Again, Many professed enquirers have rejected it; _Strabo_ an exact and judicious Geographer, hath largely condemned it as a fabulous story, _Julius Scaliger_ a diligent enquirer, accounts thereof, but as a Poetical fiction; _Ulysses Aldrovandus_ a most exact Zoographer in an express discourse hereon, concludes the story fabulous, and a Poetical account of _Homer_; and the same was formerly conceived by _Eustathius_, his excellent Commentator. _Albertus Magnus_ a man ofttimes too credulous, herein was more then dubious; for he affirmeth, if any such dwarfs were ever extant, they were surely some kind of _Apes_: which is a conceit allowed by _Cardan_, and not esteemed improbable by many others. There are I confess two testimonies, which from their authority admit of consideration. The first of _Aristotle_[SN: _Hist. animal. lib. 3._], whose words are these, ἐστὶ dὲ ὁ τόπος, etc. That is, _Hic locus est quem incolunt Pygmæi, non enim id fabula est, sed pusillum genus ut aiunt._ Wherein indeed _Aristotle_ plaies the _Aristotle_, that is, the wary and evading assertor; For though with _non est fabula_, he seems at first to confirm it, yet at the last he claps in _Sciunt aiunt_, and shakes the belief he put before upon it. And therefore I observe _Scaliger_ hath not translated the first; perhaps supposing it surreptitious or unworthy so great an assertor. And truly for those books of animals, or work of eight hundred talents, as _Athenæus_ terms it, although ever to be admired, as containing most excellent truths; yet are many things therein delivered upon relation, and some repugnant unto the history of our senses; as we are able to make out in some, and _Scaliger_ hath observed in many more, as he hath freely declared in his Comment upon that piece. The second testimony is deduced from holy Scripture; [SN: Ezek. 27. 12.] thus rendered in the vulgar translation, _Sed et Pygmæi qui erant in turribus tuis, pharetras suas suspenderunt in muris tuis per gyrum_: from whence notwithstanding we cannot infer this assertion, for first the Translators accord not, and the Hebrew word _Gammadim_ is very variously rendered. Though _Aquila_, _Vetablus_ and _Lyra_ will have it _Pygmæi_, yet in the Septuagint, it is no more then Watchmen; and so in the _Arabick_ and high _Dutch_. In the _Chalde_, _Cappadocians_, in _Symmachus_, _Medes_, and in the _French_, those of _Gamad_. _Theodotian_ of old, and _Tremellius_ of late, have retained the Textuary word; and so have the _Italian_, Low _Dutch_ and _English_ Translators, that is, the Men of _Arvad_ were upon thy walls round about, and the _Gammadims_ were in thy Towers.