THE PHOENIX.
Æthiopia and India, more especially, produce birds of diversified
plumage, and such as quite surpass all description. In the front rank of
these is the phoenix,[165] that famous bird of Arabia; though I am not
quite sure that its existence is not all a fable. It is said that there
is only one in existence in the whole world, and that that one has not
been seen very often. We are told that this bird is of the size of an
eagle, and has a brilliant golden plumage around the neck, while the
rest of the body is of a purple color; except the tail, which is azure,
with long feathers intermingled of a roseate hue; the throat is adorned
with a crest, and the head with a tuft of feathers. The first Roman who
described this bird, and who has done so with the greatest exactness,
was the senator Manilius, so famous for his learning, which he owed to
the instructions of no teacher. He tells us that no person has ever seen
this bird eat, that in Arabia it is looked upon as sacred to the sun,
that it lives five hundred and forty years, that when it becomes old it
builds a nest of cassia and sprigs of incense, which it fills with
perfumes, and then lays its body down upon them to die; that from its
bones and marrow there springs at first a sort of small worm, which in
time changes into a little bird: that the first thing that it does is to
perform the obsequies of its predecessor, and to carry the nest entire
to the city of the Sun near Panchaia, and there deposit it upon the
altar of that divinity.
The same Manilius states also, that the revolution of the great
year[166] is completed with the life of this bird, and that then a new
cycle comes round again with the same characteristics as the former one,
in the seasons and the appearance of the stars; and he says that this
begins about mid-day of the day on which the sun enters the sign of
Aries. He also tells us that when he wrote to the above effect, in the
consulship of Licinius and Cornelius, it was the two hundred and
fifteenth year of the said revolution. Cornelius Valerianus says that
the phoenix took its flight from Arabia into Egypt in the consulship of
Plautius and Papinius. This bird was brought to Rome in the censorship
of the Emperor Claudius, being the eight hundredth year from the
building of the City, and it was exposed to public view in the Comitium.
This fact is attested by the public Annals, but there is no one who
supposes that it was a genuine phoenix.