Note 1481 — Chapter XII · AELIAN, SOLINUS AND HORAPOLLO

Ibid., 46-7. Mommsen could give no source for these statements concerning Sardinia, and they do not appear to be in Pliny. But it is from a footnote in the English translation of the Natural History by Bostock and Riley (II, 208, citing Dalechamps, and Lemaire, III, 201) that I learn that the laughter which Pliny (NH, VII, 52) speaks of as a premonitory sign of death in cases of madness, “is not the indication of mirth, but what has been termed the risus Sardonicus, the ‘Sardonic laugh,’ produced by a convulsive action of the muscles of the face.” This form of death may be what Solinus has in mind. Agricola in his work on metallurgy and mines still believes in the poisonous ants of Sardinia; De re metallica, VI, near close, pp. 216-7, in Hoover’s translation, 1912.