3Q 



BIRDS IN LEGEND 



that "its portrayal with two heads is said to have re- 

 corded the double portion of the spirit bestowed on 

 Elisha." 



Old Mohammedan traditions, according to Dalton, 

 give the name "hamca" to a fabulous creature identical 

 with the bicephalous eagle carved on Hittite rock-faces. 

 Dalton 25 says also that coins with this emblem were 

 struck and issued by Malek el Sala Mohammed, one of 

 the Sassanids, in 1217; and that this figure was engraved 

 in the 13th century by Turkoman princes on the walls 

 of their castles, and embroidered on their battle-flags. 



To the early Greeks the eagle was the messenger of 

 Zeus. If, as asserted, it was the royal cognizance of the 

 Etruscans, it came naturally to the Romans, by whom 

 it was officially adopted for the Republic in 87 B. C, 

 when a silver eagle, standing upright on a spear, its 

 wings half raised, its head in profile to the left, and 

 thunderbolts in its claws, was placed on the military 

 standards borne at the head of all the legions in the 

 army. This was in the second consulship of Caius 

 Marius, who decreed certain other honors to be paid to 

 the bird's image in the Curia. 



One need not accuse the Romans of merely copying the 

 ancient monarchies of the East. If they thought of any- 

 thing beyond the majestic appearance of the noble bird, 

 it was to remember its association with their great god 

 Jupiter — the counterpart of Zeus. Nothing is plainer as 

 to the origin of the ideas that later took shape in the 

 divinities of celestial residence than that Jupiter was the 

 personification of the heavens ; and what is more natural 

 than that the lightnings should be conceived of as his 

 weapons? Once, early in his history, when Jupiter was 

 equipping himself for a battle with the Titans, an eagle 



