Hircocervus
Origins
File:Hircocervus Naturalis historiae Plinius.jpg by Pliny the Elder.]]
In Plato's Republic, Socrates speaks of his own image-making as similar to that of painters who paint goat-stags, combining the features of different things together (488a).Plato Republic. 488a.
In his work De Interpretatione,Ch. 1, 16a16. Aristotle utilized the idea of a fabulous goat-stag to express the philosophical concept of something that is describable even though it does not really exist.{{cite web|url= http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-hir1.htm|author=Quinion, Michael|title= Hircocervus|year=2009|publisher=World Wide Words|accessdate=February 8, 2009}} His Greek "τραγέλαφος" was rendered into Latin "hircocervus" by Boethius.{{Cite web |title=ARISTOTELES: DE INTERPRETATIONE |url=http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Aristotle/perihermenias/boethius |access-date=2023-06-12 |website=www.logicmuseum.com}}
Aristotle returned to this in the Posterior AnalyticsBook 2 ch. 7 92a 7. to argue that, though the word is definable, there can be no definition of the species as it has no members. He also uses the tragelaphos together with the Sphinx in the PhysicsBook 4 ch. 1 208a 30. to illustrate the point that a non-existent creature has no spatial location. On the other hand, Diodorus Siculus treats the tragelaphos as an existing animal, and there are references in Greek literature to other hybrid creatures such as the hippelaphos (horse-stag).Bibliotheca Historica p. 322.
The word hircocervus first appears in the English language in a medieval manuscript dating from 1398 (now at the Bodleian Library).
In culture
File:Winchester Trusty Servant 2.jpg
Rabbinic literature refers to an animal called a koy which is halfway between domesticated and wild species of quadruped, and debates how far it is subject to the laws governing each category.Mishnah Bikkurim 2.8-11. Scholars are divided on whether the rabbis believed the koy to be a real creatureShaye J. D. Cohen, “Sabbath Law and Mishnah Shabbat in Origen De Principiis”, Jewish Studies Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 2, Special Issue: Jews in Ottoman Lands II (2010), pp. 160-189. or an imaginary example used for a hypothetical discussion.Judith Romney Wegner “Tragelaphos Revisited: the Anomaly of Woman in the Mishnah” Judaism 37.2 160-172.
Martin Luther uses the term "tragelaphus" in his Theses Against the Antinomians (1540, Sixth Set) to describe "a law that does not condemn". Luther is stating that one can imagine a law from God that only instructs or teaches without threatening and condemning human sin. However, Luther claims that such a law, often sought by theologians throughout Christian history, does not actually exist.Luther, Martin. Weimar Ausgabe. 39I:358.26-27; Luther, Martin. Solus Decalogus Est Aeternus: Martin Luther's Complete Antinomian Theses and Disputations. Ed. and trans. Holger Sonntag. Latin and English ed. (Minneapolis: Lutheran Press, 2008): 375.
The Trusty Servant, depicted in a painting at Winchester College, was described as a Hircocervus by Arthur Cleveland Coxe,{{Cite book |last=Coxe |first=Arthur Cleveland |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QA0HAAAAQAAJ |title=Impressions of England; or, Sketches of English Scenery and Society |date=1874 |publisher=J. B. Lippincott |language=en}} though this is not strictly accurate as the Trusty Servant contains no part of a goat but rather parts of a man, a hog and a donkey.
Umberto Eco refers to a hircocervus in his novel The Island of the Day Before, as does Italo Calvino in Invisible Cities.Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. 1997, Vintage: London. p. 144
Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci uses the term "hircocervus" to describe parliamentary political alliances between socialist parties and parties sympathetic to the state and capitalism. The dual party of socialists and capitalists "thus becomes a hircocervus, a historical monster devoid of will or particular aims, concerned only with its possession of the state."{{cite book |last1=Gramsci |first1=Antonio |authorlink1=Antonio Gramsci |editor1-last=Forgacs |editor1-first=David |title=The Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings, 1916-1935 |date=2000 |publisher=New York University Press |location=New York |isbn=9780814727010 |page=43 |url=http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/gramsci-reader.pdf |accessdate=13 December 2018 |chapter=Class Intransigence and Italian History}}
References
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Category:Medieval European legendary creatures