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III. — On Bird and Beast in Ancient Symbolism. By Professor D'Arcy 



Wentworth Thompson, Jr. 



(Read 4th June 1894.) 



I 



The following essay, except for one or two slight corrections and additions which 

 I have since interpolated, was read before the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh in June 

 1894. Very shortly thereafter, M. Jean Svoronos published in the Bulletin de 

 Correspondance HelMnique (Janv.-Juillet, 1894) a learned pa.per " Sur la signification 

 des types monetaires des anciens," in which he demonstrated with an elaborate 

 wealth of illustration the astronomic significance of many coin-types, the precise 

 point that the greater part of this essay of mine was written to prove. Beginning 

 with coins on which a beast- or bird-emblem is figured together with the symbol of 

 a star, and passing on to others where the star-symbol is omitted, M. Svoronos 

 shows clearly that in a very varied series of coin-types, the Lion, the Bull, 

 the Eagle, the Horse, and so forth, represent not merely these creatures themselves, 

 but their stellar namesakes : in short, that, in more or less obscure and occult 

 shapes, astronomic emblems are imprinted on a vast range of ancient coins, 

 just as in open and acknowledged forms they are visible, for instance, on the 

 coins of Antoninus Pius. So clearly is all this put forward by M. Svoronos that 

 my paper might well have remained unpublished were it not that I think I take 

 the case somewhat further than he does. For, whereas M. Svoronos is content to 

 demonstrate the symbols of individual constellations, I have attempted also in certain 

 cases to show that the associated emblems correspond to the positions relative to 

 one another of the heavenly bodies, in some cases to the configuration of the sky 

 at critical periods of the year or at the festival seasons of the cities to which the 

 coins belong. In some other respects, also, I have attempted to carry to a further 

 issue the general considerations suggested by the astronomic hypothesis. 



In a Glossary of Greek Birds now passing through the press, I have indicated, so far 

 as the scope of the work and the size of the book permit me, certain astronomical 

 phenomena which seem to me to be veiled or symbolised in art and in literature 

 in connection with certain bird-names. The present essay deals with the same 

 hypothesis in greater detail, and adduces a somewhat different set of illustrations in 

 support of it. 



VOL. XXXVIII. PART I. (NO. 3). 2 A 



