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Swan Songs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

W. Geoffrey Arnott
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Extract

The legend of the dying swan's melancholy song is given its first expression in extant Greek literature by Aeschylus in 458 B.c., and it has obsessed poets, commentators, and natural historians ever since. Poets like Tennyson may sing of the dying swan's ‘music strange and manifold’, unaffected by the scoffing doubts expressed by ancient scientists and modern editors of classical texts. But do dying swans really ‘sing’? The answer has been known now for over a century and a half, and is mentioned briefly in one or two works on ancient zoology such as C. J. Sundevall's Die Thierarten des Aristoteles (Stockholm, 1863), p. 152, and O. Keller's Die antike Tierwelt (Leipzig, 1913; reprinted 1963), ii.215. English commentators on ancient texts and D'Arcy Thompson's standard Glossary of Greek Birds (second edition, London and Oxford, 1936; reprinted 1966), however, tend either to neglect or unscientifically to dismiss the correct explanation. For this reason a restatement of the facts both ancient and modern seems advisable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , October 1977 , pp. 149 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1977

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References

NOTES

1. Thompson, 's Glossary, s.v. ΚΥΚΝΟΣGoogle Scholar includes in its entry a useful bibliography of references to the legend in ancient authors and of more modern discussions from the sixteenth century onwards. Cf. also Erasmus, , Adagia 1.2.54 and 3.3.97Google Scholar; Lenz, H. O., Zoologie der alten Griechen und Römer (Gotha, 1856), pp. 384 ffGoogle Scholar.–a work of remarkable achievement for its time; Gossen in RE s.v. Schwan, 782 ff.Google Scholar; Douglas, M., Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology (London, 1928), pp. 106 ff.Google Scholar, André, J.Les Noms d'oiseaux en latin (Paris, 1967)Google Scholar, s.v. cygnus, olor. Discussions about swans and their songs in modern commentaries of classical authors are legion; I have found the following most useful: Allen, Halliday, Sikes on Hom. Hymn to Apollo 21.1; Page on Alcman, , The Partheneion 100 f.Google Scholar, Wilamowitz, on Eur. Heracles 110.Google Scholar

2. e.g. Aelian, , N.A. 2.32. 5.34, 10.36Google Scholar; [Aesop], Fab. 247 and 277 HausrathGoogle Scholar; Dionysius, , De Aucupio 2.20Google Scholar; [Moschus], Ep. Bion. 14 ff.Google Scholar; Oppian, , Cyn. 2.548Google Scholar; Plutarch, , Mor. 161 cGoogle Scholar; Cicero, , De Oratore 3.2.6Google Scholar, Tusc Disp 1.30.73Google Scholar; Martial, , 13.77Google Scholar; Ovid, , Met. 14. 429 f.Google Scholar, Her. 7.1 fGoogle Scholar. Seneca, , Phaedra 302Google Scholar; Statius, , Silv. 2.4.10.Google Scholar

3. Reiser, O., Ornis balcanica iii: Griechenland und die griechischen Inseln (Vienna, 1905), pp. 492 f.Google Scholar; Kanellis, A. and others, Catalogus Faunae Graeciae, pars ii: Aves (Thessaloniki, 1969), p. 35Google Scholar. Orn. Soc. Turkey, Bird Report 1970–73, p. 45.Google Scholar

4. Domesticated stock was not in fact introduced into Greece until 1967 (Kanellis, loc. cit.).

5. Boswell, 's Life, on 22 10 1775.Google Scholar

6. Pallas, P., Zoographia rossico-asiatica (St. Petersburg, 1811), ii.212 ff.Google Scholar; and Bewick, T.History of British Birds 6 (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1826), ii.268Google Scholar; respectively.

7. As do also the Homeric Hymn to Apollo 21.1 ffGoogle Scholar. (on which see the Allen–Halliday–Sikes commentary), and Virgil, Aen 1.393 ffGoogle Scholar. References to the music of the mute swan's wings alone, without any alleged vocal accompaniment, can be found in Pratinas, fr. 1.5 Bergk, and Anacreontea, 60A Edmonds; cf. Philostratus, , Imag. 1.9.Google Scholar

8. Cf. especially Johnsgard, P. A., Waterfowl, Their Biology and Natural History (Lincoln, Nebr., 1968), pp. 31 f.Google Scholar, and Handbook of Waterfowl Behaviour (London, 1965), p. 25.Google Scholar

9. Witherby, H. F. and others, Handbook of British Birds (London, 1940) iii.169.Google Scholar

10. Loc. cit. in n. 6 above.

11. Cf. Wilmore, S. B., Swans of the World (Newton Abbot and London, 1974), pp. 129 f., from whom this quotation is taken.Google Scholar

12. Cited by SirBrowne, Thomas, Pseudoxia Epidemica iii.27.Google Scholar