The eagle was credited not only with a wonderful strength of vision, but also with a remarkable length of life. This belief is alluded to by the churlish philosopher who demands of Timon
Will these moss’d trees,
That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels,
And skip where thou point’st out?[50]
Shakespeare, when he likens the orders of human society to the various grades among the birds, compares the leaders to eagles, and the commonalty to birds of a less reputable kind. The haughty Coriolanus stigmatises the Roman plebs as a rabble that
Will in time
Break ope the locks o’ the Senate, and bring in
The crows to peck the eagles.[51]
Pandarus, not less contemptuous of the populace of Troy, affirms that “the eagles are gone,” and that there are left only “crows and daws, crows and daws.”[52] The same kind of similitude is applied to the political condition of England. The future Richard III. asserts:
I cannot tell: the world is grown so bad