These examples illustrate the two general characteristics of the accounts in the _Physiologus_: they have the same legendary quality whether the animal is real or fabulous; the subjects are chosen, and the accounts are shaped, by doctrinal considerations. Indeed, from the first the _Physiologus_ seems to have been a selection of those animal stories which lent themselves most readily to theological application. It would be pointless to distinguish between the actual and fabulous in such a book; nor did the minds of the readers make any such distinction. For Ambrose or Augustine the importance of the story lay in its doctrinal significance, or moral, which was quite careless of the truth of facts of which it was the “point.” The facts were told as introductory argument. The interest of the Fathers in physics and natural history bears analogy to their interest in history and biography. Looking back to classical times, one finds that historians were led by other motives than the mere endeavour to ascertain and state the facts. The Homeric Epos was the literary forerunner of the history which Herodotus wrote of the Persian Wars; and the latter often was less interested in the closeness of his facts than in their aptness and rhetorical probability. Doubtless he followed legends when telling how Greek and Persian spoke or acted. But had not legend already sifted the chaff of irrelevancy from the story, leaving the grain of convincing fitness, which is also rhetorical probability? Likewise, Thucydides, in composing the _History of the Peloponnesian War_, that masterpiece of reasoned statement, was not over-anxious as to accuracy of actual word and fact reported. He carefully inquired regarding the events, in some of which he had been an actor. Often he knew or ascertained what the chief speakers said in those dramatic situations which kept arising in this war of neighbours. Yet, instead of reporting actual words, he gives the sentiments which, according to the laws of rhetorical probability, they must have uttered. So he presents the psychology and turning-point of the matter. This was true historical rhetoric; the historian’s art of setting forth a situation veritably, by presenting its intrinsic necessities. Xenophon’s _Cyropaedia_ went a step farther; it was a historical romance, which neither followed fact nor proceeded according to the necessities of the actual situation. But it did proceed according to moral proprieties, and so was edifying and plausible.