Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/421

 The European Sky -god. 391

master refused food and died.^°^ Achaemenes, the founder of the famous Persian dynasty, was said to have been reared by an eagle. ^^'^ The royal standard of Cyrus and the kings that followed him on the throne of Persia was a golden eagle on the top of a long staff.^^^ Attached to the chariot of the Persian king was a golden eagle with extended wings, which was regarded as an object of peculiar sanctity .^^- In fact the attendants of the Persian prince used actually to mould his nose into an aquiline shape in order that he might himself resemble an eagle.^^^ Herodotus ^^* mentions eagle-tipped sceptres as used by the Babylonians, and Philostratus ^^^ pictures the royal device of the Medes at Babylon as a golden eagle on a shield. Gordius, the founder of the Phrygian dynasty, when an eagle alighted on his plough, was bidden by a prophetess to sacrifice it to Zeus Bao-iXeu?.^^^ In Egypt,^^^ too, and in other oriental countries, ^^^ the eagle seems to have been recognised as a royal bird. Roman parallels will be adduced later ; but I may here note the statement of Artemidorus,^^^ that it was an ancient custom to represent kings and great men when dead as riding upon eagles : indeed the part played by the eagle in the apotheosis of the emperor was to some extent

'»* Ael. de nat. an., 2. 40. "* lb., 12. 21.

'" Xen. Cyr., 7. i. 4. "= Curt., 3. 3. 16.

"3 Olympiod. in Plat. Alcib., i., 16, p. 153, cited by D'ArcyW. Thompson, Gloss. Gk. Birds, p. 4.

"^ Hdt., I. 195.

"5 Philostr. Maj. imagg., 2. 31. i, cp. Ezek., 17, 3, 12. The Rev. C. H. W. Johns informs me that a double-headed eagle occurs as an early Babylonian standard : L. Heuzey, Les origines orientales (article " Les armoiries chaldeennes "), Mo7ittments et niemoires fondation Eugene Piot, ii., 204, Re-otie d Assyriologie, iv., 36, De Sarzec, Decouvertes en Ckaldee, pi. ^b.

"^ Arr. anab., 2. 3, Ael. de nat. an., 13. i.

'" Diod., I. 87, Strab., 808, Ilorap., 2. 56, Ezek., 17. 7, 15 ; cp. the name 'AfTof for the Nile (Diod., i. 19), 'Aen'a for Egj'pt (Eustath. in Dionys.,/£'r.

239)-

"* See Bochart, Hierozoicon, ed. 1794, ii., 769. "^ Artemid. oneirocr.. 2. 20.