34 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



Empire became the heritage of the Austrian house of 

 Hapsburg which had succeeded the German Hohen- 

 stauffens; and to Sigismund, head of the house in that 

 century, is ascribed the design in the Austrian arms of 

 the two-headed eagle, looking right and left, as if to 

 signify boastfully that he ruled both East and West. 

 These were relative and indefinite domains, but as he 

 had, by his crowning at Rome, received at least nominal 

 sovereignty over the fragmentary remains in Greece of 

 the ancient Eastern Empire, he was perhaps justified in 

 adopting the Byzantine ensign as "captured colors'* ; but 

 a rival was soon to present a stronger claim to these 

 fragments and their badge. 



In this same period, that is in the middle of the 15th 

 century, Ivan the Great of Russia was striving with high 

 purpose and despotic strength to bring back under one 

 sway the divided house of Muscovy, together with what- 

 ever else he could obtain. To further this purpose he 

 married, in 1472, Sophia Paleologos, niece of the last 

 Byzantine emperor, getting with her Greece and hence a 

 barren title to the throne of the Eastern empire — a barren 

 title because its former domain was now over-run by the 

 Turks, but very important in the fact that it included 

 the headship of the Greek, or Orthodox, Church. From 

 this time Russia as well as Austria has borne a two-faced 

 eagle on its escutcheon; and, although both birds are 

 from the same political nest, the feeling between them 

 has been far from brotherly. 



It may be remarked here, parenthetically, that in Egypt 

 the cult of the kingly eagle never flourished, for the 

 griffon vulture, "far-sighted, ubiquitous, importunate," 

 became the grim emblem of royal power; and a smaller 

 vulture {Neophron pcrcnopterus) is called Pharaoh's 



