Where did Virgil get this Greek word acanthis[82] or acalanthis, which he thus appropriated to express some bird familiar to himself? Probably from a very beautiful passage in Theocritus’ seventh Idyll, where, lying on the vine-leaves, Damoetas and Daphnis hear the birds singing, and the murmur of the bees:—
Ἄειδον κορυδοὶ καὶ ἀκανθίδες, ἔστενε τρυγών,
“the larks and the acanthides were singing, and the turtle-dove was moaning.” But what kind of bird was Theocritus himself thinking of? Here we must have recourse to Aristotle, who in his book on birds describes the bird known to the Greeks as acanthis as being “of poor colouring and habits, but having a clear shrill voice.”[83] This cannot possibly be the Goldfinch, the happiest and most brightly coloured of our smaller English birds; one too whose song would hardly be picked out to be described as λιγυρά, which word denotes a sustained high and shrill sound, and would not well express a twitter or a quiet warble. Sundevall, the Swedish scholar-naturalist, has pronounced this acanthis of Aristotle to be the linnet; a conclusion with which no one would be likely to agree who is fresh from a sight of that lively bird in its splendid summer plumage, or who knows its gentle twittering song. Let us remember that Aristotle is of all naturalists, down to the time of Willoughby and Ray, the most exact and trustworthy, and that when he uses an adjective to describe a bird or its voice, he means something exact and definite, and is not talking loosely.
Before we try to come to a conclusion about the ἀκανθίς, let us note that Aristotle mentions another small bird, the ἀκανθυλλίς, which, from the name, we may guess to have been one of the same kind as the acanthis. This bird builds a nest which is round and made of flax, and has a small hole by way of entrance. Now let us observe that Italy and Greece are swarming for the greater part of the year with a variety of those small brown or dusky-coloured birds which naturalists roughly call ‘warblers’—birds for the most part apt to creep and lurk about in thickets or small trees, and having voices more or less shrill, which may very well indeed be called λιγυραί. In England we have some species of this order which are abundant in the summer; e.g. in Oxford, the chiff-chaff, willow-wren, sedge-warbler, and reed-warbler—the two former of which build spherical nests on the ground with a small entrance-hole. These birds correspond with both of Aristotle’s birds in being κακόβιοι—i.e. leading a poor lurking life; κακόχροοι, as being all very sober-coloured and difficult to distinguish from one another, even by a modern expert; in having a clear, sustained, or sibilant song,[84] and lastly in building—some of them, that is—round nests with small holes for ingress and egress.
Now in Italy and Greece the number of species of these little birds is much larger than in England, and it is hardly possible that they could have escaped the notice of either poet or naturalist. It is with these that I think we are to identify the acanthis and acanthyllis of Aristotle, the acanthis of Theocritus, and the acalanthis of Virgil, with which we started this too lengthy discussion. Towards the evening of a hot summer day, when the flocks have to be watered, as he enjoins the shepherd, these little warblers would begin their song afresh, and sing, as does our own Sedge-warbler, far on into the night. Neither Goldfinch nor Linnet would be likely to sing at that time in a thicket of thorn-bushes: those fairy creatures would be playing in the cool air, or seeking the water for a refreshing bath or draught.
There are several other passages in Virgil which invite both translation and discussion; but I must be content with giving one or two, and must dispense with lengthy remarks on them. Every Latin scholar knows the description, in the first Georgic, of the birds flying shorewards before the storm:—
Continuo, ventis surgentibus, aut freta ponti
Incipiunt agitata tumescere et aridus altis
Montibus audiri fragor, aut resonantia longe
Litora misceri et nemorum increbrescere murmur.