HKB
are produced from the middle portion of an egg? There are some who believe that human marrow changes into a serpent,[44] when the spine has putrefied in the enclosed sepulchre.
“But these {which I have named} derive their origin from other particulars; there is one bird which renews and reproduces itself. The Assyrians call it the Phœnix. It lives not on corn or grass, but on drops of frankincense, and the juices of the amomum. This {bird}, when it has completed the five ages of its life, with its talons and its crooked beak constructs for itself a nest in the branches of a holm-oak, or on the top of a quivering palm. As soon as it has strewed in this cassia and ears of sweet spikenard and bruised cinnamon with yellow myrrh, it lays itself down on it, and finishes its life in the midst of odours. They say that thence, from the body of its parent, is reproduced a little Phœnix, which is destined to live as many years. When time has given it strength, and it is able to bear the weight, it lightens the branches of the lofty tree of the burden of the nest, and dutifully carries both its own cradle and the sepulchre of its parent; and, having reached the city of Hyperion through the yielding air, it lays it down before the sacred doors in the temple of Hyperion.
“And if there is any wondrous novelty in these things, {still more} may we be surprised that the hyæna changes its sex,[45] and that the one which has just now, as a female, submitted to the embrace of the male, is now become a male itself. That animal, too, which feeds upon[46] the winds and the air, immediately assumes, from its contact, any colour whatever. Conquered India presented her lynxes to Bacchus crowned with clusters; {and}, as they tell, whatever the bladder of these discharges is changed into stone,[47] and hardens by contact with the air. So coral, too, as soon as it has come up to the air becomes hard; beneath the waves it was a soft plant.[48] “The day will fail me, and Phœbus will bathe his panting steeds in the deep sea, before I can embrace in my discourse all things that are changed into new forms. So in lapse of time, we see nations change, and these gaining strength, {while} those are falling. So Troy was great, both in her riches and her men, and for ten years could afford so much blood; {whereas}, now laid low, she only shows her ancient ruins, and, instead of her wealth, {she points at} the tombs of her ancestors. Sparta was famed;[49] great Mycenæ flourished; so, too, the citadel of Cecrops, and that of Amphion. {Now} Sparta is a contemptible spot; lofty Mycenæ is laid low. What now is Thebes, the city of Œdipus, but a {mere} story? What remains of Athens, the city of Pandion, but its name?