Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 14

CHAPTER II.

THE HAWK, THE EAGLE, THE VULTURE, THE PH?NIX, THE HARPY, THE STRIX, THE BAT, THE GRIFFON, AND THE SIREN.

SUMMARY.

The bird of prey the most heroic of birds.--Indras as a hawk.--The hawk and the ambrosia; the ambrosia as sperm.--The bird of prey and the serpent.--Agnis, the Acvinau, and the Marutas as hawks.--The place of sacrifice has the form of an eagle.--The two sons of Vina?a.--Garu?as, the bird of Vish?us; he fights against the monsters.--Genealogy of the vultures.--?atayus and Sampatis.--The king or the young hero who offers himself up to be devoured by the hawk or the eagle.--The grateful hawk or eagle.--cyena and caena; Simurg; the feather of the bird of prey.--The birds as clouds.--The eagles as winds; Aquila and Aquilo.--The hawks as luminous birds; the eagles as demoniacal ones.--Accipiter.--The hawk as an emblem of n.o.bility.--The hawk as the ensign of Attila.--The hawk in h.e.l.lenic antiquity.--The kite among the stars; it discharges its body upon the image of the G.o.d.--The beetle, the eagle, and Zeus.--The eagle as the thunderbolt or sceptre of Zeus.--The eagle presages supreme power and fertility; the eagle and the laurel.--The eagle carries off the robes of Aphrodite.--The eagle takes away the slippers of Rhodope.--The eagle kills aeschilos.--Nisos and Scylla.--The vulture in ancient cla.s.sical authors.--The vultures in h.e.l.l.--The learned vulture.--Voracity of the vulture.--Imaginary birds.--The sun as a phoenix.--The demoniacal harpies or Furiae, canes Jovis.--Strix and striges; they suck blood.--Proca and Crane.--Bats and vampires.--The Stymphalian birds.--The birds of Seleucia.--The Gryphes and the Arimaspi.--The griffons sacred to Nemesis; the hypogriff, gryphos, logogriph, griffonage.--The Siren now as a bird, now as a fish.--Circe; a lunar myth.

The most heroic of birds is the bird of prey; the strength of its beak, wings, and claws, its size and swiftness, caused it to be regarded as a swift celestial messenger, carrier, and warrior.

The hawk, the eagle, and the vulture, three powerful birds of prey, generally play the same part in myths and legends; the creators of myths having from the first observed their general resemblance, without paying any regard to their specific differences.

The bird of prey, in mythology, is the sun, which now s.h.i.+nes in its splendour, and now shows itself in the cloud or darkness by sending forth flashes of lightning, thunderbolts, and sunbeams. The flash, the thunderbolt, and the sunbeam are now the beak, now the claw of the bird of prey, and now, the part being sometimes taken for the whole, even the entire bird.

In the _?igvedas_, the G.o.d Indras often appears in the form of a hawk or cyenas. Indras is like a hawk that flies swiftly over the other hawks, and, being well-winged, carries to men the food tasted by the G.o.ds.[289] He is enclosed in a hundred iron fortresses; nevertheless, with swiftness, he succeeds in coming out of them;[290] while flying away, he carries in his claw the beautiful, virgin, luminous ambrosia, by means of which life is prolonged and the dead brought to life again[291] (the rain, which is also confounded with the ambrosial humour of the moon. In the first strophe of the same hymn, Indus is also called ambrosia).[292] The hawk with iron claws kills the hostile demons,[293] has great power of breathing, and draws from afar the chariot with a hundred wheels.[294] However, while the hawk carries the ambrosia through the air, he trembles for fear of the archer K?ica.n.u.s,[295] who, in fact, shot off one of his claws (of which the hedgehog was born, according to the _ai?areya Br._,[296] and according to the Vedic hymn,[297] one of his feathers which, falling on the earth, afterwards became a tree). After the victory gained over Ahis, the serpent-demon, Indras flees like a terrified hawk.[298] This is the first trace of the legendary and proverbial enmity between the bird of prey and the serpent. In the third book of the _Ramaya?am_, Rava?as says that he will carry off Sita as the well-winged one (carries off) the serpent (supar?a? panna?amiva).

Nor is Indras alone a hawk in the _?igvedas_, but Agnis too. Mataricvan and the hawk agitate, the one the heavenly fire, the other the ambrosia of the mountain.[299] The chariot of the Acvinau is also sometimes drawn by hawks, as swift as heavenly vultures.[300] They are themselves compared to two vultures that hover round the tree where the treasure is[301] (we have seen in the preceding chapter that the tree is the sky). The Marutas are also called G?idhras or vultures (falcons according to Max Muller.[302]) In the _?igvedas_, again, when the sun goes to the sea, he looks with a vulture's eye.[303] On account of this form of a bird of prey, often a.s.sumed by the solar G.o.d in the Vedic myths, we read in the _aitareya Br._, that the place destined for the sacrifice had the same shape. In the _Ramaya?am_ we find, in the sacrifice of a horse, that the place of sacrifice has the form of the bird Garu?as, the powerful mythical eagle of the Hindoos. In the 149th hymn of the tenth book of the _?igvedas_, the ancient well-winged son of the sun Savitar is already named Garutman. The mythical bird is the equivalent of the winged solar horse, or hippogriff; indeed, the 118th hymn of the first book of the _?igvedas_, soon after celebrating the hawks that draw the chariot of the Acvinau, calls them beautiful flying horses (acva vapusha? pata?ga?). We have observed that of the two twins, or the two brothers, one prevails over the other. Thus of the two mythical vultures, of the two sons of Vinata, in the legend of the _Mahabharatam_,[304] their mother having broken the egg before the proper time, one, Aru?as, is born imperfect, and curses his mother, condemning her to be the slave of her rival Kadru for five thousand years, until her other son, the luminous, perfect, and powerful solar bird Garu?as, comes to release her. Aru?as becomes the charioteer of the sun; Garu?as is, instead, the steed of the G.o.d Vish?us, the solar horse, the sun itself, victorious in all its splendour. No sooner are the two birds born, than the horse Uccai?cravas also appears, which again signifies that solar bird and solar horse are identical. Like the hawk Indras, or the hawk of Indras, Garu?as, the bird of Vish?us, or Vish?us himself, is thirsty, drinks many rivers,[305] carries off from the serpents the ambrosia, protected (as in the _?igvedas_) by a circle of iron. Like Vish?us, Garu?as, from being very tall, makes himself very little, penetrates among the serpents, covers them with dust and blinds them; it is, indeed, on account of this feat that Vish?us adopts him for his celestial steed.[306] The G.o.d Vish?us goes on the back of the well-winged one to fight against the monsters;[307] indignant with them, he throws them to the ground with the flapping of his wings; the monsters aim their darts at him as another form of the hero, and he fights on his own account and for the hero.[308] When the bird Garu?as appears, the fetters of the monsters, which compress like serpents the two brothers Ramas and Lakshma?as, are loosed, and the two young heroes rise more handsome and stronger than before.[309] The Nishadas come from their damp abodes, enter into the gaping jaws of Garu?as in thousands, enveloped by the wind and the dust.[310] (The sun of morning and that of spring devour the black monsters of night and of winter.)

Hitherto we have seen the hawk, the eagle (as Garu?as), and the vulture exchanged for each other; even the Hindoo mythical genealogy confirms this exchange. According to the _Ramaya?am_,[311] of Tamra (properly the reddish one; she also gave birth to Kraunci, the mother of the herons) was born cyeni (that is, the female hawk); of cyeni was born Vina?a. Vina?a (properly the bent one) laid the egg whence Aru?as and Garu?as came forth (the two Dioskuroi also came, as is well known, out of the egg of Leda, united with the swan); Garu?as was in his turn father of two immense vultures, Gatayus and Sampatis. In this genealogy the ascending movement of the sun appears to be described to us, like the myth of the sun Vish?us, who, from a dwarf, becomes a giant. The vulture Gatayus knows everything that has happened in the past, and everything that will come to pa.s.s in the future, inasmuch as, like the Vedic sun, he is vicvavedas, all-seeing, omniscient, and has traversed the whole earth. In the _Ramaya?am_ we read of the last fierce battle of the aged vulture Gatayus with the terrible monster Rava?as, who carries off the beautiful Sita during the absence of her husband Ramas. Gatayus, although old in years, rises into the air to prevent the carrying off of Sita by Rava?as in a chariot drawn by a.s.ses; the vulture breaks with his strong claws the bow and arrow of Rava?as, strikes and kills the a.s.ses, splits the chariot in two, throws the charioteer down, forces Rava?as to leap to the ground, and wounds him in a thousand ways; but at last the king of the monsters succeeds with his sword in cutting off the wings, feet, and sides of the faithful bird, who expires in pain and grief, whilst the demon carries the ravished woman into Lanka.

Thus far, therefore, we always find in the bird of prey a friend of the hero and the G.o.d. Such is also, in the _Ramaya?am_,[312] the immense vulture that comes to place itself, and to vomit blood upon the standard of the monster Kharas, to predict his misfortunes to him; and such is the elder brother of Gatayus, the vulture Sampatis, who, coming out of a cavern, informs the great monkey Hanumant where Sita may be found.

Sampatis, after having seen Hanumant, recovers his own wings, which had been burnt by the sun's rays, once when he had wished to defend his younger brother from them whilst they were flying together too high up in the regions of the sun[313] (a variety of the h.e.l.lenic legend of Dedalus and Icarus, of that of Hanumant who wished to fly after the sun in order to catch it, and of that of the two Acvinau).

When, in the very popular Hindoo legend of the Buddhist king who sacrifices himself instead of the dove that had looked for hospitality from him, the hawk appears as the persecutor of the dove, this apparent persecution is only a trial that Indras, the hawk, and Agnis, the dove, wish to make of the king's virtue. No sooner does the hawk see that the king offers himself up to be devoured by the hawk, who complains that the king has taken his prey, the dove, from him, than both hawk and dove rea.s.sume their divine form, and cover the holy king with benedictions.[314] Indras and Agnis, united together, are also themselves a form of the two Acvinau, like the two faithful doves that sacrifice themselves in the third book of _Pancatantram_.

The wise caena of the _Avesta_ has a character nearly resembling the Vedic bird cyenas. According to the _Bundehesh_, two caenas stay at the gates of h.e.l.l, which correspond to the two crepuscular hawks or vultures of the Vedas. The bird with wings that strike, into which the hero Thraetaona is transformed in the _Khorda Avesta_, whilst it reminds us of the Hindoo warrior vulture, can serve as a link to join together the Zendic caena and the Persian Simurg. The bird Simurg has its marvellous nest upon Mount Alburs, upon a peak that touches the sky, and which no man has ever yet seen. The child Sal is exposed upon this mountain; he is hungry and cold, and cries out; the bird Simurg pa.s.ses by, hears his cry, takes pity upon him, and carries the child to its solitary peak. A mysterious voice blesses the glorious bird, who nourishes the boy, instructs, protects, and strengthens him, and, when he lets him go, gives him one of his own feathers, saying that when he is in danger he must throw this feather into the fire, and he will come at once to a.s.sist him,[315] and take him back into the kingdom. He only asks him never to forget his faithful and loving preserver. He then carries the young hero to his father's palace. The king praises the divine bird in the following words:--"O king of birds! Heaven has given thee strength and wisdom; thou art the a.s.sister of the needy, propitious to the good and the consoler of the afflicted; may evil be dispersed before thee, and may thy greatness last for ever." In the fifth adventure of Isfendiar, in _Firdusi_, the gigantic bird Simurg appears, on the contrary, as demoniacal as he that dims the sunbeams with his wings (in the _Birds_ of Aristophanes, when a great number of birds appear, the spectators cry out, "O Apollo, the clouds!") Isfendiar fights with him, and cuts him to pieces.

In Scandinavian and German mythology, while the hawk is generally a luminous shape, preferred by the heroes, and by Freya, the eagle is a gloomy form preferred by demons, or at least by the hero or G.o.d (like Odin)[316] hidden in the gloomy night or in the windy cloud. The _Edda_ tells us that the winds are produced by the shaking of the wings of a giant, who sits in the form of an eagle at the extremity of the sky; the aquila and the wind called aquilo by the Latins, as they correspond etymologically, seem also to be mythically identical. I have observed on a previous occasion that in the _Edda_ the witch rides upon a wolf, using eagles as reins. In the _Nibelungen_, Krimhilt sees in a dream his beloved hawk strangled by two eagles.

On the other hand, the swallows sing to Sigurd in the _Edda_, predicting to him his meeting with the beautiful warrior maiden who, coming forth from the battles, rides upon an eagle. But this warlike girl was, however, destined to cause the death of Sigurd.

In the chapter on the elephant, we saw how the bird Garu?as transported into the air an elephant, a tortoise, a bough of a tree, and hermits. In the Greek variety of the same myth, we have the eagle instead of Garu?as. In the _Edda_, three Ases (Odin, Loki, and Honir) are cooking an ox under a tree; but from the summit of the tree, an eagle interrupts the cooking of the meat, because it wishes to have a share. The Ases consent; the eagle carries off nearly every thing, upon which Loki, indignant, wounds the eagle with a stake; but whilst one end of the stake remains attached to the eagle, the other is fastened to Loki's hand, and the eagle carries him up into the air.

Loki feels his arms break, and implores the eagle to have compa.s.sion upon him; the gigantic bird lets him go, on condition of obtaining, instead of him, Iduna and her apples.[317] In the twenty-third story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the eagle, after having been benefited by a peasant, eats up his sheep. The name of eagles was given during the Middle Ages to certain demons which were said to appear in the form of an eagle, especially on account of their rapacious expression, and aquiline nose.[318]

The hawk, on the other hand, I repeat, usually appears as divine, in opposition to all that is diabolical. In the twenty-second story of the fifth and the forty-sixth of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the hero transforms himself into a hawk, in order to strangle the c.o.c.k into which the devil has metamorphosed himself (a Russian proverb, however, says of the devil that he is more pleasing than the luminous hawk).[319] When they wished, in popular Russian phraseology, to express something that it is impossible to overtake, it was said, "Like the hurricane in the field, and the luminous hawk in the sky."

We know that the Latin _accipiter_ and the Greek _okupteros_ mean the swift-winged. In the seventh story of the first book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the hawk appears in opposition to the black crow. When the young girl, disguised as a man, succeeds in deceiving the Tzar three times, she says to him, "Ah! thou crow, crow; thou hast not known, O crow, how to catch the hawk in a cage."

The hawk was one of the distinctive badges of the mediaeval cavalier; even ladies kept them. Krimhilt brings up a wild hawk; Brunhilt, when she throws herself upon the funeral pyre, that she may not survive Sigurd, has two dogs and two hawks immolated along with her. On the sepulchres of mediaeval cavaliers and ladies, a hawk was not unfrequently found, as an emblem of their n.o.bility. According to a law of the year 818, the sword and hawk belonging to the losing cavalier were to be respected by his conqueror, and left unappropriated; the hawk to hunt, and the sword to fight with. In _Du Cange_, we read that in 1642 Monsieur De Sa.s.say claimed as his feudal right, "ut nimirum accipitrem suum ponere possit super altare majus ecclesiae Ebraicensis (of Evreux), dum sacra in eo peragit ocreatus, calcaribusque instructus presbyter parochus d'Ezy, pulsantibus tympanis, organorum loco." According to the law of the Burgundians, he who attempted to steal another man's hawk was, before all, obliged to conciliate the hawk itself by giving it to eat (s.e.x uncias carnis acceptor ipse super testones comedat); or if the hawk refused to eat, the robber had to pay an indemnity to the proprietor, besides a fine (s.e.x solidos illi cujus acceptor est, cogatur exsolvere; mulctae autem nomine solidos duos). According to information supplied me by my learned friend Count Geza Kuun, the hawk (turul) was the military ensign of Attila.

According to a tradition preserved in the chronicle of Keza and of Buda, Emesu, mother of Attila, saw in a dream a hawk which predicted a happy future to her, after which dream she became pregnant.

Nor was the hawk less honoured in h.e.l.lenic antiquity; according to Homer, it was the rapid messenger of Apollo; the spy of Apollo, sacred to Zeus, according to aelianos; having after death the faculty of vaticination, according to Porphyrios (who even recommends the heart of a hawk, a stag, or a mole to any one about to practise divination).

In the _Iliad_, Apollo coming down from Mount Ida, is compared to the swift hawk, the killer of doves, the swiftest of all birds. Many are the superst.i.tious beliefs concerning the hawk collected by aelianos; such as, for instance, that it does not eat the hearts of animals; that it weeps over a dead man; that it buries unburied bodies, or at least puts earth upon their eyes, in which it thinks it sees the sun again, upon which, as its most beloved star, it always fixes its gaze; that it loves gold; that it lives for seven hundred years; not to mention the extraordinary medical virtues which are always attributed to every sacred animal, and which are particularly considered as essential to the sacred hawk. Several of the qualities of the sacred hawk pa.s.sed also into other falcons of inferior quality, the kite (milvius),[320] for instance, of which it is said that it was placed among the stars for having carried to Zeus the entrails of the monster bull-serpent, and, according to the third book of Ovid's _Fasti_, for having brought back to Zeus the lost ring (an ancient form of the mediaeval ring of Solomon, _i.e._, the solar disc):--

"Jupiter alitibus rapere imperat, attulit illi, Milvius, et meritis venit in astra suis."

With regard to the kite, we find an apologue,[321] according to which the kite, at the point of death, asks its mother to beg grace from the neighbouring statue of the G.o.d, and especially forgiveness, for the sacrilege which it had frequently committed, discharging its body upon the image of the G.o.d (the sun upon the sky).

A richer variety of this story is found in another apologue, which ill.u.s.trates a Greek proverb ("aeton kantaros maieusomai"); but instead of the hawk, we have the beetle, and instead of the statue, the G.o.d himself, Zeus, with eagle's eggs in his lap. The beetle (the hostess-moon), wis.h.i.+ng to punish the eagle, which had violated the laws of hospitality with regard to the hare (also the moon), attempts to destroy its eggs; the eagle goes and places them in the lap of Zeus; the beetle, who knows that Zeus hates everything that is unclean, lets some dung fall upon him; Zeus forgets the eggs, shakes himself, and breaks them. Here the eagle is identified with Zeus, as in the Vedic hymns the hawk with Indras. In the first of Pindar's Pythic odes, the poet speaks of the eagle as sleeping on the sceptre of Zeus (as a thunderbolt, which is the real sceptre of Zeus). The eagle of Zeus is also represented as holding the thunderbolt in its claws, which is in accordance with the sentence, "Fulmina sub Jove sunt." When Zeus is equipping himself to fight against the t.i.tans, the eagle brings his dart to him, for which reason Zeus adopted the eagle as his ensign of war. In _Dion Ca.s.sius_, the eagles let the golden thunderbolts drop out of their talons into the camp of the Pompeians, and fly towards the camp of Caesar to announce his victory. We find very numerous examples in the ancient cla.s.sics of eagles that presage now victory, now supreme power to the heroes, that now nourish, now save them, and now sacrifice themselves for them.[322] The eagle of Zeus, the royal eagle, does not feed upon flesh, but upon herbs, properly upon the moisture of these herbs, by means of which we can comprehend the rape of Ganymede, the cup-bearer of Zeus, carried off by the eagle in the same way as the hawk of Indras carries off the somas in the _?igvedas_. The h.e.l.lenic eagle is generally, like Zeus, a bringer of light, fertility, and happiness. Pliny narrates of an eagle, that immediately after the wedding of Augustus it let fall, as an omen of fecundity in the family of Augustus, into the lap of Livia Drusilla a white hen, having a branch of laurel in its beak; this branch was planted, and grew into a dense laurel-grove; the hen had so many descendants, that afterwards the villa where this happened was called the Villa of the Hens. Suetonius adds that in the last year of the life of Nero all the hens died, and all the laurel plants were dried up. We also find the eagle in connection with the laurel in the myth of Amphiaraos, whose spear, carried off by the eagle and plunged into the ground, grew into a laurel plant.

In the first chapter of the first book, when speaking of the myth of the aurora, we mentioned the young hero who disrobes the beautiful princess on the bank of the river and carries her apparel away. In the h.e.l.lenic myth we find a zoological variety of this myth. Aphrodite (here the evening aurora) bathes in the Acheloos (the river of night); Hermes (the extreme western light, and perhaps even the moon) becomes enamoured of her, and makes the eagle (the bird of night) carry off her garments, to obtain which, Aphrodite satisfies the desire of Hermes. In _Strabo_ we find a variation of the same story which reminds us of the fairy-tale of Cinderella. Whilst Rhodope is bathing, the eagle s.n.a.t.c.hes one of her slippers out of her maid's hands and carries it off to the king of Memphis, who, seeing the slipper, falls in love with the foot that wore it, gives orders to search everywhere for the girl to whom the slipper belongs, and, when Rhodope is found, marries her. aelianos says that this king was Psammetichos. But the h.e.l.lenic eagle is divine as long as the G.o.d Zeus, whom it represents, is propitious; when Zeus becomes the tyrant of heaven, and condemns Prometheus to be bound upon a rock, the eagle goes to gnaw at his heart. And because the poet aeschilos glorified Prometheus, making him curse the tyranny of Zeus, hence, doubtless, arose the legend that aeschilos was, when old and bald, killed by a tortoise, which the eagle, mistaking the head of aeschilos for a white rock, had let fall from the sky in order to break it and feed upon it. The eagle which, according to Theophrastos, announced death to the cutters of black h.e.l.lebore, was also a funereal and demoniacal bird. In the eighth book of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, King Nisos, the golden-haired (the sun of evening), is transformed into a marine eagle (the night or winter), when his daughter Scylla (the night, or winter), in order to give him up to his enemies, destroys his strength by cutting his hair (an evident variation of the solar legend of Delilah and Samson).

The vulture, too, is a sacred bird in the legends of ancient cla.s.sical authors; Herodotos says that it is very dear to Herakles (the killer of the eagle that gnaws at the heart of Prometheus, who had made for the hero the cup in which he had been enabled to cross the sea); it announces sovereign dominion to Romulus, Caesar, and Augustus. Pliny writes that burnt vulture's feathers make serpents flee; the same feathers, according to Pliny, have the property of facilitating parturition, inasmuch as, as St Jerome writes (adversus Jovinianum ii.), "Si medicorum volumina legeris, videbis tot curationes esse in vulture, quot sunt membra."[323] Two vultures (a form of the Acvinau) eat every day, in h.e.l.l, the liver that continually grows again (the _immortale jecur_ of Virgil) of the giant t.i.tyo, the offender of Latona (the moon), dear to Jupiter. (The monster of night is killed every day and rises again every night). The two youths aegipios and Nephron are another form of the Acvinau, who, hating each other on account of the love which each has for the other's mother, are changed by Zeus into two vultures, after that aegipios, by a stratagem of Nephron, united himself with his own mother. Iphiklos consults the birds to have children, from the vulture downwards, who alone knew how to a.s.sign the reason why Iphiklos had no children and indicate the means of obtaining them. Philakos had tried to kill Iphiklos; not having succeeded, he fastened his sword on a wild pear-tree; around the sword a covering of bark grew, which hid it from the sight of men. The vulture shows the place where this tree grows, and advises Iphiklos to take the bark off, to clean the rust off the sword, and after ten days to drink the rust in a toast; Iphiklos thus obtains offspring.

The vulture, therefore, generally preserves in Graeco-Latin tradition the heroic and divine character which it has in Indian tradition, although its voracity became proverbial in ancient popular phraseology. Lucian calls a great eater the greatest of all the vultures. Moreover, the special faculty of distinguis.h.i.+ng the smell of a dead body, even before death, is attributed to him; whence Seneca, in an epistle against the man who covets the inheritance of a living person, says "Vultur es, cadaver expecta," and Plautus in the _Truculentus_ says of certain parasitical servants: "Jam quasi vulturii triduo prius praedivinabant, quo die esituri sient."

Besides these royal birds of prey that become mythical, there are several mythical birds of prey that never existed, still to be noticed, such as the ph?nix, the harpy, the griffon, the strix, the Seleucide birds, the Stymphalian birds, and the sirens. Popular imagination believed in their terrestrial existence for a long time, but it can be said of them all as of the Arabian Ph?nix:--

"All affirm that it exists; Where it is no one can tell."[324]

In point of fact, no man has ever seen them; a few deities or heroes alone approached them; their seat is in the sky, where, according to their several natures and the different places occupied by the sun or the moon in the sky, they attract, ravish, seduce, enchant, or destroy.

The ph?nix is, beyond all doubt, the eastern and western sun; hence Petrarch was able to say with reason,

"Ne 'n ciel ne 'n terra e piu d'una Fenice,"

as there is not more than one sun; and we, like the ancient Greeks, say of a rare man or object, that he or it is a ph?nix. Tacitus, who narrates, in the fourteenth book, the fable of the ph?nix, calls it _animal sacrum soli_; Lactantius says that it alone knows the secrets of the sun--

"Et sola arcanis conscia Ph?be tuis,"

and represents it as rendering funereal honours to its father in the temple of the sun; Claudian calls it _solis avem_ and describes its whole life in a beautiful little poem.

It is born in the East, in the wood of the sun, and until it has a.s.sumed its whole splendid shape it feeds upon dew and perfumes, whence Lactantius--

"Ambrosios libat c?lesti nectare rores Stellifero teneri qui cecidere polo.

Hos legit, his mediis alitur in odoribus ales, Donec maturam proferat effigiem."

It then feeds upon all that it sees. When it is about to die it thinks only of its new birth--

"Componit bustumque sibi, partumque futurum" (_Claudian_);

inasmuch as it is said to deposit a little worm, the colour of milk, in its nest, which becomes a funeral pyre,

"Fertur vermis lacteus esse color" (_Lactantius_).

Before dying, it invokes the sun:

"Hic sedet, et solem blando clangore salutat Debilior, miscetque preces, et supplice cantu Praestatura novas vires incendia poscit; Quem procul abductis vidit c.u.m Ph?bus habenis, Stat subito, dictisque pium solatur alumnum" (_Claudian_).

The sun extinguishes the conflagration, which consumes the ph?nix, and out of which it has to arise once more. At last the ph?nix is born again with the dawn--

"Atque ubi sol pepulit fulgentis lumina portae, Et primi emicuit luminis aura levis, Incipit illa sacri modulamina fundere cantus, Et mira lucem voce ciere novam" (_Lactantius_).

In my opinion, no more proofs are required to demonstrate the ident.i.ty of the ph?nix with the sun of morning and of evening, and, by extension, with that of autumn and of spring. That which was fabled concerning it in antiquity, and by reflection, in the Middle Ages, agrees perfectly with the twofold luminous phenomenon of the sun that dies and is born again every day and every year out of its ashes, and of the hero or heroine who traverses the flames of the burning pyre intact.

The nature of the ph?nix is the same as that of the burning bird (szar-pt.i.tza) of Russian fairy tales, which swallows the dwarf who goes to steal its eggs (the evening aurora swallows the sun).[325]

The solar bird of evening is a bird of prey; it draws to itself with its damp claw; it draws into the darkness of night; it has night behind it; its appearance is charming and its countenance alluring, but the rest of its body is as horrid as its nature.