# Gorillai
## English
### Alternative forms

* Gorillæ, gorillæ (obsolete)
* Gorillae

### Etymology

From Ancient Greek Γόριλλαι (Górillai, “Gorillai”). Doublet of gorilla.

### Proper noun

Gorillai (historical)
* A tribe of hairy women described by Hanno the Navigator.
** 1797, Thomas Falconer, “Dissertation II.”, in The Voyage of Hanno: […], London, page 41:Mr D. cenſures Voſſius for imagining that the Gorgons and Gorillæ had any reference to each other; and obſerves, that it was not the Greeks, nor even the Carthaginian Hanno himſelf, who gave them this appellation, but the interpreters, whom they had procured from the Lixitæ; and that it is probable, that this word Gorillæ is of African origin, whereas the word Gorgon is a Greek word. / But Voſſius might think, that there was ſome connection between them, when almoſt all the writers of antiquity place the Gorgons nearly at leaſt in the ſame ſituation in which Hanno ſays that he diſcovered the Gorillæ.
** 1799, The Critical Review; or, Annals of Literature, London, page 488:Proceeding to the chapter which treats of the ‘traditions reſpecting the iſands of the Atlantic,’ adjacent to the coaſts juſt examined, we may remark, that, at the extremity of Hanno’s expedition, he mentions the Gorillæ, and tells us, that he chiefly ſaw females, who fought with fury; that he killed three of them, and carried their ſkins, covered with hair, back to Carthage. Theſe female Gorillæ are ſuppoſed to be the Gorgons of antiquity; the iſland of the Gorillæ, the Gorgades, and the Gorgons, from the authority of Xenophon of Lampſacus, quoted by Pliny, are conſidered as the ſame.
** 1832, Murray, Hugh, Jameson, Wilson, James, Narrative of Discovery and Adventure in Africa, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time: With Illustrations of the Geology, Mineralogy, and Zoology, 2nd edition, Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd; London: Simpkin & Marshall, pages 48–49:These monsters whom they call Gorillæ, and who seem evidently to have been orang-outangs, ran off on their approach, climbed rocks, and threw down stones on their pursuers; yet three females were caught, and their skins carried to Carthage. At length, the coast becoming desolate, and no longer affording either provisions or water, it was found necessary to return. / How far this voyage extended, and what proportion of the African coast it surveyed, has been the subject of long and learned controversy. The only two disputants who now appear on the field are Major Rennel and M. Gosselin: the former believes that Hanno passed Sierra Leone, and that the island and bay of the Gorillæ were Sherbro’ Island and Sound; while the other terminates the voyage on the frontier of Morocco, at the entrance of the river Nun.
** 1859, Henry Lawes Long, “Chapter I. The Early Geography of Western Europe”, in A Survey of the Early Geography of Western Europe, as Connected with The First Inhabitants of Britain, Their Origin, Language, Religious Rites, and Edifices, London: Lovell Reeve, Note upon the Voyages of Hanno and Pytheas: Gorillæ,—Chimpanzees., pages 88, 89:Hanno’s account of the gorillæ has been confused with fabulous stories of Gorgons; but even this circumstance is confirmatory of the truth of his progress. […] Hanno’s gorillæ were found in an island; the males could not be killed, but three females were slain and their skins were exhibited when the expedition returned to Carthage.
** 1867 June, Packard, Alpheus Spring, Morse, Edward S., Hyatt, Alpheus, Putnam, Frederic Ward, editors, The American Naturalist, a Popular Illustrated Magazine of Natural History, volume I, number 4, Salem, Massachusetts: Essex Institute, The Habits of the Gorilla by W. Winwood Reade, pages 177–178:Hanno, a Carthaginian, made an exploring voyage down the west coast of Africa. His log, or Periplus, has been preserved. He records the number of days occupied by his voyage, mentions its chief incidents, and describes the features of the coast sometimes with minuteness. The two great authorities upon the Periplus are Gossclin (Geographie des Anciens) and Rennell (Geography of Herodotus). The former, a sceptic, will not allow that Hanno sailed beyond the limits of the Barbary coast; an hypothesis to be rejected: while Rennell, evidently desirous of taking him as far as he can, fixes the end of his voyage at a little below Sierra Leone. Now the chimpanzee is found in that region; but the gorilla is found only close to the equator. In the first place, therefore, Hanno’s voyage must be stretched to the equator. / Allowing that he did reach the equator, and that the volcanic peak of Fernando Po was the Currus Deorum, “the flames of which seemed to touch the sky,” another difficulty remains to be disposed of. He says that the gorillæ defended themselves with stones, and escaped over the precipices. Now there are no precipices on the coast of the gorilla country, and the gorilla of the nineteenth century is not in the habit of throwing stones.
** 1882, Royal Colonial Institute, Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute, volume 13, page 57:The earliest mention of the peninsula now called Sierra Leone is supposed to be contained in the Periplus or account of the voyage of Hanno, the Carthaginian traveller in the sixth century b.c. There has been much disputation as to the exact places visited by him, but it seems to be certain that Sierra Leone is the locality whence he carried the skins of the gorillæ—long supposed to be fabulous creatures until their re-discovery by Du Chaillu—and where he witnessed, to his surprise, the burning down of the rank vegetation by the natives in the dry season, a system of agriculture followed to this day, but which he described as burning mountains running into the sea.
** 1931, Richmond Palmer, The Carthaginian Voyage to West Africa in 500 B. C.: Together with Sultan Mohammed Bello's Account of The Origin of the Fulbe, Bathurst: Lawani, J. M., page 17:It is not necessary to suppose that the “Gorillai” were really Gorillas; in fact, they were probably dog-faced baboons, which, when attacked, do sometimes throw stones at their attackers.
** 1970 [1966], Charles Johnson, transl., Willingly to School: How Animals are Taught, New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, translation of original by Hermann Dembeck, published 1972, →ISBN, page 19:Pliny describes the ‘Gorillae’ mentioned by Hanno as ‘Gorgades’, by which term he refers, in the common parlance of those days, to their repulsive appearance and terrifying faces.
** 1981, John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 15:Gorgades. Pliny speaks of hairy women who live in the Gorgades Islands and who take that name. These may be the Gorillae, a race of hairy women mentioned by Homer.$^{19}$
** 1982, International Society of Cryptozoology, Interdisciplinary Journal of the International Society of Cryptozoology, page 133:On the other hand, some believe that Hannon reached Senegal and the Cameroons, and that the gorillaï were actually gorillas (an opinion refuted by Heuvelmans).
** 1990, Michael Bright, The Dolittle Obsession, Robson Books, →ISBN, page 44:Until recently, the gorilla had received a bad press, usually depicted as a fearsomely powerful and aggressive beast. From the time of its discovery by the American medical missionary Thomas Savage, as recently as 1847, the gorilla had been misrepresented. The skull that Savage examined confirmed ancient reports from the fifth century, when the Carthaginians sailed along the west coast of Africa and killed the ‘hairy people – the gorillae’.
** 1996, Janet Lembke, Shake them 'Simmons Down, Lyons & Burford, →ISBN:Animals without wings share in the storytelling, too, which may depart from myth and take other forms. There is, for example, Gorilla gorilla, named not once but twice for a tribe of hairy women, the Gorillai, reported to live on the west coast of Africa; this rumor reaches the present day through a very old Greek version of a geographical account first written in Phoenician by one Hanno, a Carthaginian navigator who supposedly conducted his explorations around 500 b.c.
** 2002, George M. Eberhart, Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology, ABC-Clio, →ISBN, Gorillaï, page 213:Either a Wildman of West Africa or an ancient encounter with an anthropoid ape. […] Significant sighting: Hanno the Carthaginian discovered Gorillaï on his voyage along the African coast in the early fifth century b.c. and is said to have taken two skins back to Carthage, where they were displayed in the Temple of Juno.
** 2005, The Ancient World Society, The Ancient World, page 122:At this point the expedition had an unfortunate encounter with the wild group called the Gorillai.$^{60}$
** 2007, David Buisseret, editor, The Oxford Companion to World Exploration: M-Z, index, Oxford University Press, page 153:Hanno, probably also seeking mineral wealth, went along the African coast. He established a trading post named Kerne—which remained a viable center until Roman times—in West Africa, perhaps in the vicinity of the Senegal River, and continued into the Bight of Biafra, where he saw Mount Cameroon during an eruption and encountered the wild tribe known as the Gorillai, whose name in the nineteenth century was applied to the species of anthropoid ape.
** 2007, Barbara Ann Kipfer, Word Nerd: More Than 17,000 Fascinating Facts about Words, Sourcebooks, →ISBN, page 243:the word gorilla (large ape) comes from the discovery by Greeks of a hairy tribe of West African island women called Gorillai
** 2017, Gregory Claeys, Dystopia: A Natural History, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 63:Other races walk upside down, on all fours; consist of bearded or hairy women (the Gorillae); have only one eye (like Homer’s Cyclops); or have horns and tails (the Gegetones or Gorgones, clearly hinting at our later chief villain, Satan, who gains these attributes in the sixth–eighth centuries).

#### Translations
### Further reading

* Hanno the Navigator § Gorillai on Wikipedia.Wikipedia