apart from some serpents, walk on four feet, unless for all that he had wanted
226 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis not usually applied to serpents.19 Again, the word "beasts" is commonly applied to lions and panthers and tigers and wolves and foxes, to dogs too and even monkeys and others of that sort, while the name "cattle" is more usually and suit ably attributed to those animals which human beings have turned to their own use, whether for helping them with work, like oxen and horses and any other such, or with wool and food, like sheep and pigs.
17. So what then are the quadrupeds? Because although all these animals, apart from some serpents, walk on four feet, unless for all that he had wanted some to be signified properly by this name, he would surely not have also mentioned quadrupeds here—though he does leave the word out in his repeti tion. Or are deer perhaps and antelopes and wild asses and boars properly called quadrupeds here, because neither can they be included among beasts, where there are lions, nor have they been domesticated by human beings, though they are like those other cattle—as if these animals were left over, and this general name, common to them and many others because of the number of their feet, was applied to them nonetheless with a special significance?
Or because he said according to kind three times, is he inviting us to consider three kinds? First according to kind quadrupeds and reptiles, where l reckon he indicates what kind ofquadrupeds he means, namely those that are in the class of reptiles, like lizards and geckos and anything else of that sort. And the reason, perhaps, he did not repeat the word "quadrupeds" in the repetition is that they were already included under the word "reptiles." So he did not simply say "reptiles" there, but he added, all reptiles of the earth; of the earth, because there are also the ones of the water, and all, so as to understand here those that also move on four feet, which had properly been signified above by the name of "quadrupeds."
Secondly beasts, about which he says again according to kind—any animal, apart from serpents, that savages its prey with claws and teeth. While as for cattle, about which for the third time he says according to kind, they are those that do not tear others with either kind of brute force, but either with horns, or not even this.
I said earlier on, you see, that one can easily tell how widely the name "quad rupeds" ranges by counting the feet, while the name "cattle" or "beasts" can
19. When it comes to the cursing of the serpent in Gn 3:14, almost all English versions, from the Authorized Version on, have it cursed "beyond all cattle." 1n this they follow not only the Hebrew, but also the Greek Septuagint, which has the word ktena. Now while the Latin Vulgate studiously avoids the word "cattle" here, and has "among all animals," animantia, the text Augustine was using had ab omnibus pecoribus (Book X1. 1 , 1 below): but when he comes to discuss this part of the passage in detail, 36, 49 of the same book, he says nothing about the use of this word, and simply refers the reader for his discussion of the serpent's punishment to the two books he wrote on Genesis against the Manichees, in which he says nothing on this particular point either. 1 think it probable that he understood the words to mean "by all cattle" rather than "from" in the sense of "beyond all cattle."