Random Aelian

Claudius Aelianus (Κλαύδιος Αἰλιανός), commonly called Aelian, was born at Praeneste around 175 AD. He was a Roman author and teacher of rhetoric who spoke Greek so perfectly that he was called "honey-tongued" (meliglossos). He preferred Greek authors, and wrote in a slightly archaizing Greek himself. "On the Nature of Animals" (Περὶ Ζῴων Ἰδιότητος) is a collection of seventeen books. Aelian has written some really weird things. One of the strangest is 4.8, the groom and the mare, or the groom who fell in love with the mare. I think about this passage sometimes and I ponder...

"Eudemus records how a groom fell in love with a young mare, the finest of the herd, as it might have Mare been a beautiful girl, the loveliest of all thereabouts. 

And at first he restrained himself, but finally dared to consummate a strange union. Now the mare had a foal, and a fine one, and when it saw what was happening it was pained, just as though its mother were being tyrannically treated by her master, and it leaped upon the man and killed him. 

And it even went so far as to watch where he was buried, went to the place, dug up the corpse, and outraged it by inflicting every kind of injury."