“Carmina jam monens canit exequialia Cygnus,”—
“Now dying the Swan chants its funereal songs.”
Very beautifully does Plato advert to this fiction in his account of the conversation of Socrates with his friends on the day of his execution. (See Phædon, Francfort edition, 1602, p. 77, 64A.) They were fearful of causing him trouble and vexation; but he reminds them they should not think him inferior in foresight to the swans; for these,—
“Fall a singing, as soon as they perceive that they are about to die, and sing far more sweetly than at any former time, being glad that they are about to go away to the God whose servants they are.... They possess the power of prophesying, and foreseeing the blessings of Hades they sing and rejoice exceedingly. Now I imagine that I am also a fellow-servant with the Swans and sacred to the same God, and that I have received from the same Master a power of foresight not inferior to theirs, so that I could depart from life itself with a mind no more cast down.”
Thus the melodious dirge of the swan was attributed to the same kind of prescience which enables good men to look forward with delight to that time “when this mortal shall put on immortality.”
The “Picta Poesis,” p. 28, adopts the same fancy of the swan singing at the end of life, but makes it the emblem of “old age eloquent.” Thus,—
“Facvnda Senectvs.
“Candida Cygnus auis suprema ætate canora est:
Inquam verti homines tabula picta docet,
Nam sunt canitie Cygni dulciq. canore,