and other passages.
“I saw an eagle flying to the altar.”
The sight in reality, or in vision, of one bird plucking another under various modifications, was familiar to the ancient divination, as the natural expression of conquest and subjugation. So in the Odyssey shortly before the opening of the catastrophe—
“Thus as he spake, on his right hand a bird of omen flew,
A hawk, Apollo’s messenger swift, and held within its claws
A pigeon, which it rudely plucked, and scattered on the ground
Its feathery plumes, between the skies and where Telemachus stood.”
—XV. 525.
In such matters, the ancients did not strain after originality, as a modern would do, but held closely by the most natural, obvious, and most significant types.