The Virtues of the Female in Aelian’s De natura animalium

In De natura animalium, Aelian describes the animal world in a manner that succumbs to the tendency to anthropomorphize that is rooted in the human mind – a phenomenon currently widely discussed in ethological and cognitive research. The author observes a female animal seeing in her the features of a woman. However, Aelian’s understanding is not superficial. At the same time, he tries to penetrate the perceptual environment of the male of a particular species and look at the female through his eyes. In some cases, the male animal analyzes the behaviour of a female, e.g., his female owner. In Aelian’s work, natural observations overlap with the author’s moral reflections (personal and as a product of his era) creating a set of virtues that could be assigned to the female sex. In the approach proposed by Aelian, these virtues are not always stereotypical, because apart from female virtues that are obvious in ancient culture, there are also less obvious ones: physical strength and courage, independence, speed in action, activity, as well as beauty that is a product of splendour. In De natura animalium, the traditional catalogue positive features attributed to the female sex seen through the prism of natural observations is modified.