Miscellanies 1.21.143

Plato assigns a certain language even to the gods, judging especially from dreams and oracles, and besides from the possessed, who do not utter their own voice or language but that of the demons who have entered them. He thinks that irrational animals too have languages, which those of the same kind understand. At any rate, when an elephant fell into mud and cried out, another that was present and saw what had happened went away and returned not long after, bringing a herd of elephants with it, and saved the one that had fallen. They say too that in Libya a scorpion, if it cannot reach a man to sting him, goes away and comes back with more, and they hang on to one another like a chain and so succeed in their plot; the irrational animals do not use some invisible nod, nor inform one another by gestures, but, I think, by their own language. Some others say that if a fish being drawn up escapes when the line breaks, no fish of the same kind will be found in that place on that same day. The first and generic languages are barbarian, but they have their names by nature, since people admit that prayers spoken in a barbarian tongue are more powerful. And Plato in the Cratylus, wishing to explain the word “fire,” says that the name is barbarian; at any rate he testifies that the Phrygians call it so, changing it a little.