The ancients didn't have Wikipedia but if they ever wanted to read doubtful information on the animal kingdom they had only to turn to Aelian (c. 170-230 AD). Aelian's On the Characteristics of Animals, a compendium of animal lore taking up three volumes of the Loeb Classical Library, is a wonderfully entertaining collection of zoological hearsay situated on the credibility scale about midway between Bewick's sometimes faulty History of Quadrupeds (which conflates gorillas and orangutans) and Aesop's Fables. Here's Aelian on the language comprehension of lions:
A Lion will accompany a Moor and will drink water from the same spring. And I am told that Lions even resort to the houses of Moors when they fail to find any prey and are overtaken by the pangs of hunger. And if the master of the house happens to be there, he keeps the Lion off and drives him away, pursuing him vigorously. If however he is out and his wife is left all alone, then with words that put the Lion to shame she checks his approach, restrains him, and admonishes him to control himself and not to allow his hunger to incense him. The Lion, it seems, understands the Moorish tongue; and the sense of the rebuke which the woman administers to the animal is (so they say) as follows. 'Are not you ashamed, you, a Lion, the king of beasts, to come to my hut and to ask a woman to feed you, and do you, like some cripple, look to a woman's hands hoping that thanks to her pity and compassion you may get what you want?--You who should be on your way to mountain haunts in pursuit of deer and antelopes and all other creatures that lions may eat without discredit. Whereas, like some sorry lap-dog, you are content to be fed by another.' Such are the spells she employs, whereupon the Lion, as though his heart smote him and he were filled with shame, quietly and with downcast eyes moves off, overcome by the justice of her words.
Now if horses and hounds through being reared in their company understand and quail before the threats of men, I should not be surprised if Moors too, who are reared and brought up along with Lions, are understood by these very animals. For the Moors profess to treat lion-cubs to the same kind of food, the same bed, and the same roof as their own children. Consequently there is nothing incredible or marvellous in Lions understanding human speech as described above.
Aelian, On Animals III.1 (tr. A.F. Scholfield)