CHAP. I.] AGENTS OF SUPERSTITION. 21 



Venus, for a hymn of love 

 "Warbled in her votive grove, 

 ('T was in sooth a gentle day,) 

 Gave me to the bard away. 

 See me now his faithful minion ; 

 Thus with softly-gliding pinion, 

 To his lovely girl I bear 

 Songs of passion through the air." 



The birds which had been found so subservient as 

 messengers of love were likely to be employed as ac- 

 cessories to the commission of witchcraft ; and Julian 

 gives us reason to suspect, that many of the marvel- 

 lous revelations of second sight, at least, may be ex- 

 plained by supposing the seers to have employed the 

 agency of Carrier Pigeons. 



" Some say that the victory of Taurosthenes at Olym- 

 pia was made known in one day to his father, at ^Egina, 

 by a vision : but others say, that Taurosthenes carried 

 a Pigeon away with him, making her leave her young ones 

 still tender and unfledged, and that having obtained the 

 victory, he sent off the bird, after attaching a piece of 

 something purple to her ; and that she, hastening to her 

 young, returned in one day from Pissa to .ZEgina." * It is 

 to be here noted that ^Elian uses the synonyms H-E^IOTE^* 

 and Trs^Eia to denote the same individual bird. 



In his treatise on Animals, Book iv. 2, there is 

 another curious story of Pigeons being absent for a 

 time from their haunts in Eryce in Sicily, where was 

 a famous temple of Venus, and of their being regu- 

 larly led back after a stated interval, by a purple 7ro%- 

 (pvgea, Dove. The tale is unintelligible, unless we sup- 



* Var. Hist. ix. 2. 



