480 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORT. [Book X. 



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 colour ; 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 Eoman who described this bird, and who 

 has done so with the greatest exactness, was the senator Ma- 

 nilius, so famous for his learning ; which he owed, too, 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 " is completed with the life of this bird, and that 



^1 Borrowed from Herodotus, B. ii. c. 73. 



12 Tiie MSS. vary considerably as to tbe number. Some make it 540 

 years, others 511, others 40, and others 560. 



13 Mentioned also^ B. vii. c. 57, 



1* 532 years, according to Hardouin. Bailly says ; " The first men who 

 studied the heavens remarked that the revolution of the sun brought back 

 the seasons in the same order. They thought that they observed that cer- 

 tain variations of the temperature depended upon the aspect of the moon, 

 and attached different prognostics to the rising and setting of the stars, 



{lersuading themselves that the vicissitudes of things here below had regu- 

 ated periods, like the movements of the heavenly bodies. From this arose 

 the impression, that the same aspect, the same arrangement of all the stars, 

 that had prevailed at the commencement of the world, would also attend 

 its destruction ; and that the period of this long revolution was the predes- 

 tined duration of the life of nature. Another impression was the idea that 

 the world would only perish at this epoch to be born again, and for the 

 same order of things to recommence with the same series of celestial phe- 

 nomena. Some fixed this universal renovation at the conjunction of all the 

 planets, others at the return of the stars to the same point of the ecliptic ; 

 others, uniting these two kinds of revolutions, marked the term of the du- 



