Pliny the Elder, Natural History 8.30: Cynocephali

Record summary

Pliny lists cynocephali, dog-headed peoples, among reported human or quasi-human groups associated with distant lands. The notice belongs to ancient ethnographic catalogues in which unfamiliar populations, animals and marvels were frequently mixed. It is relevant to unknown-creature research because later authors treated the term as evidence for a biological race, while modern scholarship usually reads it as a literary or intercultural motif. The location is imprecise, and the passage should be compared with Ctesias, Solinus and medieval encyclopedias. AI-recalled; source quality 5; corroboration 0.