The same Manilius states also, that the revolution of the great year[2891] is completed with the life of this bird, and that then a new cycle comes round again with the same characteristics as the former one, in the seasons and the appearance of the stars; and he says that this begins about mid-day of the day on which the sun enters the sign of Aries. He also tells us that when he wrote to the above effect, in the consulship[2892] of P. Licinius and Cneius Cornelius, it was the two hundred and fifteenth year of the said revolution. Cornelius Valerianus says that the phœnix took its flight from Arabia into Egypt in the consulship[2893] of Q. Plautius and Sextus Papinius. This bird was brought to Rome in the censorship of the Emperor Claudius, being the year from the building of the City, 800, and it was exposed to public view in the Comitium.[2894] This fact is attested by the public Annals, but there is no one that doubts that it was a fictitious phœnix only. CHAP. 3. (3.)—THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF EAGLES. Of all the birds with which we are acquainted, the eagle is looked upon as the most noble, and the most remarkable for its strength. There are six[2895] different kinds; the one called “melanaetos”[2896] by the Greeks, and “valeria” in our language, the least in size of them all, but the most remarkable for its strength, is of a blackish colour. It is the only one among all the eagles that feeds its young; for the others, as we shall mention just now, drive them away; it is the only one too that has neither cry nor murmur; it is an inhabitant of the mountains. The second kind is the pygargus,[2897] an inhabitant of the cities and plains, and distinguished by the whiteness of its tail. The third is the morphnos,[2898] which Homer also calls the “percnos,” while others, again, call it the “plangus” and the “anataria;” it is the second in size and strength, and dwells in the vicinity of lakes. Phemonoë, who was styled the “daughter of Apollo,” has stated that this eagle has teeth, but that it has neither voice nor tongue; she says also that it is the blackest of all the eagles, and has a longer tail than the rest; Bœus is of the same opinion. This eagle has the instinct to break the shell of the tortoise by letting it fall from aloft, a circumstance which caused the death of the poet Æschylus. An oracle, it is said, had predicted his death on that day by the fall of a house, upon which he took the precaution of trusting himself only under the canopy of the heavens.