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 [1] Here Lucian gives a very fair mockery of descriptions of naval engagements such as that in Thucydides at Naupactus 2.83-92 or the sea-fight in the harbor of Sicily 7.70-71.
-[2] Huge captive squids | Aelian, //Varia Historia//, Chapter 1, described the habits of the polypus (squid) and its mode of lying in wait for and catching its prey: “Of the Polypus. The Polypusses are so ravenous that they devour all they light on; so that many times they abstain not even from one another. The lesser taken by the greater, and falling into his stronger nets, (which are usually called the hairs or grasps of the Fish) becometh his prey. They also betray Fishes in this manner; lurking under the Rocks they change themselves to their color, and seem to be all one with the Rock itself. When therefore the Fishes swim to the Rocks, and so to the Polypus, they entangle them in their nets, or grasps.”(( A A A A A A A Aelian, Claudius, and Thomas Stanley. //Claudius Ælianus His Various History//. London: Printed for Thomas Dring, 1665. Print.
+[2] Huge captive squids | Aelian, //Varia Historia//, Chapter 1, described the habits of the polypus (squid) and its mode of lying in wait for and catching its prey: “Of the Polypus. The Polypusses are so ravenous that they devour all they light on; so that many times they abstain not even from one another. The lesser taken by the greater, and falling into his stronger nets, (which are usually called the hairs or grasps of the Fish) becometh his prey. They also betray Fishes in this manner; lurking under the Rocks they change themselves to their color, and seem to be all one with the Rock itself. When therefore the Fishes swim to the Rocks, and so to the Polypus, they entangle them in their nets, or grasps.”((Aelian, Claudius, and Thomas Stanley. //Claudius Ælianus His Various History//. London: Printed for Thomas Dring, 1665. Print.
 )) Pliny, //Natural History// 9.29, mentions an enormous one with feelers thirty feet long, which is doubtless and exaggeration of fact as it appears from the actual size of an octopus.(( **Pliny, , Philemon Holland, and Adam Islip.**//**The Historie of the World: Commonly Called the Natural Historie of C. Plinius Secundus**//**. London: Printed by Adam Islip, 1601. Print.** **Spelling modernized.:** Of Polypus or Pourcontrels, there be sundry kinds. They that keep near to the shore are bigger than those that haunt the deep. All of them help themselves with their fins and arms, like as we do with feet and hands: as for their tail, which is sharp and two-forked, it serves them in the act of generation. These Pourcontrels have a pipe in their back, by the help whereof they swim all over the seas; and if they can shift, one while to the right side, and another while to the left. They swim awry or side-long with their head above, which is very hard and as it were puffed up, so long as they be alive. Moreover, they have certain hollow concavities dispersed within their claws or arms like to ventoses or cupping glasses, whereby they will stick too, and cleave fast, as it were by sucking, to anything; which they clasp and hold so fast (lying upward with their bellies) that it cannot be plucked from them. They never settle so low as the bottom of the water: and the greater they be, the less strong they are to clasp or hold anything. Of all soft fishes, they only go out of the water to dry land, especially into some rough place; for they cannot abide those that are plain and even. They live upon shell-fishes, and with their hairs or strings that they have, they will twine about their shells and crack them in pieces: and therefore a man may know where they lie and make their abode, by a number of shells that lie before their nest. And albeit otherwise it be a very brutish and senseless creature, so foolish withal, that it will swim and come to a man’s hand; yet it seems after a sort to be witty and wise, and keeping of house and maintaining a family: for all that they can take, they carry home to their nest. When they have eaten the meat of the fishes, they throw the empty shells out of dores, and lie as it were in ambuscade behind, to watch and catch fishes that swim thither. They change their color eftsoones, and resemble the place where they be, and especially when they be afraid. That they gnaw and eat their own claws and arms, is a mere untruth; for they be the Congress that doe them that shrewd turn: but true it is, that they will grow again, like as the tail of snakes, adders, and lizards. But among the greatest wonders of Nature, is that fish, which of some is called Nautilos, of others Pompilos. This fish, for to come aloft above the water, turns upon his back, and raises or heaves himself up by little and little: and to the end he might swim with more ease, as disburdened of a sink, he discharges all the water within him at a pipe. After this, turning up his two foremost claws or arms, he displayed and stretched out between them, a membrane or skin of a wonderful thinness: this serves him instead of a sailed in the air above water: with the rest of his arms or claws, he rows and labors under water; and with his tail in the midst, he directs his course, and steers as it were with an helm. Thus holds he on and makes way in the sea, with a faire show of a foist or galley under sail. Now if he be afraid of anything in the way, he makes no more adoe but draws in water to balance his body, and so plunges himself down and sinks to the bottom.
 )) See endnote for detail.