The Eagle 
The eagle was credited not only with a 
wonderful strength of vision, but also with 
a remarkable length of life. This belief 
is alluded to by the churlish philosopher 
who demands of Timon 
Will these moss’d trees, 
That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels, 
And skip where thou point’st out ?! 
Shakespeare, when he likens the orders 
of human society to the various grades 
among the birds, compares the leaders 
to eagles, and the commonalty to birds 
of a less reputable kind. The haughty 
Coriolanus stigmatises the Roman plebs as 
a rabble that 
Will in time 
Break ope the locks o’ the Senate, and bring in 
The crows to peck the eagles.” 
Pandarus, not less contemptuous of the 
populace of Troy, affirms that “the eagles 
are gone,” and that there are left only 
“crows and daws, crows and daws,”’? The 
1 Timon of Athens, wv. iil, 222. 
2 Coriolanus, ut. i. 136. * Troilus and Cressida, 1. ii. 235. 
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