84 THE SWALLOW 



lows appeared to him and warned him of 

 defeat. And he also writes in his account 

 of his times that both the kings, Darius and 

 Antiochus, were forewarned by swallows not 

 to engage in battle. 



Some swallows, by building their nests in 

 the sails of the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra's 

 barge, foretold the death of her lover, Mark 

 Antony. It is to this same ancient swallow 

 superstition that Shakespeare alludes in his 

 Antony and Cleopatra, when he makes 

 Scarus say (IV, lo): — 



Swallows have built 

 In Cleopatra's sails their nests ; the augurers 

 Say they know not, — they cannot tell, — look grimly, 

 And dare not speak their knowledge. 



A famous Roman consul named Hostilius 

 Mancinus was also warned of defeat by a 

 swallow resting among the sails of hi§ 

 galley. 



We read in an old history, and in a pretty 

 Italian poem, a tale of how Olaf the Great, a 

 king of Denmark, destroyed the city of 



