There should be unicorns: wild asses of India, oryges and other single-horned species in the zoological lore of the Greeks and the Romans

While it is widely accepted that the prototype of the medieval unicorn is the Indian ass described in Greco-Roman natural histories, this article demonstrates that the ancient world actually knew a wide variety of unicorn species. By illustrating some of the dynamics of naming and folk classification among the Greeks and Romans, it is evident that there was a greater diversity of unicorns in ancient times than previously thought.