The fifth century ВС Greek historian
and personal physician to Persian Kings, Cresias is said to
have discovered all the wonders of his time. And so, he was the first to
tell of the amazing beast called the unicorn: it could be found in Asia
and was a white, donkey-like horse with a red head, blue eyes and a large
horn. According to Cresias, the horn, if scraped down and ground to a
powder, was an antidote to poison and relieved muscle cramps. Although
malicious gossip had it that Ctesias was a drinker and a pathological
liar, his tale of the unicorn lived on. Physiologus, an anonymous writer
who invested all sorts of animals with Christian symbolism, took up the
tale, associating the unicorn with Christ. Conceived by a virgin, the Son
of God had become a "horn of healing" as an antidote to all the world's
ills. In the Middle Ages, when poison had become a popular instrument to
settle political disputes, many rulers were anxious to protect themselves
from assassination through the horn of the unicorn. By the sixteenth
century it was considered more than an antidote to poison and an
aphrodisiac; it was also "serviceable and wholesome as a remedy for
epilepsy, pestilential fever, rabies and parasitic worms".
But how is one to catch a unicorn? Physiologus himself
had remarked that the marvellous beast, which loved solitude and shunned
humans, was "possessed of high courage". He stated further: "The hunter
cannot approach it because it is so powerful." The famous legend which
told of placing a virgin in the path of a unicorn was still known. And
although artists had been dealing with the subject matter for centuries,
few success stories had been recorded. All that was known was that a
unicorn could not be deceived by an "unvirtuous" virgin. If the unicorn
were tricked in such a way, instead of placing its head in her lap it
would ram its horn into her side.
Capturing a unicorn was not a simple undertaking.
Considering this, the number of cornua unicornuum (unicorn horns)
in the treasuries and curiosity cabinets of Renaissance princes is
astonishing. Upon closer inspection, these "horns", which can be up to
three metres long, transpire to be the tusks of male narwhals. It is for
this reason that the narwhal is also known as the "unicorn whale".
