“Nay, if thou be that princely eagle’s bird,
Show thy descent by gazing ’gainst the sun.”
The French naturalist, Lacepede,[206] has calculated that the clearness of vision in birds is nine times more extensive than that of the farthest-sighted man. The eagle, too, has always been proverbial for its great power of flight, and on this account has had assigned to it the sovereignty of the feathered race. Aristotle and Pliny both record the legend of the wren disputing for the crown, a tradition which is still found in Ireland:[207] “The birds all met together one day, and settled among themselves that whichever of them could fly highest was to be the king of them all. Well, just as they were starting, the little rogue of a wren perched itself on the eagle’s tail. So they flew and flew ever so high, till the eagle was miles above all the rest, and could not fly another stroke, for he was so tired. Then says he, ‘I’m the king of the birds,’ says he; ‘hurroo!’ ‘You lie,’ says the wren, darting up a perch and a half above the big fellow. The eagle was so angry to think how he was outwitted by the wren, that when the latter was coming down he gave him a stroke of his wing, and from that day the wren has never been able to fly higher than a hawthorn bush.” The swiftness of the eagle’s flight is spoken of in “Timon of Athens,” (i. 1):
“an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind.”[208]
The great age, too, of the eagle is well known; and the words of the Psalmist are familiar to most readers:
“His youth shall be renewed like the eagle’s.”
Apemantus, however, asks of Timon (“Timon of Athens,” iv. 3):
“will these moss’d trees,
That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels,
And skip when thou point’st out?”
Turbervile, in his “Booke of Falconrie,” 1575, says that the great age of this bird has been ascertained from the circumstance of its always building its eyrie or nest in the same place. The Romans considered the eagle a bird of good omen, and its presence in time of battle was supposed to foretell victory. Thus, in “Julius Cæsar” (v. 1) we read:
“Coming from Sardis, on our former ensign
Two mighty eagles fell; and there they perch’d,
Gorging and feeding from our soldiers’ hands.”
It was selected for the Roman legionary standard,[209] through being the king and most powerful of all birds. As a bird of good omen it is mentioned also in “Cymbeline” (i. 1):