m of the deep; wolves he forces out of the woods,
bears out of the rocks, foxes out of their holes, and serpents out of the
ground, and all for the gut.

In short, he is so unruly, that in his rage he devours all men and beasts;
as was seen among the Vascons, when Q. Metellus besieged them in the
Sertorian wars, among the Saguntines besieged by Hannibal; among the Jews
besieged by the Romans, and six hundred more; and all for the gut. When
his regent Penia takes a progress, wherever she moves all senates are shut
up, all statutes repealed, all orders and proclamations vain; she knows,
obeys, and has no law. All shun her, in every place choosing rather to
expose themselves to shipwreck at sea, and venture through fire, rocks,
caves, and precipices, than be seized by that most dreadful tormentor.

Chapter 4.LVIII.

How, at the court of the master of ingenuity, Pantagruel detested the
Engastrimythes and the Gastrolaters.

At the court of that great master of ingenuity, Pantagruel observed two
sorts of troublesome and too officious apparitors, whom he very much
detested. The first were called Engastrimythes; the others, Gastrolaters.

The first pretended to be descended of the ancient race of Eurycles, and
for this brought the authority of Aristophanes in his comedy called the
Wasps; whence of old they were called Euryclians, as Plato writes, and
Plutarch in his book of the Cessation of Oracles. In the holy decrees, 26,
qu. 3, they are styled Ventriloqui; and the same name is given them in
Ionian by Hippocrates, in his fifth book of Epid., as men who speak from
the belly. Sophocles calls them Sternomantes. These were soothsayers,
enchanters, cheats, who gulled the mob, and seemed not to speak and give
answers from the mouth, but from the belly.

Such a one, about the year of our Lord 1513, was Jacoba Rodogina, an
Italian woman of mean extract; from whose belly we, as well as an infinite
number of others at Ferrara and elsewhere, have often heard the voice of
the evil spirit speak, low, feeble, and small, indeed, but yet very
distinct, articulate, and intelligible, when she was sent for out of
curiosity by the lords and princes of the Cisalpine Gaul. To remove all
manner of doubt, and be assured that this was not a trick, they used to
have her stripped stark naked, and caused her mouth and nose to be stopped.
This evil spirit would be called Curled-pate, or Cincinnatulo, seeming
pleased when any called him by