THE EAGLES 63 



Four hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ, 

 the Persians, at the battle of Kunaxa, bore into the fight 

 an Eagle raised on a spear, as a standard. Three centuries 

 later the silver eagle standards of the Romans began to 

 overrun the world. They came with Caesar to our own 

 little island, where all was wild heath and marsh and 

 forest, and where the real Eagles screamed at the 

 intruders on their solitudes. In the Middle Ages the 

 shields and banners of this or that king and count and 

 feudal chief began to show the red or the black Eagle 

 emblazoned upon them. Later, Napoleon and his 

 marshals carried the new French "Eagles" right across 

 Europe. And to-day the three great military mon- 

 archies — Russia, Germany, and Austria — have the double- 

 headed Eagle as their emblem, while the great Republic 

 of the New World has chosen this bird as symbol of the 

 ]30wer that guards "the star-spangled banner." All 

 this is proof positive of the reputation which the Eagle 

 bears, and has ever borne, for royal dignity and courage. 



Perhaps a still more striking use of the Eagle as a 

 symbol was shown by the old Romans when they cele- 

 brated the funeral rites of one of their emperors. When 

 the funeral jDile had been built up and set on fire — a 

 mountain of wood, in the midst of which lay the dead 

 body of the man who had ruled the world — it was their 

 custom to let loose, from the pinnacle of the pile, a bird, 

 to represent the soul taking flight from earth to heaven. 

 And the bird that was chosen was always an Eagle : no 

 lesser bird might do, for a Roman emperor. 



Not only the warriors but the poets and teachers of 

 the world have had their eyes upon the Eagle from 

 the earliest times. The writers of the Old Testament 

 have used language about him which we do not easily 



