Note 335 — BOOK XII
Reading edition
This animal is of literary origin and illustrates the danger of a literary science. For some reason the Septuagint translators translated the Hebrew word for lion in Job 4:11 by the word μυρμηκολέων. The commentators later on, in their efforts to explain the term, evolved a new animal, a compound of ant and lion. See Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus, p. 21, and art. “Physiologus” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed.