The tortoise and the snail: a lexical shellgame.(Critical essay)

In his second fable, the poet Avianus (c. AD 400) tells the story of a tortoise (testudo) which tired of its slowness and asked an eagle to carry it into the air in return for some precious sea-shells: (1)

 
   Pennatis avibus quondam testudo locuta est: si quis eam volucrum 
   constituisset humi, protinus a rubris conchas proferret arenis, 
   Quis pretium nitido cortice baca daret. Indignum sibimet, tardo 
   quod sedula gressu Nil ageret toto perficeretque die. (2) 

The eagle dropped it (deliberately, according to its source Babrius and a collateral version) and it was killed. (3) About seven hundred years later, in his Dialogus super auctores, a review of the major authors of the educational curriculum, Conrad of Hirsau (s. xii in.) summarizes the first few of the fables, but for the tortoise he substitutes a snail (limax): (4)

 
   Secundo vero falsas human cordis irridens insanias limacem posuit, 
   qui tardiori natura sua pertesus precio suo sublimiora pent, sed 
   mox uoti penituit, quia ruina presumptionem recompensauit. (5) 

Another retelling of the story is given in the early thirteenth century by Alexander Neckam in his Novus Avianus, which retells six stories. (6) In Fable II, although he uses the word testudo, it is clear that Neckam means a snail:

 
   Testudo cupiens ferri per inane, dolorem 
      Exponit, uerbis talibus, orsa suum: 
   'Inuidisse mihi naturam sencio: uires 
      Desunt; nulla fuge spes datur. Ha, quid agam? 
   Si lateo, latebras manifestat semita squalens; 
      Si moueor, motus segnior esse nequit. 
   Pro clipeo testam fragilem gero; lumina desunt; 
      Tucior haut possum cornibus esse meis. (7) 

That is, its hiding place is betrayed by the slimy mucous trail that it leaves; it has a frail shell; it has no eyes; and its horns are useless for defence. (Neckam could not have known that the snail's longer horns do in fact carry its eyes.)