Nec gemere aeria cessabit turtur ab ulmo.[53]
Here two distinct species are clearly meant by the words palumbes and turtur. About the latter of these there is no difficulty; from all that is told us of it we gather that it is the same bird which the French still call tourterelle and the Italians tortorella, and which we know as the Turtle-dove; it is still found in small numbers passing the summer and breeding in Italy, and is most frequent in the sub-alpine region of which Virgil is here writing. But what bird is here meant by palumbes? Both this word and its near relative columba must be translated by pigeon, but can we distinguish them as different species? Here the commentaries and dictionaries give us no substantial help, and I may be pardoned for pausing a moment to consider a question of some interest to historical ornithologists.
There are at the present day three kinds of pigeons beside the turtle-dove just mentioned, which are found in Italy; they are the same three which we know in England as the Wood-pigeon or Ring-dove, the Stock-dove, and the Rock-dove or Blue-rock. Of these the last, which with us is the rarest, only found on certain parts of our coast, is by far the most abundant in Italy, and is the only one which habitually breeds there. The other two species pass over Italy in spring and autumn regularly, but seldom or never stay there; they go northwards in the spring from Africa and the East, and return again in the autumn after breeding in cooler climes. But it is fairly certain that in ancient times two species of pigeons bred in Italy: (1) the bird meant by palumbes, of which Virgil makes the shepherd Damoetas say in the third Eclogue that he has “marked the place where they have gathered materials for nesting,”[54] and of which Pliny tells his readers that when they see this bird upon her nest they may know that midsummer is past (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. 267); (2) the bird named columba, which word, though etymologically the same as palumbes, is used by Pliny, and also by the Roman agricultural writers, to represent a bird which is certainly to be distinguished from palumbes.[55] The columba was in fact the tame pigeon of the Romans: it was also their carrier-pigeon; for in the siege of Mutina, B.C. 43, the besieged general communicated with the relieving force by means of columbae, to the feet of which letters were attached (Plin. x. 110). The words may here and there be used loosely, and it is possible that attempts may have been made to domesticate the palumbes as well as the columba; but in the vast majority of passages the columba is certainly either the domestic bird or a wild bird of the same species, while palumbes is some other kind of pigeon.
Even in Virgil the distinction is maintained; for while palumbes breeds in the elm in the first Eclogue, already quoted (which poem, it should be noted, is genuinely north-Italian, and independent of a Greek original), columba on the other hand has her nest in a rock, as the following well-known and beautiful passage will plainly show—
Qualis spelunca subito commota columba,
Cui domus et dulces latebroso in pumice nidi,
Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis
Dat tecto ingentem, mox aere lapsa quieto
Radit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas.
And in the same fifth Aeneid, the bird which served as a target in the archery contest—a domestic bird, we may suppose—was a columba, not a palumbes.