Age of Fable or Beauties of Mythology

by Thomas Bulfinch

And shot a dayspring into distant climes,

  Ennobling every region that he chose;

  He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose,

  And, tedious years of Gothic darkness past,

  Emerged all splendor in our isle at last.

  Thus lovely Halcyons dive into the main,

  Then show far off their shining plumes again."

  Ovid.

  Often alluded to in poetry by his other name of Naso, was born in the year 43 B.

  C. He was educated for public life and held some offices of considerable dignity, but

  poetry was his delight, and he early resolved to devote himself to it. He accordingly

  sought the society of the contemporary poets, and was acquainted with Horace and saw

  Virgil, though the latter died when Ovid was yet too young and undistinguished to have

  formed his acquaintance. Ovid spent an easy life at Rome in the enjoyment of a

  competent income. He was intimate with the family of Augustus, the emperor, and it is

  supposed that some serious offence given to some member of that family was the cause

  of an event which reversed the poet's happy circumstances and clouded all the latter

  portion of his life. At the age of fifty he was banished from Rome, and ordered to betake

  himself to Tomi, on the borders of the Black Sea. Here, among the barbarous people

  and in a severe climate, the poet, who had been accustomed to all the pleasures of a

  luxurious capital and the society of his most distinguished contemporaries, spent the last

  ten years of his life, worn out with grief and anxiety. His only consolation in exile was to

  address his wife and absent friends, and his letters were all poetical. Though these

  poems (the Tristia and Letters from Pontus) have no other topic than the poet's sorrows,

  his exquisite taste and fruitful invention have redeemed them from the charge of being

  tedious, and they are read with pleasure and even with sympathy.

  The two great works of Ovid are his Metamorphoses and his Fasti. They are

  both mythological poems, and from the former we have taken most of our stories of

  Grecian and Roman mythology. A late writer thus characterizes these poems: -

  "The rich mythology of Greece furnished Ovid, as it may still furnish the poet, the

  painter, and the sculptor, with materials for his art. With exquisite taste, simplicity, and

  pathos he has narrated the fabulous traditions of early ages, and given to them that

  appearance of reality which only a master-hand could impart. His pictures of nature are

  striking and true; he selects with care that which is appropriate; he rejects the

  superfluous; and when he has completed his work, it is neither defective nor redundant.

  The Metamorphoses are read with pleasure by youth, and are re-read in more advanced

  age with still greater delight. The poet ventured to predict that his poem would survive

  him, and be read wherever the Roman name was known."

  The prediction above alluded to is contained in the closing lines of the

  Metamorphoses, of which we give a literal translation below: -

  "And now I close my work, which not the ire

  Of Jove, nor tooth of time, nor sword, nor fire

  Shall bring to nought. Come when it will that day

  Which o'er the body, not the mind, has sway,

  And snatch the remnant of my life away,

  My better part above the stars shall soar,

  And my renown endure forevermore.

  Where'er the Roman arms and arts shall spread,

  There by the people shall my book be read;

  And, if aught true in poet's visions be,

  My name and fame have immortality."

  Chapter XXXVI: Modern Monsters

  The Phoenix - Basilisk - Unicorn - Salamander.

  Modern Monsters.

  There is a set of imaginary beings which seem to have been the successors of

  the "Gorgons, Hydras, and Chimeras dire" of the old superstitions, and, having no

  connection with the false gods of Paganism, to have continued to enjoy an existence in

  the popular belief after Paganism was superseded by Christianity. They are

  mentioned perhaps by the classical writers, but their chief popularity and currency

  seem to have been in more modern times. We seek our accounts of them not so

  much in the poetry of the ancients, as in the old natural history books and narrations of

  travellers. The accounts which we are about to give are taken chiefly from the Penny

  Cyclopedia.

  The Phoenix.

  Ovid tells the story of the Phoenix as follows. "Most beings spring from other

  individuals; but there is a certain kind which reproduces itself. The Assyrians call it the

  Phoenix. It does not live on fruit or flowers, but on frankincense and odoriferous gums.

  When it has lived five hundred years, it builds itself a nest in the branches of an oak, or

  on the top of a palm tree. In this it collects cinnamon, and spikenard, and myrrh, and of

  these materials builds a pile on which it deposits itself, and dying, breathes out its last

  breath amidst odors. From the body of the parent bird, a young Phoenix issues forth,

  destined to live as long a life as its predecessor. When this has grown up and gained

  sufficient strength, it lifts its nest from the tree, (its own cradle and its parent's

  sepulchre,) and carries it to the city of Heliopolis in Egypt, and deposits it in the temple

  of the Sun."

  Such is the account given by a poet. Now let us see that of a philosophic

  historian. Tacitus says, "In the consulship of Paulus Fabius, (A. D. 34,) the miraculous

  bird known to the world by the name of the Phoenix, after disappearing for a series of

  ages, revisited Egypt. It was attended in its flight by a group of various birds, all

  attracted by the novelty, and gazing with wonder at so beautiful an appearance." He

  then gives an account of the bird, not varying materially from the preceding, but adding

  some details. "The first care of the young bird as soon as fledged, and able to trust to

  his wings, is, to perform the obsequies of his father. But this duty is not undertaken

  rashly. He collects a quantity of myrrh, and to try his strength makes frequent

  excursions with a load on his back. When he has gained sufficient confidence in his

  own vigor, he takes up the body of his father and flies with it to the altar of the Sun,

  where he leaves it to be consumed in flames of fragrance." Other writers add a few

  particulars. The myrrh is compacted in the form of an egg, in which the dead Phoenix

  is enclosed. From the mouldering flesh of the dead bird a worm springs, and this

  worm, when grown large, is transformed into a bird. Herodotus describes the bird,

  though he says, "I have not seen it myself, except in a picture. Part of his plumage is

  gold- colored, and part crimson; and he is for the most part very much like an eagle in

  outline and bulk."

  The first writer who disclaimed a belief in the existence of the Phoenix, was Sir

  Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," published in 1646. He was replied to a few

  years later by Alexander Ross, who says, in answer to the objection of the Phoenix so

  seldom making his appearance, "His instinct teaches him to keep out of the way of the

  tyrant of the creation, man, for if he were to be got at, some wealthy glutton would

  surely devour him, though there were no more in the world."

  Dryden in one of his early poems has this allusion to the Phoenix: -

  "
So when the new-born Phoenix first is seen

  Her feathered subjects all adore their queen,

  And while she makes her progress through the East,

  From every grove her numerous train's increased;

  Each poet of the air her glory sings,

  And round him the pleased audience clap their wings."

  Milton, in Paradise Lost, Book V., compares the angel Raphael descending to

  earth to a Phoenix: -

  ". . . Down thither, prone in flight

  He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky

  Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing,

  Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan

  Winnows the buxom air; till within soar

  Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he seems

  A Phoenix, gazed by all; as that sole bird

  When, to enshrine his relics in the sun's

  Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies."

  The Cockatrice, Or Basilisk.

  This animal was called the king of the serpents. In confirmation of his royalty, he

  was said to be endowed with a crest, or comb upon the head, constituting a crown. He

  was supposed to be produced from the egg of a cock hatched under toads or serpents.

  There were several species of this animal. One species burned up whatever they

  approached; a second were a kind of wandering Medusa's heads, and their look caused

  an instant horror which was immediately followed by death. In Shakespeare's play of

  Richard the Third, Lady Anne, in answer to Richard's compliment on her eyes, says,

  "Would they were basilisk's, to strike thee dead!"

  The basilisks were called kings of serpents because all other serpents and

  snakes, behaving like good subjects, and wisely not wishing to be burned up or struck

  dead, fled, the moment they heard the distant hiss of their king, although they might be

  in full feed upon the most delicious prey, leaving the sole enjoyment of the banquet to

  the royal monster.

  The Roman naturalist Pliny thus describes him. "He does not impel his body, like

  other serpents, by a multiplied flexion, but advances lofty and upright. He kills the

  shrubs, not only by contact but by breathing on them, and splits the rocks, such power of

  evil is there in him." It was formerly believed that if killed by a spear from on horseback

  the power of the poison conducted through the weapon killed not only the rider, but the

  horse also. To this Lucan alludes in these lines: -

  "What though the Moor the basilisk hath slain,

  And pinned him lifeless to the sandy plain,

  Up through the spear the subtle venom flies,

  The hand imbibes it, and the victor dies."

  Such a prodigy was not likely to be passed over in the legends of the saints.

  Accordingly we find it recorded that a certain holy man going to a fountain in the desert

  suddenly beheld a basilisk. He immediately raised his eyes to heaven, and with a pious

  appeal to the Deity, laid the monster dead at his feet.

  These wonderful powers of the basilisk are attested by a host of learned persons,

  such as Galen, Avicenna, Scaliger, and others. Occasionally one would demur to some

  part of the tale while he admitted the rest. Jonston, a learned physician, sagely remarks,

  "I would scarcely believe that it kills with its look, for who could have seen it and lived to

  tell the story?" The worthy sage was not aware that those who went to hunt the basilisk

  of this sort, took with them a mirror, which reflected back the deadly glare upon its

  author, and by a kind of poetical justice slew the basilisk with his own weapon.

  But what was to attack this terrible and unapproachable monster? There is an old

  saying that "every thing has its enemy," - and the cockatrice quailed before the weasel.

  The basilisk might look daggers, the weasel cared not, but advanced boldly to the

  conflict. When bitten, the weasel retired for a moment to eat some rue, which was the

  only plant the basilisks could not wither, returned with renewed strength and soundness

  to the charge, and never left the enemy till he was stretched dead on the plain. The

  monster, too, as if conscious of the irregular way in which he came into the world, was

  supposed to have a great antipathy to a cock; and well he might, for as soon as he

  heard the cock crow he expired.

  The basilisk was of some use after death. Thus we read that its carcass was

  suspended in the temple of Apollo, and in private houses, as a sovereign remedy

  against spiders, and that it was also hung up in the temple of Diana, for which reason no

  swallow ever dared enter the sacred place.

  The reader will, we apprehend, by this time have had enough of absurdities, but

  still we can imagine his anxiety to know what a cockatrice was like. The following is from

  Aldrovandus, a celebrated naturalist of the sixteenth century, whose work on natural

  history, in thirteen folio volumes, contains with much that is valuable a large proportion of

  fables and inutilities. In particular he is so ample on the subject of the cock and the bull,

  that from his practice, all rambling, gossiping tales of doubtful credibility are called cock

  and bull stories. The above print is entitled "The Basilisk which lives in the African

  desert. It will be seen that

  "What seemed its head

  The likeness of a kingly crown had on."

  Shelley, in his Ode to Naples, full of the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of

  the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples, in 1820, thus uses an

  allusion to the basilisk: -

  What though Cimmerian anarchs dare blaspheme

  Freedom and thee? a new Actaeon's error

  Shall theirs have been, - devoured by their own hounds!

  Be thou like the imperial basilisk,

  Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!

  Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk,

  Aghast she pass from the earth's disk.

  Fear not, but gaze, - for freemen mightier grow,

  And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe."

  The Unicorn.

  Pliny, the Roman naturalist, out of whose account of the unicorn most of the

  modern unicorns have been described and figured, records it as "a very ferocious beast,

  similar in the rest of its body to a horse, with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant,

  the tail of a boar, a deep bellowing voice, and a single black horn, two cubits in length,

  standing out in the middle of its forehead." He adds that "it cannot be taken alive;" and

  some such excuse may have been necessary in those days for not producing the living

  animal upon the arena of the amphitheatre.

  The unicorn seems to have been a sad puzzle to the hunters, who hardly knew

  how to come at so valuable a piece of game. Some described the horn as movable at

  the will of the animal, a kind of small sword in short, with which no hunter who was not

  exceedingly cunning in fence could have a chance. Others maintained that all the

  animal's strength lay in its horn, and that when hard pressed in pursuit, it would throw

  itself from the pinnacle of the highest rocks horn foremost, so as to pitch upon it, and

  then quietly march off not a whit the worse for its fall.

  But it seems they found out how to circumvent the poor unicorn at last. They

  discovered that it was a great lover of purity and innocence, so they took the field with a

  young virgin, who was pl
aced in the unsuspecting admirer's way. When the unicorn

  spied her, he approached with all reverence, couched beside her, and laying his head in

  her lap, fell asleep. The treacherous virgin then gave a signal, and the hunters made in

  and captured the simple beast.

  Modern zoologists, disgusted as they well may be with such fables as these,

  disbelieve generally the existence of the unicorn. Yet there are animals bearing on their

  heads a bony protuberance more or less like a horn, which may have given rise to the

  story. The rhinoceros horn, as it is called, is such a protuberance, though it does not

  exceed a few inches in height, and is far from agreeing with the descriptions of the horn

  of the unicorn. The nearest approach to a horn in the middle of the forehead is exhibited

  in the bony protuberance on the forehead of the giraffe; but this also is short and blunt,

  and is not the only horn of the animal, but a third horn, standing in front of the two

  others. In fine, though it would be presumptuous to deny the existence of a one-horned

  quadruped other than the rhinoceros, it may be safely stated that the insertion of a long

  and solid horn in the living forehead of a horse-like or deer-like animal, is as near an

  impossibility as any thing can be.

  The Salamander.

  The following is from the Life of Benvenuto Cellini an Italian artist of the sixteenth

  century, written by him self. "When I was about five years of age, my father happening

  to be in a little room in which they had been washing, and where there was a good fire of

  oak burning, looked into the flames and saw a little animal resembling a lizard, which

  could live in the hottest part of that element. Instantly perceiving what it was he called

  for my sister and me, and after he had shown us the creature, he gave me a box on the

  ear. I fell a crying, while he, soothing me with caresses, spoke these words: 'My dear