him feeding; that in Arabia he is held a sacred bird, dedicated unto the sun; that he liveth 660 years, and when he groweth old and begins to decay, he builds himself a nest with the twigs and branches of the canel or cinamon, and frankincense trees; and when he hath filled it with all sort of sweet aromatical spices, yieldeth up his life thereupon. He saith moreover that of his bones and marrow there breeds at first as it were a little worm, which afterwards proveth to be a pretty bird. And the first thing that this young new phoenix doth is to perform the obsequies of the former phoenix late deceased; to translate and carry away his whole nest into the city of the sun near Panchea, and to bestow it full devoutly there upon the altar. The same Manilius affirmeth that the .revolution of the great year so much spoken of, agreeth just with the life of this bird, in which year the stars return again to their first points, and give significations of times and seasons as at the beginning; and withall that this yeare should begin at high noon that very day when the sun entereth the sign Aries: and by his saying, the year of that revolution was by him shewed when P. Licinius and M. Cornelius were consuls. Cornelius Valerianus writeth that whiles Q. Plautius and Sex. Papinius were consuls, the phoenix flew into Egypt. Brought he was hither also to Rome in the time that Claudius Cæsar was censor, to wit in the eight hundredth year from the foundation of Rome; and shewed openly to be seen in a full hall and generall assembly of the people, as appeareth upon the public records: howbeit, no man ever made any doubt but he was a counterfeit phoenix, and no better *."

We shall not go into the particulars of what is said respecting the phoenix by other ancient authors of inferior name, such as Solinus †, who uses nearly the * Holland's Plinie, i, 271.

Polyhist., cap. 46.

same words with Pliny; Ælian*, who marvels how it can calculate the exact number of years at the termination of which it is necessary to build its funeral nest, and how it can fly unerringly to Heliopolis; and Philostratus †, who says the Egyptians sing elegiac hymns at its decease. We shall content ourselves with the notice which has been taken of it by Tacitus:

“Paulus Fabius and Lucius Vitellius succeeded to the consulship (a. u. c. 787, a. d. 34). In the course of the year, the miraculous bird known to the world by the name of the phoenix, after disappearing for a series of ages, revisited Egypt. A phenomenon so very extraordinary could not fail to produce abundance of various speculation. The learning of Egypt was displayed, and Greece exhausted her ingenuity. The facts about which there seems to be a concurrence of opinions, with other circumstances, in their nature doubtful, yet worthy of notice, will not be unwelcome to the reader.

"That the phoenix is sacred to the sun, and differs from the rest of the feathered species, in the form of its head and the tincture of its plumage, are points settled by the naturalists. Of its longevity the accounts are various. The common persuasion is that it lives five hundred years, though by some writers the date is extended to fourteen hundred and sixtyone. The several eras when the phoenix has been seen are fixed by tradition. The first, we are told, was in the reign of Sesostris; the second in that of Amasis; and in the period when Ptolemy, the third of the Macedonian race, was seated on the throne of Egypt, another phoenix directed its flight towards Heliopolis, attended by a group of various birds, all attracted by the novelty, and gazing with wonder at so beautiful an appearance. For the truth of this *De Animalibus, vi. 58. † De Vit. Apollon. iii.

account we do not presume to answer.

The facts lie

too remote; and covered, as they are, with the mists of antiquity, all further argument is suspended.

"From the reign of Ptolemy to Tiberius, the intermediate space is not quite two hundred and fifty years. From that circumstance it has been inferred by many that the last phoenix was neither of the genuine kind, nor came from the woods of Arabia. The instinctive qualities of the species were not observed to direct its motions. It is the genius, we are told, of the true phoenix, when its course of years is finished, and the approach of death is felt, to build a nest in its native clime, and there deposit the principles of life, from which a new progeny arises. The first care of the young bird, as soon as fledged and able to trust to its wings, is to perform the obsequies of his father. But this duty is not undertaken rashly. He collects a quantity of myrrh, and to try his strength, makes frequent excursions with a load on his back. When he has made his experience through a long tract of air, and gains sufficient confidence in his own vigour, he takes up the body of his father, and flies with it to the altar of the sun, where he leaves it to be consumed in flames of fragrance. Such is the account of this extraordinary bird. It has, no doubt, a mixture of fable; but that the phoenix from time to time appears in Egypt, seems to be a fact sufficiently ascertained *"

After this statement we deem it superfluous to quote writers of inferior note, such as Pomponius Mela, who talks of its "being regenerated," and "carrying its own bones to Heliopolist;" or Horus Apollo, who says it "dashes itself on the ground till it is wounded, and another phoenix is generated from the blood thus shed." Nor shall we detail all the

* Tacitus, Hist. by Murphy, vi. 28.

+ De Litu Orbis, iii. 9.

Hieroglyphicis, i. 33.

fanciful descriptions to be met with in the works of the ancient Fathers, who, as Mariana, the Spanish historian, remarks, considered its alleged appearance, in the reign of Tiberius, as a prognostic of the Resurrection, because it revives out of its own ashes. The following will, we think, satisfy the curious in this respect:

"St. Ambrose, in Exameron, saith, of the humour or ashes of phoenix ariseth a new bird and wexeth, and, in space of time, he is clothed with feathers and wings, and restored into the kind of a bird, and is the most fairest bird that is, most like to the peacock in feathers, and loveth wilderness, and gathereth his meat of clean grains and fruits. Alanus speaketh of this bird and saith, that when the highest bishop Onyas had builded a temple in the city of Heliopoly in Egypt to the likeness of the temple of Jerusalem, and the first day of Easter, when he had gathered much sweet-smelling wood, and set it on fire upon the altar, to offer sacrifice to all men's sight; such a bird came suddenly, and fell into the middle of the fire, and was brent anon to ashes in the fire of the sacrifice; and the ashes abode there, and was besely kept and saved by the commandment of the priest: and, within three days of these ashes, was bred a little worm, that took the shape of a bird at the last, and flew into the wilderness *'

This account of a worm being generated out of the ashes of a sacrifice and afterwards becoming a bird, is precisely similar to the directions given by Virgil and Columella for the generation of bees from dead carcases, which originated in an imperfect knowledge of the natural history of insects; while

* Bartholomew Glantville, de Propriet. Rerum, translated by Trevisa, fol. clxx. Black letter, Wynkyn de Worde, London, 1498.

This may be seen explained at length in 'Insect Transformations', pp. 1-10.

the appearance of a bird alighting on the altar must have obviously arisen from some eagle or vulture pouncing upon the carcase of the animal sacrificed, a circumstance, we should imagine, of occasional occurrence when altars were situated in the open air, and which, in Greece or Rome, instead of the bird being considered a phoenix, would have been hailed as an avatar (if we may borrow the Brahminical term) of Jupiter himself. That such were the circumstances which, in process of time, were worked up into the fabulous and fanciful stories of the phoenix we have not a doubt; and it appears to us that this is the only plausible and rational explanation which can be given, though a vast deal of learning and no little ingenuity has been expended in support of other views.

Deusing*, for example, as well as Kirchmayer † and Laurenberg, concludes that the phoenix was nothing else than a hieroglyphic character, signifying that the study and knowledge of the heavenly bodies originated in Phoenicia, the golden colour of the head denoting the stars, and the variegated body the earth, and so of the other parts. In the Introduction, again, to the Latin Translation of Pennant's Indian Zoology, by the late Dr. Rheinhold Forster, we are gravely told that the phoenix means the conversion of the great year; because Pliny says the conversion of the great year corresponds with the life of the phoenix; and Horapollo says the Egyptian priests paint the phoenix as an emblem of the great year. The author, therefore, concludes by saying, Every common year is a year of God; and the great year the sun of time, which, in the Egyptian language, would be Dsphenoeisch, and, on account + Disputat. Zoologica, Acerra, Philol. Cent, Secuud. Hist. xvii,

66

*Dissertatio de Phoenice.