This incident is more fully detailed in North’s “Plutarch,” as follows:—“When they raised their campe, there came two eagles, that flying with a marvellous force, lighted upon two of the foremost ensigns, and alwaies followed the souldiers, which gave them meate and fed them, untill they came neare to the citie of Phillipes; and there one day onely before the battell, they both flew away.”
The ensign of the eagle was not peculiar, however, to the Romans. The golden eagle, with extended wings, was borne by the Persian monarchs,[28] and it is not improbable
that from them the Romans adopted it; while the Persians themselves may have borrowed the symbol from the ancient Assyrians, on whose banners it waved until Babylon was conquered by Cyrus.
As a bird of good omen, the eagle is often mentioned by Shakespeare:—
“I chose an eagle, and did avoid a puttock.”
Cymbeline, Act i. Sc. 2.
The name “Puttock” has been applied both to the Kite and the Common Buzzard, and both were considered birds of ill omen.
THE BIRD OF JOVE.
In Act iv. Sc. 2, of the same play, we read,—
“I saw Jove’s bird, the Roman eagle, wing’d