard 
skins (1ta.pbaAEo)v bopa<;: Cantacuzene I 447). The Byzantines 
by this stage would presumably have been getting similar re­
ports on wild cats from Westerners, and the learned among 
them would have obtained corroboration on what the pard was 
from the ancient descriptions of pards available to them-the 
instance in Revelation 13:2 (lea\. 'to 9TlPiov 0 dbov ~v O~OtoV 
1ta.pbaAEt, II And the beast which I saw was like unto a 
leopard") presumably capturing their imagination the most. 

The Short-tailed Pard 
The evidence for what the Palaeologans made of the pard 

from the fourteenth-century vernacular Greek poem Entertaining 
Tale of Quadrupeds is even more ambiguous. The pard in that 
poem is described at some length; but what is given does not 
match expectation: 

and close to him he had two chief advisors-
the cheetah and the leopard, those defamers (21-22).44 
[ ... ] 
Cheetah and leopard then arrived on stage, 
telling each other "I'm the better one!," 
baring their teeth, and waiting each in ambush. 
But then impetuously the cheetah spoke, 
and uttered to the leopard what here follows: (860-864) 
[ ... ] 
"Now me-my gallantry goes with the name; 
for I'm the mighty cheetah, brave past measure, 
able to overpower any beast. 
In just two bounds, or three at times, I reach 
and pin down any animal I chase. 

HI am citing the forthcoming translation by myself and George Baloglou of 
the poem. In this translation, cheetah corresponds to 1tap~, and leopard to 
~ov't61ta.pOo~. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 

I clench it with my claws, to stop it fleeing, 
and then I eat it to my heart's content. 
Whatever's left, I leave there and depart, 
and any other passing beast consumes it. 
Also my skin is valued by the sultans, 
the knights and noblemen and great emirs, 
who cover both their seats and couches with it, 
and place it on their mattresses and pillows; 
for anywhere it lies, no flea will land." 
The leopard answered back to him as follows: 
"No point in bragging, motley, short-tailed beast, 
about your strength, about your bounds and claws [ .. . J" (869-885) 

271 

We have already seen that the pard's claim to "overpower 
any beast" does not match the cheetah's behaviour in the wild. 
In fact, the author of the Entertaining Tale himself shows up the 
cheetah, having him kicked and gored by the buffalo within an 
inch of his life (1028-1030). But that is not the only puzzling 
feature of this description. Although most animals in the poem 
are described extensively in terms of their uses to humanity, the 
Entertaining Tale does not even mention that the pard is used in 
hunting-though the description of how it seizes prey echoes 
Pantechnes' ("with swift-turning bounds not more than two or 
three in number"). Instead, the pard is singled out for the use of 
its pelt on couches. This could refer to cheetahs, but is likelier to 
refer to leopards-the use of whose pelt was so widespread 
among the Ottomans that, as reported by Evliya \=elebi (1630s), 
it was decreed that leopard-keepers and lion-keepers should 
parade in the company of fur merchants instead of shepherds in 
the Ottoman procession of guilds.45 

As if things were not already complicated enough, the Enter­
taining Tale's leopard refers to the pard in verse 884 as "short­
tailed." This does not match what we know of leopards­
whose tails are around 90 cm long. A "pard" (= leopard) could 
reproach a "leo-pard" (= cheetah) for having a short tail; but it 

45 <;:elebi (supra nAO) 1.2205. 



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272 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

would be pedantic indeed to do so, as the cheetah's tail is only 
10-15 cm shorter. And given the prevalent confusion between 
leopards and cheetahs, it is doubtful the author would have 
distinguished between the two species, let alone their tail 
lengths-if indeed he even had the opportunity to compare 
them at close range. 

"Short-tailed" however does match the lynx uniquely amongst 
the cats of the old world: the southern lynx (Felis lynx pardina) 
survives in Greece and Anatolia. The vernacular Modern Greek 
name of the lynx is Slavonic in origin (pf)croC;),46 and is thus not 
obvious as a referent of 7tup8oC;. But the lynx may have served 
as a model to the late Byzantines for what the pard might 
actually have looked like-being the closest the Balkans have to 
a great cat.47 

And evidence from the Pontic dialect of Greek does in fact 
show that the meaning of 1tup8oC; was shifting. In the form of 
Pontic formerly spoken in Turkey, 1tup8oC; refers to the (male) 
domestic cat; this is the only meaning attested in Papa­
dopoulos' dictionary of Pontic.48 It is just possible that 1tUpOOC; 

46From Old Church Slavonic nlsi "pardalis" cf. Russian rys', Southern 
Slavonic (Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian Sfavonic) ris. On the vernac­
ular use of pipo:;, cf e.g. the proverb "01tou !j)(Ov<iSEl p"cro~, 6 AUKO~ oEv ltun:i, 
"where the lynx how[s, the wolf won't set foot" ( 'EYKUKAOltufoElu 'HAiou S.v. 
AUyS). The conjecture im:elicit in the word's Modern Greek orthography'-and 
made by N. A Andriotis, 'ErVj.LOAoY!I(O Ae~!I(O Tfi~ K01Vfi~ NeOeA1T/VllCfj~3 (Thes­
salonica 1983) S.v. pipo:;, that the word has anything to do with Latin/Greek 
Rhesus, is fancifuL J. Pokorny, Indogermanisches Etymologisches Worterbuch 
(Bern 1959) I 690, derives it from Proto-Indo-European *leuK-, making it cognate 
with Greek AuYS-though he admits the substitution of I by r is problematic. 

47 This confusion does not extend to the illustrator of the Constantinopolitan 
manuscript of the Entertaining Tale, which displays the pard as a reasonably 
realistic cheetah with a collar. However, the manuscript in question (Con­
stantinopolitanus Seraglio 35) was written in 1461, in Venetian Euboea (D. R. 
Re~~ch, "Ko~ikologisch-P.rosopographisc~es zum Codex Seragliensis gr~ecu.s 
35, m 1. VasslS, G. S. Hennch, and D. R. Remsch, edd., Lesarten: Festschrift fur 
Athanasios Kambylis zum 70. Geburtstag [Berlin 1988] 248-258). As cheetahs 
and cheetah-coursing were known to Westerners from the time of Frederick II, 
the illustrator's knowled~e of cheetahs need not have been the same as the 
author's one century preViOusly, and in a different realm. 

48 A A Papadopoulos, 'Icr'toplKov AESlKOV 'tfi~ nOV'tlK:fj~ ~luA.EK'tOU (Athens 
1961) s.v. We have been assured by sI?eakers of Pontic from Georgia and Russia 
(PwcrcrOltOV'tlOl), where Pontians errugrated in the eighteenth and nineteenth 



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NICK NICHOLAS 273 

in Pontic, before ending up as "tomcat," went through an 
intermediate phase denoting a wild feline indigenous to 
Northern Anatolia; possibly a lynx or wild cat, and more than 
likely not a leopard or cheetah.49 The transition would have 
been made much easier by the fact that cheetahs were no longer 
to be seen in Greek-speaking areas; the term would then have 
become applied to the felines Greeks did see in the wild. 

There is some more evidence favouring such an interpretation. 
The breed of the lynx native to Southern Europe, Asia Minor, 
and the Caucasus (Felis lynx pardina) is indeed "motley," as the 
Entertaining Tale's leopard claims (884), having "a very bright 
'reddish' coloration combined with profuse spottiness"­
although, it must be said, the spots are nowhere near as 
pronounced as on the leopard or cheetah.5o Furthermore, the 
propensity of the pard to leave behind leftovers (876-877) is 
not characteristic of the leopard, who goes so far as to drag its 
carcass up a tree to prevent its being scavenged, and will 
repeatedly return to its kilts1 Nor is it characteristic of the 
cheetah, who is known as a rushed eater, and leaves very little 

centuries, that It(ip8o~ in their dialect does not refer to "cat." George Baloglou 
and I had initially conjectured that this might preserve an older state of affairs, 
in which the Pontic "pard" referred to a feline intermediate between the 
cheetah and the domestic cat-say, the lynx. However, as Dr Julia Krivoruchko 
(Univ. of Haifa) found enquirinR amongst Abkhazian Pontians on our behalf, 
the word It(ip~ means "tomcat for older speakers of the dialect, just as it does 
in Southern Pontic. Krivoruchko believes younger speakers have been in­
fluenced by the Russian use of gepard and pardus to mean "leopard" or "lynx," 
so that Northern Pontic does not provide independent evidence for the down­
ward shift of It(ip8o~. (Our thanks to Dr Krivoruchko for clarifying this for us.) 

49Heptner ISludskii 532. The move downwards of 7tap8o~ might be antici­
pated in the Vita of the Esteemed Donkey 179, 189, in which the 01d lady calls 
her cat with the diminutive nap8i1:S11. Note that this is a diminutive of the late 
(and vernacular) form 7tap8o~, whereas the leopards the Vita mentions as game 
in verse 38 are 7tap8aA.Ql, a miss tressed form of the Classical7tap8aA.t~. TheVita 
may thus present two stages of the meaning of "pard" in Greek. 

50Heptner ISludskii 537. This also rules out the caracal or desert lynx (Felis 
caracal) as a referent for the Entertaining Tale's pard. The caracal has been 
used in hunting like the cheetah, but is not spotted at all. 

5lDenis 38-39; Turnbell-Kemp 42, 102, 117-119. A leopard will let the 
viscera of its kill, dragged up a tree, drop to waiting hyenas (Turnbull-Kemp 
117). Otherwise, leopards display "a keen proprietary mterest in their kills­
even if they have made a substantial meal from one of these" (119). 



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274 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

meat behind unless disturbed.52 It sounds rather more like a 
lynx, which only eats part of its victims. While the Iberian lynx 
(to be identified with the Balkan and Anatolian breed) covers 
the remainder with sand and litter, to prevent other carnivores 
getting at it, it does not safeguard its kill as efficiently as the 
leopard: "foxes often profit by its leavings" (Denis 96). Like­
wise, according to Heptner and 5ludskii, 

On killing its prey, the lynx rarely eats it at the site, usually 
carrying it or dragging it away, sometimes for 400 to 1,000 m. The 
predator usually bites the throat of a large prey first and licks 
and sucks its blood; then the cat slits open the abdomen and eats 
the liver and heart, and later the flesh of the neck and 
shoulders; the rest of the carcass is not touched ... Having killed 
a prey but not consumed it immediately, the lynx sometimes 
conceals the remains of a small animal under a fallen tree; 
carcasses of large animals are covered with dry grass, twigs, or 
snow, and returns to eat the remaining part of the meal-if 
wolves or wolverines have not destroyed it. Sometimes it lives 
beside even a white hare for a few days or until only the paws 
and intestines remain, and may stay for as long as a week next to 
a roe deer kill; a lair is established close by, sometimes within 
10 m of the kill. More often, however, when full, the lynx simply 
abandons the quarry and does not return even if the remains of 
the victim are concealed ... Wolverine, wolf, and fox often eat 
prey caught by lynx if it is not consumed at once. In Latvia not 
only predators (wolf), but also wild boar represent "spongers" off 
lynx. On coming across a lynx track a wild boar often will follow 
it and eat the remains of the cat's kill (613-615, 626). 

50 the lynx does attempt to act as proprietary about its prey 
as the great cats. But since the lynx is less capable of chasing off 
other carnivores, and more capable of remaining hidden, the 
author could have formed the impression that it leaves its half­
eaten prey behind for others, more readily than he might for the 
great cats. In some instances, in fact, that is indeed what 

52Wro5emann 64-65. In Nairobi Park a symbiosis has latterly emerged 
between Jackals and cheetahs, with cheetahs leaving behind leftovers for the 
jackals. However, Eaton (85) doubts this is characteristic of cheetahs overall. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 275 

happens. However, this does not prove the lynx rather than the 
cheetah is being described in the passage. The cheetah is like­
wise less capable of warding off other predators, as noted; it is 
also disinclined to return to its kill.53 The behaviour the Enter­
taining Tale reports, of a pard contentedly leaving its leftovers 
for scavengers, matches the lynx best; but while one could not 
claim it under any circumstances for the leopard, one might mis­
takenly attribute it to a cheetah. 

The multiple jumps of the pard onto its prey (Entertaining 
Tale 872) are also more in character with a lesser cat than either 
the leopard, who waits in a tree or creeps up to its prey before 
executing a single pounce, or the cheetah, who uniquely amongst 
felines knocks down its prey in pursuit (Eaton 131). Yet the 
term "bounds" used to refer to the stride of the cheetah already 
occurs in Pantechnes, as well as Chardin in the seventeenth 
century (see Appendix.) 

A point against identifying the lynx with the pard is that, un­
like what is claimed of the Entertaining Tale's pard, the lynx is 
by no means able to overpower any beast (871). The northern Euro­
pean lynx feeds largely on ungulates (mostly smaller species of 
deer, in some locations on larger species), supplemented by 
hares, foxes, and squirrels. It is capable of killing prey three to 
four times its size, and it has even been known to attack fully­
grown boars.54 This is a respectable feat, but the Entertaining 
Tale's boast seems better attuned to the leopard. Likewise, the 
manner the Entertaining Tale specifies of the pard capturing its 
prey (873) is more characteristic of the larger cheetah than the 
lynx: the cheetah holds the animal down with its forelegs and 
chest.55 

The main evidence identifying the pard with the lynx in this 
passage is its short tail. If the identification with the lynx was 

53Ricciuti (supra n.38) 110; Wrogemann 65; Heptner/Sludskii 723. 
54http://lynx.uio.no/jon/lynx/lynxeu02.htm; Heptner/Sludskii 596-606; 

RicciutI (supra n.38) 90; J. Schneider, Lynx (Minneapolis 1995) 16. 
55Eaton 131-132; Wrogemann 41-42. 



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276 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

not intended by the author of the Entertaining Tale, then the 
explicit reference to a short tail presents a problem. If the author 
used written sources to obtain information on the pard, he may 
have derived the notion of a short-tailed pard from Timothy of 
Gaza (who in turn obtained it from Oppian, Cynegetica 3.63): 

That there are two kinds of pards, the big ones having a short ... 
tail (Timothy of Gaza [Paraphrase] §1l). 
As for the pard, it has two kinds; one is small, while the other 
has been born large. And the small has a very long tail, while 
the large has a short tail (cited in Aristophanes of Byzantium II 
260). 

The paraphrase of Timothy of Gaza, and the excerpts of Tim­
othy included in the epitome by Aristophanes of Byzantium, 
mention both panthers (Paraphrase: §14; Epitome: II 279) and 
leo-pards (Paraphrase: §12; Epitome: II 274), as animals 
distinct from the pard. So the distinction between the two kinds 
of pard may be specious, even though it is reminiscent of the 
attempts to distinguish leopards from panthers in modern 
times.56 The author of the Entertaining Tale must have consulted 
some written source to get information on the very existence of 
leo-pards, as he would hardly find corroboration of the fanciful 
ancient notions of hybrids in the real world; he may have caught 
sight of something like this reference, and extended the 
distinction Timothy makes to one between leo-pards and pards. 

The Timothean instances are not promising, however, as a 
source for the belief about the length of pard tails. Timothy has 
abundant mentions of panthers and leo-pards, though without 
comparing their tail lengths; in fact the panther is said to have 
the tail of a wolf (Epitome II 281), and the pard to have a sting 
on its tail (Paraphrase §11). The fabulous properties of the 
pard and panther mentioned by Timothy, however, are con­
spicuous by their absence in the Entertaining Tale, and at any 

56 In fact, F. S. Bodenheimer and A. Rabinowitz, Timotheus of Gaza on Ani­
mals (Lei den 1949) 13, adduce the three appearances of the (mocfern) leopard as 
evidence of Timothy of Gaza being an armchair zoologist. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 277 

rate provide little excuse for the author to divine that the pard's 
tail is significantly shorter than a leo-pard's. It is not impossible 
that "short-tailed" does not refer to a physical attribute at all, 
but is a literate allusion-or misunderstanding. But it is just as 
possible, for that matter, that "short-tailed" indicates an in­
cipient confusion between familiar lynxes and exotic cheetahs or 
leopards, leading the author to attribute the lynx's tail to a 
beast he otherwise termed a cheetah. 

In all, the Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds, the only vernacular 
mediaeval Greek text to give a detailed description of the pard, 
instead presents a chimera. The poem appears to be conflating 
the heroic pard of Classical and travellers' lore (the leopard), 
the pard used on Turkish couches (leopard, less likely cheetah 
or lynx),57 possibly reminiscences of the pard in Comnenan hunt­
ing (the cheetah), and the physiognomy of the vernacular par~ 
(potentially the lynx-certainly not the leopard, now inaccessible 
to Byzantium).58 That the author intended the lynx from the 
beginning is unlikely: he always uses vernacular names ·for his 
beasts in the poem (though not to the exclusion of Classical 
names), and the vernacular name p~cro<; should in that case 
have made an appearance in his text. Yet it is not surprising 
that the author's description should match a lynx better than a 

57" After him rode several trumpeters, blowing their trumpets without 
intermission, who were followed by about 300 Turkish hussars, ornamentally 
dressed in pelisses of spotted lynx skin, who sometimes shouted, sometimes 
sprang from their horses, and exhibited tokens of great exultation" (Wratislaw 
[supra n.40] 17-account from the 1590s). But when Cantacuzene made 
reference to the pardskins the emir Orhan sent him as a present, he was using 
Attieist Greek, and presumably was capable of distinguishing between the 
Attic A.uy~ and ltapOaA.t~. 

S8The conflation of the exotic leop'ard with the familiar lynx would not be 
unique to the Entertainin~ Tale . GUIllaume Ie Clerc's thirteenth-century bes­
tiary claims the panther IS "in proper French called a lynx" (F. McCulloch, 
Mediaeval Latin and French Bestiarzes2 [Chapel Hill 1962] 149); and the Old 
Church Slavonic nisi, which gave rise to the Modern Slavonic names for 
"lynx," is glossed into Latin in A. G. Preobrazhenskii's Russian-Ian~uage 
Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language (1910-1949) s.v. r':ls (pre­
sumably relaying a much earlier gloss) as pardalis. Ironically, Bodenhelffier and 
Rabinowitz (supra n.56: 44) believe the larger lynx "with a saffronlike (Kp01CO­
OEtOE~) skin" referred to by Timothy of Gaza (§46) is in fact a cheetah, pre­
sumably because the lynx is not indigenous to Palestine. 



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278 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

cheetah or leopard; the lynx is the only large feline native to the 
part of the world in which the Entertaining Tale was written, 
and the author would have had much more opportunity to 
observe it in the wild than the occasionally imported pard on 
show. All the same, there is only one piece of evidence in­
controvertibly pointing to a lynx-the pard's allegedly short 
tail-and there is reason to cast even that into doubt. 

The latest edition of the Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds 
glosses 1tapoo<; as the "male of the panthera."59 While the 
identification of the pard's gender is consistent with its meaning 
of "tomcat" in Modern Pontic, the definition given is certainly 
misleading, as the modern panther is not distinct from the 
leopard; and the ancient panther-which the Byzantines would 
have known through the Physiologus (the fantastical compen­
dium of animal lore which underlay the Western bestiaries) as a 
charming hybrid of all animals (1taV Sflp), foe only to the 
dragon-is altogether too fabulous to belong here. Yet the 
confusion the author seems to have harboured about what 
precisely this pard was lends his creation a chimeric air, and is 
further evidence that the Palaeologans were nowhere near as 
sure of what a pard was as their Comnenan forebears. (It is 
possible, indeed, that the reality of the lynx "contaminated" 
notions of the pard in other texts: the lynx's fearsome cater­
wauling, for example, would provide a better explanation of the 
Chronicle of the Tocco's "he moaned like a pard, and roared like a 
lion" than the cheetah's chirping.) In our forthcoming translation 
and commentary of the Entertaining Tale, accordingly, George 
Baloglou and I render 1tapoo<; as /I cheetah," though more as a 
matter of convenience than as a concrete identification. 

The Leo-Pard 
Like the "pard," the "leopard" was also mentioned in Byzan-

5 9 nat8t6cppa(Jm~ L\!11YTl(JI~ -rwv Zwwv -rwv Te-rpa1to8wv : Critical Edition, ed.. 
V. Tsiouni (Munich 1975 [1972]) 48. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 279 

tine literature, continuing on from Roman times. The only 
Byzantine author who displays some concrete notion of what 
the AE61tap80<; looked like is Timothy of Gaza, ca 500 A.D.: 

Chapter XII, On the leopard. 
1. That it is born from the intercourse of a lion and a pard. 
2. That the lioness when she cubs (having conceived) from a 

pard, hides the (new)-born (cub) and herself lest the lion may 
find her and rend her in pieces. 

3. That she washes herself in many rivers to wash off the 
smell; for if the lion perceives (anything) he kills her and 
never again mates even with another (lioness) (Timothy of 
Gaza §12: Bodenheimer/Rabinowitz, Timotheus 26). 

Of course, the leopard also has different parents; for it is born of 
the lion and the pard coming together for sex. And it preserves 
its mother's colour, spots, and vigour, and its father's size, 
courage, and fearlessness (Aristophanes of Byzantium II 274) 
(after Timothy of Gaza). 

The first mention of the leopard in Greek writing also displays a 
grim familiarity with the feline; it was penned by the Christian 
martyr Ignatius, early in the second century A.D., on his way to 
be killed by wild animals: 

All the way from Syria to Rome I am fighting wild beasts, on 
land and sea, by day and night, chained as I am to ten leopards, 
that is, a detachment of soldiers, who prove themselves the 
more malevolent for kindnesses shown them (Ignatius, Epistle to 
the Romans 5.1). 

Though Timothy of Gaza's description has made it into 
Porphyrogenitus' zoological compendium (the Epitome of Ari­
stophanes), the leopard occurs everywhere else in Byzantine 
literature as a purely fabulous beast.60 Even Timothy of Gaza 
worked from fabulous hearsay, and was hardly a scientific 
zoologist. 61 This is in contrast to Roman practice, where the 

6° In the case of Alexander Romance ~ discussed above, the reference to the 
cheetah as a leopard rather than a pard may reflect the earlier provenance of 
the redaction. 

61 Bodenheimer/Rabinowitz, Timotheus 13. 



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280 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

leopard was an animal actually sighted by someone (e.g. Pliny, 
Ignatius). 

Though the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae corpus of Byzantine 
Greek is by no means comprehensive (as of this writing it has a 
fair amount of historical and theological material, but little 
oratory, for instance), the distribution of Ato(v1O)1tapO- in that 
corpus is indicative of the obscurity the leopard had fallen into 
in Byzantium. Excluding citations by other authors, the leopard 
is mentioned by ten authors in the corpus, as of November 
2000. The instances in Ignatius and Timothy of Gaza have 
already been seen; the instance in the Alexander Romance was 
considered alongside the mentions in that work of pards. Of the 
remaining seven works, the leopard plays the most prominent 
role in the redactions of the Acts of Philip, where a leopard 
spares a goat kid for the greater glory of the apostle. Both the 
leopard and the goat speak to the apostle with a human voice, 
promising to be rid of their animal natures, and nothing more 
beastly is said about the leopard than the goat's exhortation: 

o leopard, make away with your savage heart and beastly 
mind, and bring yourself into meekness; for the apostles of the 
Divine Magnitude are to go through this desert, to fulfil to per­
fection the promise of the glory of the Only-Begotten Son of God 
(Acts of Philip 95). 

The only concrete feature about the leopard we learn from the 
text is that he is a quadruped (123). 

The other instances of the leopard in the corpus are even 
sketchier. The instances in Theognostus (IX A.D.) are merely gram­
matical illustrations of the behaviour of omega in compounding 
(498,577), and can be passed over. Galen (II A.D.) mentions the 
consumption of lion, pard, and leo-pard meat as being bene­
ficial to the spleen, in a prescription more magical than medical 
(De atra bile p.134); the allusion is at any rate Roman rather 
than Byzantine. An astrological work in an XI A.D. manuscript 
states that Mars governs dogs, lynxes, leopards, wild and 



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NICK NICHOLAS 281 

carnivorous beasts (though not lions, which are the province of 
Jupiter), pigs, apes, and wasps (Astrologica p.122): the leopard 
merely forms part of a laundry list of beasts. Likewise, Michael 
Psellus (XI A.D.) rattles off the name of the leo-pard in a listing 
of non-kosher carnivores: "hyena and crocodile, leopard and 
lion, wolf and bear, carnivorous beasts-none of these lodged 
within Eden, but Man alone, the work of the hands of God" 
(Poemata 55.81). Theodore Studites (VIII-IX A.D.) unflatteringly 
compares "appearances of the soul" of dissent to animals­
"one having something of a human, another of a dog, another a 
leopard perhaps, another a fish or some other reptile-with 
your holiness finding them quite unmanageable" (Letters 8). Like 
Psellus, Studites uses the leopard as a bogeyman, though 
without displaying any deeper familiarity with it: the conflation 
of fish and reptiles raises suspicion enough about his command 
of zoology. St Athanasius (IV A.D.), finally, has demons in the 
form of wild beasts attacking St Anthony: 

And when the demons were just about to break down the four 
walls of the hut, they tried to get in through them, transforming 
themselves into the images of beasts and reptiles; and the place 
was at once filled with the images of lions, bears, leopards, 
bulls, and serpents, asps, and scorpions, and wolves. And each of 
these moved in its own manner. The lion roared, wanting to come 
in; the bull tried to headbutt; the serpent crawled and could not 
enter; and the wolf rushed forwards. And all the phantasms' 
noises together were fearsome, and their rage grievous (V. Ant. 
p .857). 

As can be seen, Athanasius does not even manage to come up 
with a description of the leopard demon's gait. In all, the 
leopard appears in learned Byzantine literature as an oc­
casional terror, though with little detail and less plausibility. In 
contrast to the West, where the leopard was emblematic of 
miscegenation and sin, and frequently brought up as an 
exemplum by both theologians and fabulists, the leopard does 
not seem to have engaged Byzantine imaginations. He is not 



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282 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

mentioned by Byzantine theologians or historians as an example 
of anything other than savagery. In fact when a Byzantine 
wished to point to an instance of miscegenation, he was just as 
likely to refer to the tiger(!): 

So he was begotten from a Syrian lioness and an Armenian pard 
as a miscegenated, mixed and peculiar species of tiger, of il~ 
legitimate and base parentage, more hateful than an Armenian 
or Syrian. He was Leo by name, and he had acquired the lion's 
rapacity and steadfastness-though by no means taking on the 
lion's nobility (George Monachus, Continuator 769-770; X A.D.).62 

Furthermore, the leopard is absent from all the Greek versions of 
the Physiologus . In fact, the leopard is even absent from the 
corpus of Byzantine lexica. 

The situation of the leopard is much the same in the ver~ 
nacular Greek works of late Byzantium. The beast is mentioned 
in the London Achilleid (verse 1228), Pseudo-Georgillas' Fall of 
Constantinople (445), and the Athenian Digenes Akrites (4402). In 
each case, the leopard's name is dropped in as a perfunctory ad­
dition to a catalogue of wild beasts. The Athenian manuscript's 
interpolation naming the leopard is absent from the other manu­
scripts of the poem-even from the Trebizond manuscript of 
Digenes, which for the most part parallels the Athenian fairly 
closely; so its mention is the responsibility of the Athenian's 
scribe alone. The leopard is mentioned in the manuscript as 
Digenes' prey along with lions and bears, but without more 
specifics. The London Achilleid likewise rattles off Achilles' prey 
as bears, dragons, lions, and leopards, where the Naples ver­
sion (verse 1645) mentions only dragons and lions: the leopards 
have been added in by the scribe of the London version, again 
merely as an afterthought. And the Fall of Constantinople merges 
all three beasts together in a portrait of the Turkish threat: "for I 

62 Referring to Emperor Leo V (813-820). See N. A. Koutrakou, "Busav'ttvl] 
nOAmKil 'lbEoAoyia Kat npo1tay<ivba : ME'tacrXll~a'tlcr~oi. e£crEt~ Kat 'Av'tl­
eEcrEl~ . To napab£ly~a 1:OU AEoV'to~ E' 'AP~EViou (813-820)," "lcr'tOlP 3 (1991) 
85-91, discussion at 89. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 283 

see he has leapt, and sat on the West as well; like a pard, a 
leopard, a hungry lion, eating your flesh and drinking your 
blood like a sweet dish and despite your will." These instances 
seem to show that the Byzantines knew the leopard to be a 
ferocious wild cat, which scribes could exploit to spice up a list 
of beasts; but .otherwise they had about as much real knowledge 
of it as they did about dragons-if indeed not less. 

The absence of the leopard from Byzantine imaginations is 
most evident in the Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds. In that 
poem, the leopard accompanies the pard as a retainer to King 
Lion. But the leopard is sketchily described: as the first modern 
commentator on the poem remarks, the author is at pains to say 
anything about the leopard at all. 63 The leopard is the one 
animal in the poem which is given no description-either by the 
narrator, by the leopard himself, or by his interlocutor the pard, 
who by contrast has more than a little to say about himself. 
Compare the pard's description in the Entertaining Tale with 
what is said about the leopard (865-868, 883, 886-888): 

"You are no pure-bred; no, you are a cross-breed, 
having both something of the lion in you, 
and something else of me. And you're a beast 
that's born in sin and brought up out of wedlock, 
just like the very name of 'leo-pard' shows." ... 
The leopard answered back to him as follows: 
" ., . for any deeds and merits you exhibit, 
most certainly I share them with you, cheetah, 
as do the cat-pard and our King the Lion." 

All the poet has to say about the leopard is that it is the 
product of miscegenation (as Pliny and Timothy of Gaza 
taught, but as would also have been obvious from the etymology 
of the name), and that it is a great cat. In deriding the pard 
(cheetah) as motley, the Entertaining Tale's leopard has even 
forgotten that it, too, is meant to be spotted. This is confirmed 

63 A. C. Gidel, Etudes sur Ia litterature $recque moderne: Imitations en grec de 
nos romans de chevalerie depuis Ie XII' siecIe (Paris 1866) 329. 



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284 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

abundantly in the only comprehensively illustrated manuscript 
of the Entertaining Tale, Constantinopolitanus Seraglio 35 (1461). 
The leopard there is depicted merely as a scraggly version of the 
lion, with not a spot in sight-in marked contrast to his col­
league the pard, clearly drawn as a cheetah, and to western 
bestiaries, where the leopard is likewise universally spotted. By 
the end of the time allotted to Byzantium, the leopard had come 
to change its spots after all. 

The Cat-Pard 
A few late vernacular Greek works make reference to a feline 

unknown to the Ancients: the cat-pard. The word appears with 
various stems for "cat." The usual mediaeval word for cat, 
Ko.tTj~ « Lat. cattus), is used in the Entertaining Tale (888: 
Kat61tap80~): the leopard there imprudently compares himself 
to the Kat61tap80~ and the lion, but no further description of 
the animal is given. In a set of XV A.D. vernacular oracles, the 
word appears as Kat<Ji1tap80~ (Oracles 1.270a MS. B), based on 
Ka't<JtV "small cat." In the printed edition of the XVII A.D. Cretan 
poem Erotokritos (2.337), it is based on the diminutive of 
Kat<Jiv, Kat<JoVAt, giving Kat<JouA61tap80~. In the Heptanesian 
manuscript of the same work, linguistically closer to standard 
Modern Greek, the word appears as '1at61tap80~-using the 
standard Modern word for "cat" ('1o.to<;), taken from Italian 
(gatto) rather than Latin (cattus). And '1at61tap80<; is the form 
in use in Modem Greek. 

The word is also present in Modem Italian (gattopardo), and 
Spanish (gatopardo). Given the spread through the Mediter­
ranean, and the similarity of the Greek to the Italian word, it is 
likeliest that the form is Italian in origin; but the use of different 
stems in Greek means one cannot rule out an independent native 
coining. 

At first sight, dictionaries present a heterogenous picture of 
what the modern instances of the cat-pard are. In Modern 



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NICK NICHOLAS 285 

Italian, gattopardo is glossed as the American "ocelot" (Felis 
pardalis) or the African "serval" (Felis serval), which lives in sub­
Saharan Africa.64 In Spanish, the word gatopardo exists as well, 
though it is rare; the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy 
characterises it as a loan from Italian gattopardo, and refers the 
reader to onza.65 The onza, however, is normally glossed in 
Spanish dictionaries not as a serval, but as a snow leopard 
(flounce": Panthera uncia) or in the Americas a jaguar (Panthera 
onca)-both of them great cats. 

Superficially, this gives a confusing picture; the meaning of the 
term has diversified prodigiously, and this shows an early 
confusion in how to apply the term. If Modem Spanish and 
Italian use the same word to refer to a range of beasts, the 
Mediaeval Latin cattopardus may well not have had a fixed 
denotation, but referred to any number of cats lesser than the 
lion and leopard. In a world where the known cats were lion, 
panther, pard, and cat, the precedent of leo-pard would have 
led mediaeval observers to characterise any other felines they 
encountered as hybrids of the established types. These pro­
posed hybrids need not have had a fixed relationship to the 
distinct species of felines we identify nowadays. Since the Latin 
K&'tll~ is the only word for" cat" in the Greek of the Entertaining 
Tale, Ka.'t61ta.pDO~ need not have even been taken from Italy; it 
could well have been coined independently by a Greek, although 
its vernacular colouring (and the reticence of Byzantine scholars 
to improve on the ancients) would have prevented it from being 
recorded in Byzantine scientific prose. The definition of "cat­
pard" would likely have shifted several times before it settled in 
modern times; for instance, it is doubtful that the mediaeval 
cattopardus was in fact the sub-Saharan serval. 

Yet it is possible to discern a single cat behind the various 
manifestations of the cat-pard. The same monolingual Spanish 

64Ricciuti (supra n.38) 218. 
65Real Academia Espanola, Diccionario de la lengua espanola (Madrid 1984). 



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286 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

dictionary which defines a gatopardo as an onza states that the 
onza was used in hunting in Persia-which makes it a cheetah 
rather than a snow leopard. The snow leopard66 is hardly to be 
found in Iran, and certainly has never been domesticated; and 
Eaton in fact gives onza as the Spanish word for cheetah (17). 
As we have already seen, ounce was formerly used to refer to 
the cheetah rather than the more recently discovered snow leop­
ard, which would explain "the confusion on the part of Spanish 
lexicographers outside the Royal Academy. 

Likewise, it is unlikely that gattopardo in Mediaeval Italian 
could have denoted a cat found south of the Sahara-a region 
Italians had no access to until well after the Renaissance. The 
cat-pard of Lampedusa's novel (and Visconti's film) II Gatto­
pardo is the animal on the protagonist's family crest; one would 
hardly expect to find the serval on a centuries-old crest, and the 
title is rendered in English as The Leopard and in French as Le 
Guerard liThe Cheetah." It is far likelier that in the Middle Ages, 
as preserved in heraldry, gattopardo referred to either the 
leopard or the cheetah; since pardo or lipardo in Italian would 
have been understood already as a leopard, the cheetah (cer­
tainly well known to late Mediaeval and Renaissance Italians as 
a hunting animal) is a promising candidate meaning for gatto­
pardo in Italian. 

And, to come to the evidence from Greek, "cheetah" is in fact 
the sense of the Modern Greek ya't61tap8o~, used alongside the 
Puristic 1(Uva{Aoupo~ (Neo-Latin cynaelurus). Internal evidence 
from the use of "cat-pard" words in Mediaeval and Early 
Modern Greek do Dot give strong indications, but certainly do 
not contradict this gloss. The only thing the Entertaining Tale of 
Quadrupeds has to say about the cat-pard is that it is com­
parable in might to the lion and the leopard. This would suggest 
a larger rather than a smaller cat. The tiger was distinctive 

66The snow leopard is indigenous to Central Asia (extending "in the west, it 
is said, to Persia"; Ward cited in Turnbull-Kemp 69); Denis 64 disputes 
accounts of the snow leopard by British hunters in Asia Minor. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 287 

enough to name separately, and the Byzantines were certainly 
well aware of the tiger: between V A.D. and XV A.D. there are at 
least 35 references to the tiger in the 2000 Thesaurus Linguage 
Graecae corpus. The snow leopard was still unknown to Euro­
peans (being identified as a distinct species only in 1761); this 
leaves the cheetah as the only likely referent.67 

The vernacular Oracles include the Ka'tcrt1tapooc; in a listing of 
beasts real and legendary. The animals are depicted feasting on 
the carcass of the Empire (They break the poles, / destroy the moat; 
/ uproot the vines / and pluck the grapes. / And full of wine / choke a 
great colt: 1.276-281). The majority of manuscripts at that point 
name ferocious beasts, real and fabulous. 68 But B, the manu­
script actually mentioning the Ka'tcrt7WpoOC; (helpfully supplying 
the names of the peoples the animals symbolise) errs on the side 
of domesticated animals (269-272): 

The dragon Hungarian saw and rushed 
to head down there as well; 
lion the relevant party and basilisk, the basilisk is the future lord 

and cat Wallachian and cat-pard Moldavian too; 
also the massive bear, Russian, Russian 

the cunning fox as well, the Turk 

and then the old man wolf Tatar 

While in real life a cheetah is docile, it would still make a more 
effective addition to a list of monsters than would a lynx. But 
B's catalogue introduces a cat (Ka'ttV, diminutive of KO:'tTlC;) be­
side the cat-pard; the two nations represented, Wallachians 
(BAO:XOC;) and Moldavians (noyoo:VOC;), were regarded as kin­
dred. (Rumania was called Moldo-Wallachia (MoAOo~AaXta) 
under Ottoman rule.) So while a cheetah makes a better mon-

671£ the leopard has in mind a wild cat or lynx, on the other hand, then he 
truly is grievously insulting the lion in the comparison, and the author of the 
Entertaining Tale is displaymg more subtle wit than might at first have been 
apparent. This is not impossible, but not the likeliest account. 

68 A 269-272: lion, pard, basilisk, bear, dragon, fox, wolf. C 269-272: lion, 
dragon, basilisk, pard, bear, fox, wolf. D 269-272b: dragon, bear, fox, wolf, 
lion, pard, 't~T17t(ip01V « ghepardo?), giraffe. 



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288 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

ster, a lynx makes a better kinsman of the cat. As can be seen, 
the confusion about hybrids persists. 

Erotokritos is less ambiguous: the cat-pard is mentioned in the 
description of a fearsome horse-" it had a taillike a cat-pard, 
legs like a buffalo, and eyes like a wild cat" (aypt6Ka'to~). It 
would be comical if a lynx's bobtail were intended here; and 
given the other fabulous wild beasts invoked in the description, 
a lynx or caracal would come as an anti-climax. A wild cat, in 
any case, may be ruled out as a candidate cat-pard, being men­
tioned on its own terms in the next verse. 

The first scholarly editor of the Erotokritos identified the 
Ka't61tap8o~69 with the "panther" (so glossed in German, Pan­
ther, and by the Classical1t&p8aA.t~)-though it is not clear why 
a Cretan, writing under explicit Italian influence, would call a 
panther a cat-pard when Greek and Italian both had perfectly 
acceptable words already in place for leopards. In fact, the 
more recent editor glosses the more plausibly original Ka'tcrou­
A.61tap8o~ as "feline, It. gatto-pardo, Fr. guepard."70 This means 
that the Cretan cat-pard was a cheetah-and, incidentally, that 
despite its modern denotation, the Italian gattopardo could also 
be glossed as II cheetah" (French guepard; the normal Modern 
Italian term for "cheetah" is ghepardo.) It is by consequence the 
cheetah with which Kriaras' dictionary of the mediaeval vernac­
ular71 identifies the Entertaining Tale's Ka't61tap()o~, considering 
it the same word as ya't61tap8o~ in the Heptanesian Erotokritos, 
and glossing both as the modern ya't61tap8o~. 

The Ka't61tap8o~, thus, could be any wild feline other than a 
"pard" and native to North Africa, the Middle East, or 
Southern Europe-for instance, a European wild cat (Felis 

69Vincenzo Cornaro, 'EpCJYr6/(P1T~, ed. S. Xanthoudidis (Herac1ion 1915) 
575. Xanthoudidis ignored the Cretan lCU'tOOUA.07tUPOOC;, and emended the Stan­
dard Modem form yu't67tupooC; to lCu't67tupooC;, in imitation of the Entertaining 
Tale of Quadrupeds. His emendation is rejected by Alexiou. 

70Vincenzo Cornaro, 'EpmT6/(plTO~, ed. S. Alexiou (Athens 1980) 477. 
71 E. Kriaras, ed., AE~I/(6 T% ME(mlmvlI(,r,~ EA.A.17vllCT,~ Ll17/lw8ov~ rpa/lJIa­

'teLa~ (Thessaloruca 1969- ). 



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NICK NICHOLAS 289 

silvestris), a sand cat (Felis margarita), a jungle cat (Felis chaus), a 
caracal (Felis caracal), or a lynx (Felis lynx). In fact, the word 
may have at some stage encompassed all of these. There are 
only two serious proposals on the table, however: Kriaras' and 
Alexiou's identification with the Modern Greek ya:tCmup8o<; 

"cheetah," and Shandrovskaja's tentative dikaja koSka "wild 
cat," in her translation of the Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds.72 

If the word was a loan into Greek from Italian, it almost 
certainly meant a "cheetah." If the word was coined locally, it 
would have denoted something considered a hybrid between the 
pard (cheetah) and the cat; a lynx, for example, or indeed a 
wild cat. But usage in Mediaeval and Early Modern Greek litera­
ture, and the high likelihood of a loan from Italian, points to 
"cheetah." The fact that someone like the author of the Entertain­
ing Tale could use KU't01tap8o<; and 1tap8o<; to refer to distinct 
entities, when it appears both are properly cheetahs, likeliest 
points to confusion on the part of late Byzantines-who, after 
all, are unlikely to have ever set eyes on any great cat. 

Appendix: Pantechnes' Cheetah Hunt 

Constantine Pantechnes' ekphrasis (rhetorical description) of a 
cheetah hunt he attended was written while he was Metropolitan of 
Philippoupolis (modern Plovdiv), some time between 1147 and 1166 
(Miller 31). I give a translation here (Pantechnes pp.49-51) with com­
mentary from the natural history of cheetahs, in order to sub­
stantiate the contention that the Byzantine 1ta.poaAl~ (and 1ta.poo~) 
corresponded to a cheetah rather than a leopard. 

AN EKPHRASIS BY THE METROPOLITAN OF PHILlPPOUPOLlS 

AND MOST ESTIMABLE LORD CONSTANTINE PANTECHNES 

ON A HUNT FOR QUAIL AND HARES 

nv. S. Shandrovskaja, "Vizantijskaja basnja 'Rasskaz 0 Chetveronogikh 
(xiv v.),'" Vizantijskij Vremennik 9 (1956) 211-249. Tsiouni's edition of the 
Entertaining Tale (p.143) has the gloss "a kind of small leopard," which is not 
much to go by. 



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290 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

So much, and suchlike, for hunts by hounds and birds. But 
cheetahs (ltCl.pOaA.Et~) also followed the hunters, with variegated 
spots (ltOllClA.OcrttlCtOt); one differing from another in both size and 
savagery; cheetahs, reckless animals and grim beasts, horrible to 
behold, even more horrible to approach. They were tamed by two 
pard-trainers (ltCl.pOCl.A.CI.'Yco'Yoi), who cared for them after the 
fashion of lions (A.EOVtOlCO~ouVtE~);73 these seemed submissive, and 
they stroked them. The cheetahs turned to them benevolently, and 
as I saw this I exclaimed: "0 how capable Man is of bridling both 
frenzied cheetahs and lions, and of treading on asps and basilisks 
and dragons! How much, then, have these to do with his privilege to 
rule, a privilege granted him who was made 'in His own image'!74 
But, 0 thou mother Eve, and thou deceitful serpent, and Death: how 
have you brought it about that we should be terrified of those beings 
over whom we had been entrusted with dominion?" 

The pard-trainers (ltCl.pOCl.A.CI.'Yco'Yoi) brought them on the gelded 
horses which they rode, binding their necks with leashes, so that 
the beasts should not get out of line when it was inopportune, and 
jump onto what they should not.75 If a hare springs forth from 

7350 rendered by Miller 42: les avaient apprivoisees commes des lions. Pantechnes refers 
below to "lion-tamers," and the term "lion" in the compounds may simply be a generic 
reference to "great cat." 

74 Namely Adam: Genesis 1:27-28. 

75The description Heptner and Sludskii give of coursing in India and China is similar 
(732): "The cheetah was secured to the cart with a leash, the other end of which was 
fastened to its body in the waist region or more rarely to a collar around its neck. Its eyes 
were closed with a bandage. The hunters, on sighting a herd of antelopes, began to 
move around them in circles until the radius was reduced to 100 to 300 m. Upon 
approaching to this distance, the cheetah was then unleashed and the bandage 
removed from its eyes, and it was shown the game. If it was possible to close in on an 
animal the predator immediately fell upon the antelope. Usually, however, the cat first 
concealed itself and then quietly crept up, and only when a very short distance was 
left, or when the antelopes started running away, did the cheetah jump up and throw 
itself into the chase. In catching an antelope the cheetah knocked it to the ground, held 
it by the throat, and began to strangle it. At this time the hunter ran up to it, slit the 
antelope'S throat, collected the blood in a special bucket, and gave it to the predator. 
After drinking the blood, the cheetah was again blindfolded and tied to the cart." Miller 
(34-35) cites a seventeenth-century description of a hunt in Persia by Chardin (De­
scription de la Perse III 398): "For great hunts, they employ wild beasts trained to hunt­
lions, leopards, tigers, panthers, cheetahs (onces). The Persians call these trained beasts 
yourze [yaz, "cheetah"]; they do no harm at all to humans. A rider brings in one on the 
horse's rump, its eyes blindfolded, with a roll of flesh attached to a chain. He stays on 
the track of the beasts being pursued, which he gets as close to as possible. When the 
rider catches sight of one, he un-blindfolds the eyes of the animal, and turns its head 
towards the pursued beast. If it catches sight of it, it 'cries out and dashes forth, and 
throws itself on top of the beast with great leaps (grands sauts), and knocks it down. If it 
misses after a few leaps, it usually gives up and stops. One goes and picks it up, and to 



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NICK NICHOLAS 291 

somewhere, and the pard-trainer (1tapoOl,6~cp) 76 thinks he should 
send the cheetah after it, the other hunters are immediately barred 
from loosing the hounds or the birds; for verily, the cheetahs would 
attack not just the wild beasts, but them as well?7 And the cheetah 
pursues (Kata'tpExet) the hare alone, and reaching it with swift­
turning7B bounds not more than two or three in number,79 he entangles 
(~u~1tooi~El) it;BO and striking it with its front feet,81 lifts it up with 
swift-acting palms;82 and faster than speech the hare ends up under 
the teeth of the beast, within an indivisible moment. Right then the 
beast sticks his jaw in;83 and suspended from the backbone where the 

console it, strokes it, and tells it it was not at fault, but rather it had not been shown the 
beast properly. It is said that it understands this excuse and is satisfied with it." Al­
though Chardin speaks of tamed leopards, tigers, and lions, the Farsi word he gives 
means just "cheetah," and there is no reason to suppose there was extensive taming 
and training of the other felines. 

76Here Pantechnes uses the vernacular stem 7tUPO-, instead of his usual 7tUpou)..-. 

77The cheetah instinctively attacks anything running: "It seems that cheetah find it 
difficult not to pursue an animal that runs away from it as this probably acts as a stimu­
lus that releases the predatory sequence" (Wrogemann 35). 

78The cheetah is able to change direction quickly while running, using its tail as a 
rudder (Eaton 141; Wrogemann 31). 

79Pantechnes and the Entertaining Tale oj Quadrupeds (872) both speak of cheetah 
leaps (QAJ.lUalV, 7tllonJ.lU1:u); Miller 43 translates Pantechnes accordingly with bonds, and 
Chardin's seventeeenth-century description cited above likewise speaks of grands sauts. 
However, the cheetah does not jump onto its prey: '''Pouncing' in most cats is 
homologous to the behavior in the cheetah that involves chasing and catching the 
intended prey animal. Most cats attack over very short distances and often the prey is 
not aware of the cat until it is very close or already upon the prey. Cheetah seldom 
make kills in this manner, but instead must bring down the prey while both are running 
very fast. In order to make a kill the cheetah must first overcome the prey and bring it 
down" (Eaton 131). Pantechnes clearly speaks of his pard as pursuing its prey, which 
identifies it unambiguously as a cheetah rather than any other feline. The leaps spoken 
of should not be identified as pounces, therefore; they should instead be considered a 
description of the strides in the cheetah's gallop. Pournelle (supra n.21: 4) likewise 
speaks of "bounds": "A series of rapid bounds and, if the cheetah is successful, the 
antelope is brought down and held by the throat until the attendant arrives for the 
dispatch." 

80Miller 43 renders the verb as arrete, "stops." 

81The forepaw is the means the cheetah always uses to down its prey (Eaton 131-
132,135-142; Wrogemann 41). Its dew claw is instrumental in this. gashing the side of 
the animal, and hooking larger prey to hold it down (Wrogemann 43-44). Eaton (41) 
similarly concludes that the dew claw is used to hook and drag the prey down, rather 
than knock it down as had been thought. 

82 1 have sighted no reports of a cheetah actually lifting its prey to its jaws. The 
cheetah instead holds the animal down with its forelegs and chest (Eaton 131-132; 
Wrogemann 41-42). 

83 A detailed description of the suffocating bite is given by Eaton 141: "Once the prey 
is fallen the cheetah approaches the head from the dorsal side of the lying prey. The 



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292 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

neck emerges to support the head, the rest of the animal gasps its 
last breath (aonuipov to Aoiafhov) .84 The cheetah, successful in its 
intent, paces on foot haughty and strutting; nor does this diminish 
his savagery in the slightest. 

But once more, it is a marvel to behold the beast, and a wonder to 
comprehend it. For it does not demand to chew up the animal, and 
suck Of its entrails (E'YlCatwv),85 and devour its flesh-mingled 
perchance with the surrounding dirt-until the lion-trainer 
(AEOVtU'Yw'Y6~) speedily dismounts from his horse, places a kind of 
platter underneath, and prepares the cheetah's food for it as if in a 

head and upper neck are rotated towards the cheetah by digging one dew claw into 
the head or upper neck and pulling, while holding the prey down with the other fore­
leg placed over the lying prey's shoulders and lower neck, which prevents the entire 
body from rolling as the head and neck are rotated ... During these movements the 
cheetah lowers its head so that the mouth faces posteriorally. The upper ventral neck of 
the prey is gripped in the mouth. Once the neck grip is achieved, the cheetah uses this 
grip to rotate the neck (and head) towards itself, thus twisting the neck. When the 
ventral neck is rotated laterally the cheetah holds the bite and suffocates the prey." 

8'The cheetah typically kills its prey by strangulation through a bite at the throat, 
rather than the neck-its jaw not strong enough to penetrate the flesh, unlike the great 
cats proper (Eaton 129-133, 143; Wrogemann 41-42). However, most observations of 
cheetah kills involve large animals, such as species of antelope. Its behaviour for small 
game, such as hares, is different: "With the young of large prey and very small game 
species or their young, such as warthogs, the cheetah simply lands on or hits the 
animal's body with one or both of its hind legs as it runs up to and overcomes the animal 
from behind and above or from the side. When the animal falls over, usually rolling, the 
cheetah keeps the prey down by standing on it and / or then very quickly grabs the 
animal by the upper back or neck and carries or drags it to nearby cover where it is then 
killed and eaten. When the prey is dragged off, the cheetah grips it in the throat region 
... Death sometimes came from crushed skulls since the bones are soft in very young 
prey and the brain is easily damaged. A bite directed to the dorsal side of a young wart­
hog's neck was observed, but death resulted from a crushed skull, not from spinal 
damage or blood loss" (Eaton 132). "I think a little caution is warranted when general­
ising on the cause of death of prey animals. With the larger ungulates, such as impala or 
Thomson's gazelle, the bite must be oriented to the throat region. But I do not think that 
this would necessarily apply to the smaller mammals cheetah prey on, such as the hare, 
which is small and has a relatively soft skin. The cheetah has to be extremely quick and 
agile when catching a hare, and if it happens to take it other than by the throat the 
canines may pierce vital internal organs which could cause death. In some cases, too, 
the neck vertebrae may be dislocated, even though the bite is from below and not from 
above, as in the case of a 'neck' bite by other larger predators. Furthermore, cheetah 
have sharp and laterally flattened canine teeth which in fact make for easy penetration 
between the vertebrae" (Wrogemann 42). The process Pantechnes describes, in any 
case, is clearly suffocation, and not a crushed skull. As Munqidh attests (supra n.20: 237), 
a cheetah could even grip one hare with its jaw (by the neck, presumably), while giving 
chase to a second. 

85 Though cheetahs eat viscera (including the heart, kidneys, and liver), they avoid 
the intestines and stomach, to the extent of dragging them aside from the carcass­
though an individual has been reported as eating intestines in "spaghetti like fashion" 
(Wrogemann 64). 



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NICK NICHOLAS 293 

bread-basket, as regally as can be amongst beasts; thereby he readies 
an improvised banquet, fit for a wild beast indeed. So hear then, 
friend, the kind of service, and what sort of banquet the pard-trainer 
(ltapo01c6Ilo~) provides to the dining bea~t. The beast lies, embracing 
the hare to itself with its front legs, chewing at it (EIlJ.1a.0'0'WIlEVOV),86 
and mixing in something like a roar87 with his meal (Kat 'tl 

PPUXTj81lou ltapalll.YVuOV 'tip O''\)O'O'l'tt<p), and looking down, bloody to 
behold (ai~.1a.'t(J)1t6v).88 Then-the cheetah being used to this and 

86The verb is left out in Miller's translation (43). 

87The cheetah does not roar, its hyoid bones permitting only purrs and chirps 
(Wrogemann 7). The author would have expected a roar from a great cat-the cheetah 
being the only great cat which does not-and his disappointment may be reflected in 
the statement "something like a roar." The closest to a description of cheetah vocalisa­
tion after the hunt is mothers' calls to their young: "One female with cubs gave a low 
pitched 'ughh' that had the effect of keeping the cubs in one place while she was gone. 
They remained still until she gave a high-pitched 'chirp' which brought the cubs to kill 
site" (Eaton 133). Heptner and Sludskii (727) add that "an excited cheetah sniffs, grinds 
its teeth, and growls." 

88The verb "chewing at it" might imply the cheetah still has the hare in a strangula­
tion hold, which may last a long time: "Five minutes is common but for some cheetahs 
15-25 minutes was not rare, even with small impala fawns" (Eaton 132). Even chickens 
were dispatched "with bites to the upper neck and head which they held for up to 
several minutes, typical of the suffocating bite used on mammalian prey" (139). Pan­
technes would then be accurate in saying that it is the trainer who actually kills the 
hare by slitting its throat. Since the cheetah strangles its prey, "Blood was seldom seen 
externally on the bodies of prey during or shortly following killing" (132). The adjective 
used to describe the cheetah, al~allJ)n6v "blood-eyed: ' means in Classical Greek 
"bloody to behold, blood-stained" according to LSJ (Eur. Or. 256, Phoen. 870), but could 
also mean "with bloody eyes"; Miller (43) chooses the latter reading (et ales yeux injectes 
de sang). Indeed, the instance in Orestes is translated by E. P. Coleridge in W. J. Oates 
and E. O'Neill Jr., edd., Euripides . The Complete Greek Drama (New York 1938), as "those 
maidens with their bloodshot eyes"-though for the Phoenician Women he uses LSI's 
sense: "That bloody destruction of his [Oedipus'] eyes." U the cheetah is actually bloody 
rather than bloodshot, and this is not just a literary convenience on the part of 
Pantechnes, then the prey has already been dispatched. Pantechnes also speaks of a 
"meal," though it is not clear that the meal has in fact commenced. But the cheetah in 
the wild takes its prey away into the shade to eat it, rather than consume it on the spot 
(Eaton 76--77; Wrogemann 44)-both to recover from the exertion of the chase, and to 
prevent its prey being purloined by other predators. So the cheetah would be inclined 
to eat the hare on the spot. And descriptions of coursing routinely state that the trainer 
is the one who actually kills the prey (e.g. Pournelle [supra n.21] 4: "the antelope is 
brought down and held by the throat until the attendant arrives for the dispatch"). 
The hare is thus probably not dead at this point, as the cheetah is still strangling it, and 
Pantechnes likely means "bloodshot" rather than "blood-stained." The significance of all 
this is why the trainer is so circumspect about letting the cheetah have its fill of the 
hare's flesh. There was a Byzantine taboo against the consumption of flesh killed by 
animals; the taboo was violated often enough, which is why Theodore Balsamon was 
entitled to marvel at the persistence of the error (see above). U the actual killing was 
done by a human, then the choicer parts of the hare could still be eaten without fear of 
mortal sin-especially in the presence of a clergyman like Pantechnes. On the other 
hand, Pantechnes himself explains giving the falcons in the hunt blood to drink as an 



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294 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

accustomed from the foregoing taming-that pard-trainer (1tUPOUAU­
,,/o)'yoc,) and crier (1t01t1tUOtl,c,) sneaks onto his hind legs without a 
sound, and the beast ends up between his legs; he stretches its 
forehead skin, holds on to the top jaw of the beast, and pinches its 
nostrils with his fingers. The beast, not being allowed to breathe 
through its nose, gapes open its jaws;89 and the beast-trainer (Eh)plO­
lCO~Oc,) eagerly snatches the hare from its throat. He slaughters it 
and fills the platter lying beneath with blood; and the beast gobbles 
up what is being emptied out there.90 Then he serves it no small por­
tion of the entrails, and also casts to it those of the limbs which that 
bold and daring man deems should be fed it.91 

The beast afterwards desires more food, and does not stop anyone 
from adding further, but lays hold of the platter (it is made of a 
single piece of wood, and artlessly), and clenches it as though it will 
never let it go unless it has licked up whatever liquid remains 
therein, and wiped up all the bloody moisture with its tongue. But 
the tamer (tt8UOOEUtl]C,) outsmarts the cheetah's gluttony,92 and wan­
ders around it tempting it with steaming meat93 (lCpwticp at~it;ovtt); 

action meant to incite them (E1tl!1aivEoOal) (Miller 49) . Whatever the case, the trainer 
would have to act quickly, before the cheetah absconded with its prize. 

89 After the chase, the cheetah is exhausted; breathing rates have been recorded as . 
ranging from 16 per minute for a male lying in the shade to a maximum of 156 for a male 
following a chase and prolonged kill (Eaton 71). The nostril pinch delivered to the 
cheetah at that very moment could have little other effect. 

90The cheetah usually drinks blood in the wild: "Blood that collects in the body 
cavity [of prey) is lapped up which is a 'useful behaviour in a predator that inhabits 
semi-desert country in which water is often scarce', writes Schaller" (Wrogemann 64). 
The same reward of a cup of blood was given Akbar the Great's cheetahs in sixteenth­
century Hindustan: "A successful kill brought about much applause and jubilation and 
the cheetah was always rewarded with a cup of warm blood from the victim" (11). The 
platterful of blood is also mentioned by Heptner and Sludskii (732); see above. 

91 Part of the training of a cheetah was to get it to eat food in this manner: "In the 
first days after capture, the artimal is 'seasoned', being given no food and little sleep. 
Then the hungry and weakened animal is taught to take food from the hands of the 
'pardusnik' [pard-trainer) tending it, who gives the food in a bucket" (Heptner / 
Sludskii 732). 

92The cheetah, not knowing where its next meal is coming from (hunts are usually 
unfruitful), is gluttonous even after an abundance of meat-let alone a platterful of 
blood from a single hare: "On several occasions an abundance of cut-up horsemeat was 
fed until the cheetahs stopped feeding. After reaching what was considered satiation, a 
whole carcass of a horse or other ungulate was introduced. Immediately the cheetahs 
fed ravenously, and did not stop until all was consumed, except for the skin, larger 
bones, skull, stomach, and intestines" (Eaton 135-136). 

93It is tempting to think the trainer has cooked meat for the purpose, but it is likelier 
that this is raw meat. As cheetahs do not eat carrion (Wrogemann 65), the meat would 
have had to be reasonably fresh. 



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NICK NICHOLAS 295 

and the beast gapes with hope, and is completely left hanging, 
staring at what the lion-trainer is up to. So the beast neglects the 
platter-which slips from its palm as it slackens and loosens, too, its 
hands, for the sake of what is wandering around. So the pard-trainer 
(7tUpouAuyroy6<;) kicks and strikes the platter aside with his foot, 
and flings it far away. And then the beast, deceived, grows savage 
seeking to attack its deceiver-who offers it the lion hide or skin he 
is girded with. And the beast scratches with its palms and teeth, its 
weapons of aggression, underneath the skin-wounds (alluxa<;), and 
does savage battle with it to no effect.94 

Then it is recaptured in some ingenious manner, and is dragged 
along with a leash bound to its collar; afterwards-trained for this 
too, I believe-it springs up on the pard-trainer's (7tUpOUAUYroyou) 
command, and follows him and rides on the same horse, on the 
hindquarters. 95 It is frightened in a way by his calls and his shouts; 
so it whines its way (7tpocrKvui;a"tUl) into his arms, gets close up and 
licks him, just in case a droplet or bubble of blood, foamed up from the 
slaughter of the prey, has splashed onto the hide. 

But we were aware that the magnate for whose sake we had be­
come spectators of all this was still lovingly obsessed with hunting; 
we decided it was not fitting that we should further accompany him, 
and neglect thereby our own duties. So we realised that we should 

94 "For example, how are we to accept that a panther, however small-a cheetah 
(guepard) or an ounce (once), could hold on to a horse without tearing at its back or 
flanks with its nails? The lion hide explains everything. It is known that this animal's 
hide, when dried, is as hard as iron" (Miller 44). 

95"The 15th century saw the cheetah indeed treated as a royal subject. Marie of 
Burgundy, who had her own small zoo, wanted a cheetah. And so, in fitting style, a 
cheetah crossed Mt Cenia in mid-winter on the rump of a horse, muffled up in a cape" 
(Wrogemann 11). Transportation in this manner was normal: "In India, Iran, Mongolia, 
the Middle Asian republics, Kazakhstan, Africa, and Europe, cheetahs were also trans­
ported on horseback by placing them in a special, rectilinear, flat seat situated behind 
the saddle" (Heptner/Sludskii 732) The orientalist de Longperier, asked by Miller, 
confirmed that horseback depictions of cheetahs were commonplace in Middle Eastern 
art. He also believed this to have been a Turkic innovation: "Since we have seen that 
the Byzantines used animals not originally from their territory, it is quite plaUSible to 
believe that the practice arrived there from more easterly countries, and especially 
Mesopotamia. I will add that since 1844-being on the lookout prompted by the goblet 
of Malek-el-Aschraf [depicting cheetahs on horseback] and the Latin of Emperor 
Frederick [speaking of cheetahs qui sciant equitare "who know how to ride horses"]-I 
have determined that the wild beasts borne on horseback are not to be seen in the 
ancient monuments of either Assyria or Persia. Nothing of the sort is to be seen on the 
stone carvings of the Sassanids. It seems that from the twelfth or thirteenth century on 
the Turkomans or Arabs of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor developed the habit of using 
birds of prey and feline quadrupeds for their hunts" (Miller 39). 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

296 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

remember to go home. Thus what we saw and marvelled at in the 
hunt, friend, we have also cast here towards your own ears. 

Editions 
Achilleid L D. C. Hesseling, L'Achilleide byzantine, Verhandelingen der 

Koninklijke Akademie von Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, Afdeeling Letter­
kunde N.S. XIX.3 (Amsterdam 1919) 

Achilleid N O. L. Smith, The Byzantine Achilleid: The Naples Version (Vienna 

1999) 
Achilleid 0 O. L. Smith, The Oxford Version of the Achilleid (Copenhagen 

1990) 
Acts of Philip M. Bonnet, Acta apost%rum (Leipzig 1903) II.2 1-98 

Alexander of Aphrodisias Problemata H. Usener, "Alexandri Aphrodisiensis 
quae feruntur problematorum tiber iii et iiii," Programm Gymnasium Joachim­
stall (1859) 1-37 

Alexander Romance a W. Kroll, Historia Alexandri Magni I (Berlin 1926) 
Alexander Romance ~ (Paris +Messina) L. Bergson, Der griechische Alexander­

roman. Rezension f3 (Stockholm 1965) 205-207 
Alexander Romance ~ (Synoptic) L. Bergson, Der griechische Alexanderroman. 

Rezension f3 (Stockholm 1965) 1-192 

Alexander Romance E and F A. Lolos and V. L. Konstantinopoulos, edd., 
Pseudo-Kallisthenes: Zwei mittelgriechische Prosa-Fassungen des Alexander­
romans (K6nigstein 1983) 

Alexander Romance E J. Trumpf, Anonymi Byzantini vita Alexandri regis 
Macedonum (Stuttgart 1974) 

Alexander Romance Cl> G. Veloudis, 'R cI>vAAaoa mu Mt:yaU!;avTpov: LlI17}'11-
cn~ i\Ac:!;avopov TOU Ma/(c:06vo~ (Athens 1977) 

Alexander Romance V K. Mitsakis, Der byzantinische Alexanderroman nach 
dem Codex Vindob. Theol. Gr. 244 (Munich 1967) 

Apollonius of Tyana Apotelesmata F. Nau, "Apotelesmata," Patrologia 
Syriaca II (1907) 1372-1391 

Apollonius of Tyana De horis diei et noctis F. Boll, "Codices Germanici," in 
CCAG VII (Brussels 1908) 175-181 

Aristophanes of Byzantium S. P. Lambros, Excerptorum Constantini de natura 
animalium libri duo (Berlin 1885) 

Astrologica [Tl cnwa\vEl Eleaa'tov 'trov ~<p8twV lea\. 'trov aa'tEpwv Ka\. 'ttVWV 
oEa7t6~ouall A. Ludwich, Maximi et Ammonis carminum de actionum 
auspiciis reliquiae (Leipzig 1877) 119-122 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

NICK NICHOLAS 297 

Athanasius Vita Antonii Migne, PG 26.835-976b 
Cantacuzene L. Schopen, Ioannis Cantacuzeni eximperatoris historiarum libri 

iv (Bonn 1835) 
Chronicle of the Tocco G. Schiro, Cronaca dei Tocco di Cefalonia (Rome 1975) 
Digenes A A. Miliarakis, Baa{A.elO~ L1lYevi]~ 'AICp{ra~ ' 'Enonoda Bv(avnvi] 

rii~ JOry, £ICarovraerTJP{oo~ ICara ro £v "A VOpf[1 avevpdHv X£lpoypaqJov 
(Athens 1881) 

Digenes E and G E. M. Jeffreys, Digenes Akrites (Oxford 1997) 1-375 
Digenes P D. Paschalis, "Oi. oeKu MYOl 'tou t.tYEVOU~ 'AKpl't01) ," AaoypaqJ{a 9 

(1926) 305-440 
Digenes Z E. Trapp, Digenes Akrites: Synoptische Ausgabe der iiltesten Ver­

sionen (Vienna 1971) 
Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds V. Tsiouni, llaloloqJpaafO~ L11~YTJal~ rwv 

Zwwv rwv Terpano8wv: Critical Edition (Munich 1975 [1972]) 
Erotokritos Vincenzo Cornaro, 'EpwrolCplfO~, ed. S. Alexiou (Athens 1980) 
Fair Tale of the Donkey, the Wolf and the Fox C. Pochert, Die Reimbildung in 

der Spiit- und Postbyzantinischen Volksliteratur (Cologne 1991) 
Falieros Words of Counsel W. F. Bakker and A. F. van Gemert, The AOyOI L11-

DaICrllCoi of Marinos Phalieros (Leiden 1977) 
Galen De atra bile W. de Boer, Galeni de atra bile libellus (Leipzig 1937) 
George Monachus, Continuator I. Bekker, Theophanes Continuatus, Ioannes Ca­

meniata, Symeon Magister, Georgius Monachus (Bonn 1838) 763-924 
Ignatius P. T. Camelot, Ignace d'Antioche. Polycarpe de Smyrne. Lettres. Mar­

tyre de Polycarpe (Paris 1969) 56-154. Translation: http://listserv. 
american.edu/ catholic/ church/ fathers/ignatius/ ign-rom.txt (Paul Halsall) 

Oracles E. Trapp, "Vulgarorakel aus Wiener Handschriften," in J. Koder and 
E. Trapp, edd., 'AICpoBlvla sodalium Seminarii Byzanini Vindobonensis (Vien­
na 1964) 83-120 

Pantechnes E. Miller, "Description d'une chasse a l'once par un ecrivain 
byzantin du xue siecle de notre ere," Annuaire de l'Association pour l'en­
couragement des etudes grecques 6 (1872) 28-52 

Psellus Poemata L. G. Westerink, Michaelis Pselli Poemata (Stuttgart/Leipzig 
1992) 

Pseudo-Codinus J. Verpeaux, Pseudo-Kodinos. Traite des offices (Paris 1966) 
Pseudo-Georgillas S. Zoras, Bv(avnv~ llolTJary (Athens 1956) 177-197 
Pseudo-Sphrantzes V. Grecu, Georgios Sphrantzes Memorii 1401-1477 

(Bucharest 1966) 
Studites Letters G. Fatouros, Theodori Studitae Epistulae (Berlin 1992) 



Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

298 A CONUNDRUM OF CATS 

Theognostus J. Cramer, Anecdota Graeca e codicis manuscriptis bibliothecarum 
Oxoniensium (Oxford 1835) II 1-165 

Timothy of Gaza M. Haupt, "Excerpta ex Timothei Gazaei libris de ani-
malibus," Hermes 3 (1869) 1-30, 174 

Trivolis Tagiapiera J.lrmscher, Tpl{3WA.ryr;, 'Ja/(w{3or;' nOtTjJ!am (Berlin 1956) 

33-61 
Vita of the Esteemed Donkey Pochert (supra: Fair Tale)96 

June, 2001 Thesaurus Linguae Graecae 
University of California, Irvine 
Irvine, California 92697-5550 
n.nicholas@linguistics.unimelb.edu.au 

96I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Dr Antonia Giannouli (Rethym­
non), whose help in the preparation of this paper was inestimable, and Prof. 
George Baloglou (SUNY-Oswego), my collaborator on the translation of the 
Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds, and a great cat-lover. I also thank Prof. Alice­
Mary Talbot (Dumbarton Oaks) and Dr Diana Wright (New York University) 
for their comments.