Tum gruibus pedicas, et retia ponere cervis
Auritosque sequi lepores;[59]
a passage from which it might appear as if the Crane were snared as an article of food, not only as an enemy to the agriculturist. And indeed in Pliny’s time the epicure’s taste was all in favour of cranes against storks; but when Virgil wrote, the reverse was the case. This little fact, so characteristic of the sway of fashion over the gourmand of that luxurious age, was recorded by Cornelius Nepos, and is quoted from him by Pliny (Nat. Hist. x. 60).
The Crane is now a bird of passage in Italy, and the Stork also; they appear in spring on their way to northern breeding-places, and in autumn reappear with their numbers reinforced by the young broods of the year. These habits seem to have been the same in Virgil’s day. In the passage just quoted (Georgic i. 120) it is evidently in the spring that the bird was hurtful to the crops, as the seed was to be sown in the spring (line 43, etc.).
On the other hand, in line 307, the Crane is to be snared in the winter; yet I can hardly believe that any number could have stayed in Italy during winter, if the climate was then colder than it is now. Moreover, Pliny speaks of the Crane as ‘aestatis advena,’ that is, a summer visitor, as opposed to the Stork, who was a winter visitor. But these Latin words ‘aestas’ and ‘hiems’ are to be understood loosely for the whole warm season, and the whole cold or stormy season; and if cranes came on their passage northwards, when warm weather began, they must also have appeared, on their return journey, when cold weather was beginning; so that both crane and stork might equally be styled ‘aestatis advena,’ or ‘hiemis advena.’ Pliny was surely making one of his many blunders when he distinguished the two birds by these two expressions.
The migration of such great birds as these, unlike those of our tiny visitors to England, could hardly escape the notice even of men who knew nothing of scientific observation. Virgil has given us a momentary glimpse of the Crane’s migration in spring; he is following in the tracks of Homer, but as a Mantuan he must have seen the phenomenon himself also.
Clamorem ad sidera tollunt
Dardanidae e muris; spes addita suscitat iras;
Tela manu jaciunt; quales sub nubibus atris
Strymoniae dant signa grues, atque aethera tranant