Chap. 3.] EAGLES. 481 



then a new cycle comes round again with the same characte- 

 ristics as the former one, in the seasons and the appearance of 

 the stars ; and he says that this begins about mid-day of the 

 day on which the sun enters the sign of Aries. He also tells 

 us that when he wrote to the above effect, in the consulship 15 

 of P. Licinius and Cneius Cornelius, it was the two hundred 

 and fifteenth year of the said revolution. Cornelius Valerianus 

 says that the phoenix took its flight from Arabia into Egypt 

 in the consulship 16 of Q. Plautius and Sextus Papinius. This 

 bird was brought to Rome in the censorship of the Emperor 

 Claudius, being the year from the building of the City, 800, 

 and it was exposed to public view in the Comitium. 17 This 

 fact is attested by the public Annals, but there is no one that 

 doubts that it was a fictitious phoenix only. 



CHAP. 3. (3.) THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF EAGLES. 



Of all the birds with which we are acquainted, the eagle is 

 looked upon as the most noble, and the most remarkable for 

 its strength. There are six 18 different kinds; the one called 

 "melanaetos" 19 by the Greeks, and " Valeria" in our language, 



ration of all things at the moment at which the planets and the stars would 

 return to the same primitive situation with regard to the ecliptic, or in 

 other words, they conceived an immense period, which would include one 

 or more complete revolutions of each of the planets. All these periods 

 were called the * great year,' or the ' great revolution.' " Histoire de 

 T Astronomic Ancienne. 



15 A.U.C. 657. 16 A.U.C. 789. 



17 A public .place in the Forum, where the comitia curiata were held, 

 and certain offences tried and punished. 



18 Cuvier remarks, that this passage is borrowed, with some changes, 

 from Aristotle's " History of Animals,"B. ix. c. 32, but that the account given 

 by Pliny is not very easily explained, from the fact that the word eagle is 

 not used by him in a rigorous acceptation of the word. Indeed it is only 

 at the present day that any accurate knowledge has been obtained as to 

 the different species of eagles, and the changes of colour to which they 

 are subject with the advance of age ; circumstances which have caused the 

 species of them to be multiplied by naturalists. It is very doubtful, 

 he says, whether Aristotle has distinguished the various kinds any better 

 than Pliny ; although Buffon, who himself was not very successful in 

 distinguishing them, says that Aristotle understood more on the subject 

 than the moderns. 



19 MtXavat rag, or the " black eagle." Cuvier says, that this description 

 is copied exactly from Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. ix. c. 32. This eagle, he 

 says, cannot be, as is commonly supposed, the " common eagle." It can 

 only be, he thinks, the "small " eagle, the female of which, according to 



YOL. II. II. 



