“Ἔστι δε καὶ ἄλλος ὄμνις,” κ. τ. λ. “There is another sacred bird, named the Phœnix, which I myself never saw except in picture; for according to the people of Heliopolis, it seldom makes its appearance among them, only once in every 500 years. They state that he comes on the death of his sire. If at all like the picture, this bird may be thus described both in size and shape. Some of his feathers are of the colour of gold; others are red. In outline he is exceedingly similar to the Eagle, and in size also. This bird is said to display an ingenuity of contrivance which to me does not seem credible: he is represented as coming out of Arabia and bringing with him his father, embalmed in myrrh, to the temple of the Sun, and there burying him. The following is the manner in which this is done. First of all he sticks together an egg of myrrh, as much as he can carry, and then if he can bear the burden, this experiment being achieved, he scoops out the egg sufficiently to deposit his sire within; next he fills with fresh myrrh the opening in the egg, by which the body was enclosed; thus the whole mass containing the carcase is still of the same weight. The embalming being completed, he transports him into Egypt and to the temple of the Sun.” Pliny’s account is brief (bk. xiii. ch. iv.),— “The bird Phœnix is supposed to have taken that name from the date tree, which in Greek is called φοῖνιξ; for the assurance was made me that the said bird died with the tree, and of itself revived when the tree again sprouted forth.” Numerous indeed are the authorities of old to the same or a similar purport. They are nearly all comprised in the introductory dissertation of Joachim Camerarius to his device of the Phœnix, and include about eighteen classic writers, ten of the Greek and Latin Fathers, and three modern writers of the sixteenth century. Appended to the works of Lactantius, an eloquent Christian Father of the latter part of the third century, there is a _Carmen De Phœnice_,—“Song concerning the Phœnix,”—in elegiac verse, which contains very many of the old tales and legends of “the Arabian bird,” and describes it as,— “_Ipsa sibi proles, suus est pater, & suus hæres: Nutrix ipsa sui, semper alumna sibi._” “She to herself offspring is, and her own father, and her own heir: Nurse is she of herself, and ever her own foster daughter.” (See _Lactantii Opera, studio Gallæi_, Leyden, 8vo. 1660, pp. 904–923.)