UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA MEDICAL CENTER LIBRARY SAN FRANCISCO FROM THBJLreWTRY OF THE LATE PAN S. CODELLAS, M.D. rr^r s*~ - GLOSSARY OF GREEK BIRDS Bonbon HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE AMEN CORNER, E.G. MACMILLAN & CO., 66 FIFTH AVENUE Fro. I. FIG. 2. FIG. 3. FIG. FIG. 5. FIG. 6. FRONTISPIECE. ILLUSTRATIONS. i. PARTHIAN FIG. AN ARCHAIC GEM, PROBABLY (Paris Coll., 1264,2 ; cf. Imhoof-Blumer und Keller, PI. xxi, 14). FIG. 2. TETRADRACHM OF ERETRIA (B. M. Cat., Central Or., PI. xxiii, i). Both these subjects represent a bird on a bull's (or cow's) back, in my opinion the pleiad in relation to the sign Taurus (vide infra, p. 31). In 2 is to the in r it is in Fig. the bull turning round, symbolize tropic ; Fig. the conventional kneeling attitude of the constellation Taurus, as Aratus describes it (Ph. 517) Tavpov 5f ateeXfcov oaarj irepityaiveTai oK\a, or in Cicero's translation ' Atque genu flexo Taurus connititur ingens.' Compare also, among other kindred types, the coins of Paphos, showing a bull with the winged solar disc on or over his back {Rev. Num., 1883, p. 355; Head, H. Numorum, p. 624, &c.). FIGS. 3, 4. A COIN OF AGRIGENTUM, WITH EAGLE AND CRAB (Head, H. Niimorum, p. 105). Aquila, which is closely associated with i. as Cancer rises : it Capricorn (cf. Manil. 624), sets may figure, therefore, as a solstitial sign. FIG. 5. COIN OF HlMERA, BEFORE B.C. 842, WITH THE COCK (Head, cf. H. Numorum, p. 125 ; infra, p. 26). FIG. 6. ATHENIAN TETRADRACHM, WITH OWL, OLIVE-TWIG, AND CRESCENT MOON (Head, p. 312; cf. infra, p. 46). FIG. 7 (on title]. DECADRACHM OF AGRIGENTUM. Cf. Aesch. Agam. 1 10-120 (vide infra, p. 8). The reverse of the coin shows Cancer associated with the solar Quadriga. A GLOSSARY OF GREEK BIRDS BY D'ARCY WENTWORTH THOMPSON PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DUNDEE OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M DCCC XCV PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS KY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY PRINTED IN GREAT BR1TA Collection THI riATPI X0ONOZ APTEIAZ APOTHPI KAPflON HN MOTE EZHEIPE -J 3 OAAYZIA ATTA 0EPIZAZ AnOAIAHMI 91807 RES ARDUA, VETUSTIS NOVITATEM DARE, NOVIS AUCTORI- TATEM, OBSOLETIS NITOREM, OBSCURIS LUCEM, FASTIDITIS GRATIAM, DUBIIS FIDEM. PLINY. TTOAAOCJN TG KA\ AAA03N TOIOyTOON 6QTI HAH0OC A N role HAAAioTc, onep ef TIC BoyAHGem QYNAfAreTN, eic AN MHKOC 6KTei'N6l TON AOfON.- NEMES., De Nat. PREFACE THIS book contains materials for research in greater measure than it the results of it presents ; and, accordingly, it is not my purpose to preface it with an extended summary of the many wide generalizations to which the assemblage of fact and legend here recorded may seem to lead. This book indeed includes only a small part of the notes I have gathered together since I began years ago, as an under- graduate, ignorant of the difficulties of the task, to prepare the way for a new edition of the Natural History of the Philosopher. Three points, however, in my treatment of the present subject deserve brief explanation here. Instead of succeeding in the attempt to identify a greater number of species than other naturalist-commentators, dealing chiefly with the Aristotelian birds, have done, I have on the contrary ventured to identify a great many less. This limita- tion on my part is chiefly due to the circumstance that I have not ventured to use for purposes of identification a large class of statements on which others have more or less confidently relied. A single instance may serve to indicate the state- ments to which I allude. In the Historia Animalium (especially in the Ninth Book, great part of which seems to me to differ in character and probably in authorship from all but a few isolated passages of the rest of the work), in the works of such later writers as Pliny, Aelian and Phile, and scattered here and there in earlier literary allusions, we find many instances recorded of supposed hostility or friendship between different animals. When we are told, Xll PREFACE for example, that avOos is hostile to anavOk and to the Horse, to that TTITTW is hostile to iroutA.1?, to Kopi>5coi>, to \Xapevs and another epooSto's, that one Hawk is hostile to the Raven and to the Dove, and one Eagle to the Goose or to the Swan, we try at first to use these statements as best we can in unravelling the probable identification of the respective species. But when we find, for instance, among the rest that the Owl is hostile to the Crow, and when we recognize in that statement the ancient Eastern fable of the War of the Owls and Crows, we are tempted to reject the whole mass of such statements and to refuse them entry into the domain of Zoological Science. While former commentators have, with greater or less caution, rejected many fables, they have often rashly accepted many others. And I fear for my part that I in turn, while rejecting a much greater number, have perhaps also erred in ascribing a fabulous or mystical meaning to too few. For many such statements, and for others equally unin- telligible in the terms of Natural History, I offer a novel and, at first sight, a somewhat startling explanation : to wit, that very many of them deserve not a zoological but an astronomical interpretation. In the spring of 1894 I read to the Royal Society of * Edinburgh a paper (which I have not yet printed) on Bird and Beast in Ancient Symbolism'. In that essay I sought to demonstrate the astronomic symbolism of certain ancient monuments, especially of the great bas-relief of Cybele in 1 of the beast and bird- the Hermitage Museum ; secondly, emblems of classical 2 and of certain fables coinage ; lastly, or myths of the philosophers and poets. 1 This monument, a figure of which is accessible in Miss J. E. Harrison's Mythology of Ancient Athens, represents, according to my view, the ancient tropics of Leo and Aquarius, with Taurus and Leo in symbolic combat in the frieze below. 2 The identical theory, in so far as it applies to numismatic emblems, was pro- mulgated a few months afterwards by M. Jean Svoronos in a learned and scholarly paper, to be found in the Bulletin de Correspondence Hellenique for 1894; but the theory was not so novel as M. Svoronos and I supposed it to be. In con- nexion with coins or gems, it is explicitly and admirably stated by Gorius, De PREFACE Xlll Many illustrations of this theory of mine will be found 1 in the pages of this Glossary . Suffice it to say here, in briefest illustration, that the Eagle which attacks the Swan and is in turn defeated by it, is, according to my view, the constellation Aquila, which rises in the East immediately after Cygnus, but, setting in the West, goes down a little while before that more northern constellation that Haliaetus ; and Ciris are the Sun and Moon in opposition, which rise and set alternately, like the opposite constellations of Scorpio and Orion with which the poet compares them. Among many other opinions and testimonies to the same effect, let us listen to the words of a Father of the Church : ' The ancients believed that the legends about Osiris and Isis, and all other mythological fables [of a kindred sort], have reference either to the Stars, their configuration, their risings and their settings, or to the wax and wane of the Moon, or to the cycle of the Sun, or to the diurnal and nocti-diurnal hemispheres V The proof and the acceptance of such a theory as this are linked with considerations far-reaching in their interest. The theory has its bearing on our new knowledge of the orientation of temple-walls; it helps to explain what Quintilian meant when he said that acquaintance with Astronomy was essential to an of the Poets the understanding ; wide-spread astronomic knowledge which it presupposes may account for the singular interest in and admiration of the didactic poem of Aratus, the poem translated by Germanicus and Cicero and St. Paul and the whole to quoted by ; hypothesis points a broad distinction between two great orders of Myth. Myths are spontaneous or literary, natural or artificial. Some come to us from the Childhood of Religion and the Childhood of the World it ; dream-pictures as were from the half-opening eyes of awakening intelligence, archaic traces of the and of and men these thoughts ways primitive simple ; Gemmis and a kindred but in to Astriferis, 1750 ; exaggerated development, regard legend, of the same hypothesis forms the method of Dupuis. 1 Cf. pp. 8, 28, 31, 63, 107, 121, 132, 192, &c. 3 Euseb, Pr. Ev. iii. c. 4. XIV PREFACE are the folk-lore tales and customs that are presented to us by the school of Mannhardt. But others, and these for the most part are astronomic myths, belonging to a relatively later age, were artificially invented of the wise, to adorn, or conceal their store of had their preserve, learning ; they birth in cultured homes of deep religion, of treasured science, of exalted poetry. Both orders of Myth come to us with the glamour of antiquity, and each has for us a diverse but perennial interest : d <TTa<pv\\s <TTa(j)is eVri, KOI ov p68ov avov oXemu. The distinction between these two orders of Myth was out an ancient critic l he drew the dis- pointed long ago by ; tinction clearly, but the tales of folk-lore, puerile in his eyes, found no echo of sympathy in the old scholar's heart.