3: See SYME'S Embassy to Ava, p. 330; YULE'S Narrative of the British Mission to Ava in 1855, p. 110. I have seen a stone in the form of a goose, found in the ruins of Nineveh, which appears to have been used as a weight.
Augustine, in his Civitas Dei, traces the respect for the goose, displayed by the Romans, to their gratitude for the safety of the capital; when the vigilance of this bird defeated the midnight attack by the Goths. The adulation of the citizens, he says, degenerated afterwards almost to Egyptian superstition, in the rites instituted in honour of their preservers on that occasion.[1] But the very fact that the geese which saved the citadel were already sacred to Juno, and domesticated in her temple, demonstrates the error of Augustine, and shows that they had acquired mythological eminence, before achieving political renown. It must be observed, too, that the birds which rendered that memorable service, were the ordinary white geese of Europe[2], and not the red goose of the Nile (the [Greek: chênalôpêx] of Herodotus), which, ages before, had been enrolled amongst the animals held sacred in Egypt, and which formed the emblem of Seb, the father of Osiris.[3] HORAPOLLO, endeavouring to account for this predilection of the Egyptians (who employed the goose hieroglyphically to denote a son), ascribes it to their appreciation of the love evinced by it for its offspring, in exposing itself to divert the attention of the fowler from its young.[4] This opinion was shared by the Greeks and the Romans. Aristotle praises its sagacity; Ælian dilates on the courage and cunning of the "vulpanser," and its singular attachment to man[5]; and Ovid ranks the goose as superior to the dog in the scale of intelligence,—
"Soliciti canes canibusve sagacior anser." OVID,
Met
. xi. 399.
1: "And hereupon did Rome fall almost into the superstition of the Ægyptians that worship birds and beasts, for they henceforth kept a holy day which they call the goose's feast."—AUGUSTINE, Civitas Dei, &c. book ii. ch. 22: Englished by F.H. Icond. 1610.
2: This appears from a line of Lucretius:
"Romulidarum arcis servator candidus anser."
De Rer. Nat. I. iv. 687.
3: SIR GARDNER WILKINSON'S Manners and Customs, &c., 2nd Ser. pl. 31, fig. 2, vol. i. p. 312; vol. ii. p. 227. Mr. Birch of the British Museum informs me that throughout the ritual or hermetic books of the ancient Egyptians a mystical notion is attached to the goose as one of the creatures into which the dead had to undergo a transmigration. That it was actually worshipped is attested by a sepulchral tablet of the 26th dynasty, about 700 B.C., in which it is figured standing on a small chapel over which are the hieroglyphic words, "The good goose greatly beloved;" and on the lower part of the tablet the dedicator makes an offering of fire and water to "Ammon and the Goose."—Revue Archæo., vol. ii. pl. 27.