238 The Birds of Virgil. 



Swans are frequently mentioned by Virgil, as 

 by other Latin and Greek poets. This splendid 

 bird must have been much commoner then 

 throughout Europe than it is now, and accord- 

 ingly attracted much attention. It doubtless 

 abounded in the swampy localities of the north 

 of Italy, and at the mouths of the great rivers 

 of Thrace and Asia Minor, as well as in the 

 north of Europe, where it came to be woven 

 into many a Teutonic fable. Homer has frequent 

 and beautiful allusions to it ; and the town of 

 Clazomenae, at the mouth of the river Hermus, 

 has a swan stamped upon its coins. 



This Swan of the old poets is without any 

 doubt the whooper (Cycnus musicus), whose voice 

 and presence are still well known in Italy and 

 Greece. Virgil had seen it at Mantua, on the 

 watery plain of the Mincius : 



Pascentem niveos herboso flumine cycnos. 1 



And in an admirable simile in the eleventh book 

 of the Aeneid, he likens the stir and dissension in 



1 Whose weedy water feeds the snow-white swan. 



Georg. ii. 199. 



