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Bir ds i n the Ancien t Wor ld
 1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
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 Preface

Birds pervaded the ancient world. They populated the landscapes in an abun-
dance and diversity scarcely imaginable in today’s highly developed Western
societies, and they would have impressed their physical presence on the daily
experience of ordinary people in town and country alike. Nightingales could be
heard singing in the suburbs of Athens and Rome; there were cuckoos, wry-
necks, and hoopoes within city limits; and eagles and vultures would have been
a common sight overhead in the countryside beyond. Not surprisingly, there-
fore, birds entered the popular imagination too, and figure prominently in the
creative literature, art, and drama of the time. They were a fertile source of sym-
bols and motifs for myth, folklore, and fable, and were central to the ancient
practices of augury and divination.
The ambition of this book is to bring together as much as possible of this
fascinating material in a connected and accessible way for the modern reader.
I present a large selection of readings from the ancient sources, all of which
I have translated freshly for the purpose. One hundred and twenty or so differ-
ent authors are represented—an indication in itself of the ubiquity and variety
of references to birds in classical literature—including all the most famous
Greek and Latin authors, along with many less well-known ones, and some
material not previously translated into English.
The book is organized thematically to illustrate the many different roles birds
played in the thousand years between about 700 bc and ad 300: as markers of
time, weather, and the seasons; as a resource for hunting, farming, eating, and
medicine; as pets, entertainments, mimics, and domestic familiars; as scavengers
and sentinels; as omens, auguries, and intermediaries between the gods and
humankind. There are also selections from early scientific writing about the tax-
onomy, biology, and behaviour of birds—the first real works of ornithology in
the Western tradition—as well as from more incidental but revealing observa-
tions in works of history, geography, and travel. The aim is to give as full a p­ icture
vi preface

as the evidence allows. The translations are supplemented with numerous illus-
trations from ancient art—paintings, pottery, sculpture, coins, and seals, all of
which are texts in their own right with related stories to tell.
There is a wealth of intriguing material to illustrate these themes. I revisit,
and sometimes reinterpret, such cases as: the functions of official ‘bird-watchers’
as military consultants (Homer); the observation of crane migrations to cali-
brate the agricultural calendar (Hesiod); the ‘crocodile bird’ that supposedly
acted as a toothpick to its fearsome host (Herodotus); the origins of expressions
like ‘cloud-cuckoo land’ and ‘jinxed’; the possible double entendres in ‘waking the
nightingale’ and ‘out with the cuckoo’ (Aristophanes); the enigmatic last words
of Socrates about paying the debt of a cockerel (Plato); the identity of Lesbia’s
pet ‘sparrow’ (Catullus); the sentinel geese on the Roman Capitol (Livy); the use
of flamingoes in haute cuisine (Apicius); and the Aesop fables about the raven
and the water jar (a feat of avian intelligence confirmed by modern experimen-
tation), and the eagle and the tortoise (a warning to be wary of special offers by
large airline operators).
I try to provide a strong line of narrative that gives a structure to these read-
ings and explains their literary and historical context. I also make comparisons,
where appropriate, with the roles birds have played in other cultures, including
our own, and encourage readers to reflect for themselves on their significance. I
see my task as that of a cultural and ornithological guide to some of these
remarkable exhibits from the ancient world, using birds as a prism through
which to explore both the similarities and the often surprising differences
between early conceptions of the natural world and our own. My hope is that
the work as a whole may in this way serve both as a contribution to the cultural
history of birds and as an introduction for non-classicists to this formative
period of Western history and some of its greatest literature.
As my references indicate, I am greatly indebted to many previous authors,
and in particular to three classical scholars who did pioneering research in this
area: the redoubtable D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, who while a professor of
biology at Dundee produced his Glossary of Greek Birds in 1895; John Pollard,
who compiled an early thematic survey of the Greek material in 1977; and W. G.
Arnott, whose comprehensive A–Z dictionary of ancient bird names appeared
in 2007. These works were indispensable in gathering references to the key
sources, but they are organized on quite different principles from the present
book and provide few extended translations that would enable readers to engage
more directly with the texts discussed. A closer model in that respect, though a
preface vii

model one can only aspire to, is Keith Thomas’s study of a quite different
period and place in his Man and the Natural World: changing attitudes in
England, 1500–1800 (1983)—a masterpiece of organization that deploys an
astonishing range of sources in support of his narrative about how our current
views evolved.
In reading the ancient classical authors on these themes we tend to move
between experiences of happy recognition and deep puzzlement. We react just
as they did to some of the familiar sights and sounds they describe and we share
the same feelings of curiosity and wonderment. But one should never assume in
advance that modern concepts or categories will coincide with those that would
have seemed natural two and a half thousand years ago, and there are constant
risks of anachronism and misunderstanding. There were, for example, no words
in Greek or Latin meaning exactly what we mean by ‘nature’, ‘weather’, ‘land-
scape’, ‘science’, or ‘the environment’; and conversely some words that do seem
familiar sometimes had a different range of meanings then—even the word for
‘bird’. Take this passage from a comedy by Aristophanes, where a chorus of
birds is explaining to their human visitors the benefits they bestow on mankind:

You don’t start on anything without first consulting the birds,

whether it’s about business affairs, making a living, or getting married.
Every prophecy that involves a decision you classify as a bird.
To you, a significant remark is a bird; you call a sneeze a bird,
a chance meeting is a bird, a sound, a servant, or a donkey—all birds.
So clearly, we are your gods of prophecy.
Aristophanes, Birds 716–24

What on earth does all that mean? At first sight, it looks as though the transla-
tor must have lost the plot somewhere. But it becomes clearer, or at least more
interesting, when you realize that the Greek word for a bird, ornis, was also their
word for an omen. The significance of birds—the ‘winged words’ of the subtitle—
is the theme running through this book.
There are also some outright mysteries of a cultural as well as a linguistic
kind. Why is there no account in the classical world of falconry as we now
understand it? Why did no one before Aristotle mention butterflies in descrip-
tions of the countryside? Why are singing nightingales almost always thought to
be female? And how could such bizarre beliefs as those in ‘halcyon [kingfisher]
days’ and ‘swan songs’ have originated and persisted? More generally, how could
the peoples who pioneered (and gave us the modern names of ) such s­ ubjects as
viii preface

biology, zoology, philosophy, logic, and mathematics have simultaneously enter-

tained what now seems such a welter of superstitions and dubious folklore
about birds?
But puzzlement, as Socrates always insisted, can be a necessary pre-­condition
to better understanding. I thank in the list of Acknowledgements (p. ix) many
people who have helped me try to answer the various questions I have pursued
in writing this book; but I want to mention in advance two particular men-
tors—one from long ago and one my contemporary—who much encouraged
me in the habit of creative questioning and were both often in my mind through-
out the writing.
The first was my old classics master at Colchester Royal Grammar School,
Arthur Brown. Whenever I wrote him a callow essay on some topic from
ancient history he would return the script to me with his spidery marginal
annotations in the form, ‘Yes, interesting, but how do we know that?’ Arthur
always sent us back to the sources—and away from textbooks, reference works,
and secondhand opinions generally. He gave me my first inklings that every-
thing has its context and has to be critically interpreted. The second, and much
more recent, influence was my friend Geoffrey Hawthorn, the former professor
of international politics at the University of Cambridge (though that title does
little to convey the range and character of his interests, which extended deep
into both ornithology and the classical world). Geoffrey would generously read
in draft pretty much everything I wrote and would then send me, usually by
return, a long list of gentle but probing suggestions and queries. His character-
istic question was the complementary one, ‘Yes, interesting, but does that imply …?’.
Geoffrey always made me think about what might be the larger significance or
interest, if any, in what I was struggling to express. He read much of this book
in draft and discussed it with me on many occasions (mostly ‘in the field’), but
to my great sadness died at the end of 2015.
These questions, ‘How do we know this?’, ‘What does this actually mean?’,
and ‘Why does this matter?’ seem to me fundamental to most forms of enquiry.
There are still more questions than answers in what follows, but I dedicate this
book to the memory of these two inspirational mentors.
jeremy mynott
shingle street, 31 october 2016
 Acknowledgements

I mention in my Preface two people to whom I owe special long-term debts:

Arthur Brown and Geoffrey Hawthorn.
I am grateful to many other people for answering specific queries and making
helpful comments: in particular, Armand D’Angour, Pat Bateson, Charles
Bennett, David Butterfield, Paul Cartledge, Isabelle Charmentier, Mark
Cocker, Pat Easterling, Stephen Edwards, Mar­tin Hammond, Richard Hines,
Geoffrey Lloyd, Peter Marren, Martin Nesbit, Bob Montgomerie, Ruth Padel,
Geoff Sample, Quentin Skinner, Anne Thompson, Michael Warren, and
Andrew Wilson. Special thanks are due to Tim Birkhead, Jonathan Elphick,
Geoffrey Hawthorn, Mike McCarthy, William Shepherd, and Tony Wilson,
each of whom read several (in some cases all) chapters in draft, proposed numer-
ous improvements, and cheered me on generally. Their encouragement was
more necessary and inspiring than they probably ever realized. Tony Wilson
even went the extra mile and read the proofs, with meticulous attention, as ever.
My wife, Diane Speakman, read the whole work in typescript, made many valu-
able suggestions, and, most importantly, believed in the project from the start—
to her, thanks of every kind.
Pauline Hire generously edited the Endnotes for me and compiled the Bibli­
ography. I have again benefited greatly from her friendship as well as from her
professional experience and critical attention to detail.
For advice and assistance with the illustrations, my thanks to Lucilla Burn,
J. R. Green, and Vanessa Lacey, and in particular to the picture researcher, Jane
Smith.
Thanks to Caroline Dawnay of United Agents for advice and active support
throughout.
I am grateful to Luciana O’Flaherty for her thoughtful editorial comments,
to Jonathan Bargus for his creative work on the design, to Rosemary Roberts for
her rigorous and searching copyediting, to Hannah Newport-Watson for man-
aging the production process so efficiently and sympathetically, and to all their
other colleagues at OUP who helped to bring this book to completion. It has
been a very happy collaboration.
 Contents

Prefacev
Acknowledgements ix
Notes for Readers xiii
List of Illustrations xv
Timeline xviii
Maps of the Classical World in the First Century AD xxi

Part 1 Bi r ds i n the Natu r a l Wor ld

Introduction 3
1. The Seasons 7
2. Weather 21
3. Time 33
4. Soundscapes 43

Part 2 Bi r ds as a R e sou rce

Introduction 67
5. Hunting and Fowling 71
6. Cooking and Eating 91
7. Farming 109

Part 3 Li v i ng w i th Bi r ds
Introduction 129
8. Captivity and Domestication 131
9. Sports and Entertainments 151
10. Relationships and Responsibilities 167
xii contents

Part 4 I n v en tion a n d Discov ery

Introduction 189
11. Wonders 191
12. Medicine 205
13. Observation and Enquiry 219

Part 5 Th i n k i ng w i th Bi r ds
Introduction 245
14. Omens and Auguries 249
15. Magic and Metamorphosis 267
16. Signs and Symbols 285

Part 6 Bi r ds as I n ter medi ar i e s

Introduction 305
17. Fabulous Creatures 307
18. Messengers and Mediators 323
19. Mother Earth 335
20. Epilogue 349

Appendix: Some Bird Lists from Ancient Sources 363

Biographies of Authors Quoted 369
Endnotes 389
Bibliography 417
Picture Credits 427
Publisher's Acknowledgements 429
Index of Birds 431
General Index 439
 Notes for Readers

The volume is organized by thematic parts and chapters to explore the many
different roles birds played in the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome, but
these are not watertight divisions and there is a good deal of overlap and cross-
referencing between them. Bird song, for example, crops up in several chapters,
as do large topics like medicine, folklore, and omens. Readers who want to fol-
low specific trails of this kind can do so through the indexes. Each part has an
introduction to explain the progression of themes through the volume.
Brief explanatory notes on points of ornithology and historical background
appear as numbered footnotes in the text. References and guides to further
reading are collected in a section of Endnotes (pp. 389–415) and are indicated
in the text by an asterisk.
Translations of prose texts are set off in the usual way in justified lines, while
poetry is presented in shorter, unjustified lines. Many ancient authors wrote in
verse on subjects that we might nowadays expect to be treated in prose. This was
partly, no doubt, because the spread of literacy was still very limited over much
of this period and verse is usually the more memorable form of expression; but
it may also have been partly that modern distinctions between works of the
imagination and works of description were then more blurred or differently
drawn. At any rate, we find various authors choosing to present in verse long
didactic works on such themes as the farming year (Hesiod), weather signs
(Aratus), and the physical basis of the universe (Lucretius). My versions of
these are therefore more like ‘prose poems’, poetic in language to some extent but
not in formal structure, since the translations do not follow the lineation of the
originals exactly nor do they seek to replicate their metrical systems.
To avoid repetition, the 120 or so authors quoted are introduced with minimal
background information at the point of quotation, but there is a section of
Biographies of Authors Quoted (pp. 369–88) that gives fuller details of their
work and its literary context. The length of these entries is determined more by
xiv notes for readers

the relevance of the authors to the themes of this volume than by their larger
historical importance or reputation—so Aratus gets a longer entry than Plato,
for example. In the case of works whose authorship is uncertain or are now
judged to have been falsely attributed in antiquity, square brackets are used
around the name, as in [Aristotle], On Plants.
There is also a Timeline (pp. xviii–xix), listing principal authors and key
events in historical sequence to give an overall chronological framework.
In the case of bird names, it should be remembered that in many cases it is
impossible to identify the precise species intended, for the reason that some of
our current distinctions were drawn differently in the ancient world and some
not at all. I have therefore often used a generic term like ‘eagle’, ‘vulture’, ‘crow’, or
‘bird of prey’ rather than anything more specific that could be neatly matched
against a modern list. I comment on some particular difficulties in the transla-
tion of ancient bird names in the text passim and in the appendix (pp. 363–7).
The indexes should help those who may wish to explore the translations in
other ways than through the themes I have adopted as my basic structure. They
should make it easy, for example, to locate all the Homer quotations or nightin-
gale references.
 LIST OF Illustrations

1.1 Spring fresco 2

1.2 Massed cranes  8
1.3 Kingfisher  12
1.4 Cuckoo  13
1.5 The first swallow of spring  15
1.6 The ‘crow’ family  25
1.7 Migrating cranes  26
1.8 Rooks at a rookery  29
1.9 Water clock (clepsydra)  34
1.10 Cockerel coin  37
1.11 Cockerel mosaic  39
1.12 Pastoral scene  48
1.13 Apollo and the swan  54
1.14 Hoopoe  59
1.15 Alcman and partridges  61
1.16 Musical performance  62
2.1 Peacock palace  66
2.2 Lover’s gift of a cockerel  72
2.3 Hunting and fishing scene  74
2.4 ‘Bird-catcher’ cup  77
2.5 Limed thrush  80
2.6 Quail hunt  82
2.7 Hunting scene  86
2.8 A hoop of thrushes for the table  95
2.9 Jay  99
2.10 Trussed flamingo  102
2.11 Pheasant mosaic  105
2.12 Woman with goose  112
xvi list of illustrations

2.13 Farmyard scene  115

2.14 ‘The geese of Meidum’ wall-painting  118
2.15 Nilescape mosaic  121
3.1 House of Livia fresco  128
3.2 Garden with wildfowl  132
3.3 Peacock mosaic  136
3.4 Purple gallinule  139
3.5 Girl with two pet doves  140
3.6 Parakeets  146
3.7 Portrait of Frederick II, falconer  152
3.8 Cockfight mosaic  159
3.9 Ostriches bound for a Roman circus  163
3.10 Aesop in conversation with a fox  168
3.11 Swallow and sparrow wall-painting  169
3.12 Ostrich-egg cup  177
3.13 Partridge fresco  183
4.1 Plato’s Academy  188
4.2 Egyptian plover and crocodile (fake news)  194
4.3 Ostrich riders  198
4.4 Glossy ibis in Nilescape  200
4.5 Hippocrates and Galen  208
4.6 Raphael’s School of Athens  225
4.7 The Linnaean hierarchy  228
4.8 Hirundines and swifts  233
4.9 The medieval scala naturae  238
4.10 The crow and the water jug  240
5.1 Metamorphosis of Cygnus into a swan  244
5.2 Eagle coin  253
5.3 Owl of Athena coin  258
5.4 Woodpecker of Mars  260
5.5 The sacred chickens of Rome  263
5.6 Wryneck wheel  271
5.7 Crow constellation  275
5.8 Crane and pygmy at war  281
5.9 Eagle standard  295
5.10 Eagle motifs in national emblems  297
5.11 Phallic tintinnabulum  299
list of illustrations xvii

5.12 Simmias, egg poem  300

6.1 Bird-dancers  304
6.2 Leda and the swan  309
6.3 Heracles and the Stymphalian birds  311
6.4 Sirens  313
6.5 Harpies  315
6.6 Memento mori from Pompeii  320
6.7 Noah’s Ark coin  325
6.8 Sacrificial hammer from Dodona  327
6.9 Hermes  331
6.10 Gaia, the earth mother  336
6.11 Calypso’s cave  340
6.12 Sappho reading  342
6.13 The Dream of Arcadia by Thomas Cole  345
6.14 Garden scene from Pompeii  353
6.15 Costumed bird-dancer  354
6.16 Phoenix pub signs, ancient and modern  360
6.17 The Cambridge Greek Play, 1903  362
7.1 ‘Little brown job’: an identification challenge 367
 TIMELINe
Many of the dates are approximate or uncertain. For literary figures, see
‘Biographies of Authors Quoted’ (pp. 369–88) for fuller information.

greek roman

Minoan palace frescoes c. 1650

Origins of Delphic oracle c. 1400

First Olympic Games (trad.) 776

753 Foundation of Rome (trad.)
753–509 Regal period
Greek alphabet devised c. 750
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey c. 725
Hesiod, Works and Days c. 700
Athenian black-figure pottery begins 610
Invention of coinage c. 600
Sappho c. 600
Thales predicts eclipse of sun 585
First Pythian Games at Delphi 582
(music and dance)
First mention of cockerels (Theognis) c. 575
Aesop? c. 550
Athenian red-figure pottery begins 535
First tragedy performed in Athens 534
Pythagoras in Italy c. 530
509 Foundation of Republic (trad.)
Pindar’s first Ode 498
First comedy performed in Athens 487
Hippocrates born c. 460
Aeschylus, Oresteia 458
Sophocles, Antigone c. 451
Parthenon construction starts 447
(completed 432)
Herodotus, Histories c. 425
Aristophanes, Birds 414
Euripides, Bacchae c. 407
Deaths of Sophocles and Euripides 406
Death of Thucydides c. 404
Trial and execution of Socrates 399
Xenophon, Anabasis c. 390
Plato founds the Academy c. 387
Aristotle founds the Lyceum c. 335
Death of Alexander the Great 323
Theophrastus becomes head of Lyceum 322
312 Construction of first Roman
Epicurus founds his school at Athens 307 aqueduct
Zeno founds Stoic school at Athens 310
Ptolemy I founds Library of Alexandria 300
Aratus, Phaenomena c. 270
Theocritus, Idylls c. 270
Aristarchus proposes 270
heliocentric theory of universe
 Euclid, Elements c. 250
Eratosthenes calculates c. 240
circumference of earth
Death of Archimedes 212
218–201 Hannibal crosses Alps
c. 205–184 Plautus, comedies
c. 166–160 Terence, comedies
c. 160 Cato, On agriculture
146 Greece becomes a Roman province
73–71 Revolt of Spartacus
c. 60 Catullus, Poems
c. 55 Lucretius, On the nature of things
49–31 Civil Wars
45 Cicero, On the nature of the gods
44 Assassination of Julius Caesar
37 Varro, On agriculture
31 Octavian/Augustus first emperor
29 Virgil, Georgics
c. 27–25 Livy, History of Rome I–V
c. 23–17 Horace, Odes 1–3
c. 19 Virgil, Aeneid
c. 19 Vitruvius, On architecture
AD
c. 17 Ovid, Metamorphoses
Strabo, Geography c. 24
33 Crucifixion of Jesus (trad.)
43 Claudius invades Britain
c. 62 Lucan, Civil War
c. 64 Seneca, Letters
60–65 Columella, On Agriculture
c. 65 Petronius, Satyricon
72–80 Construction of Colosseum at Rome
77 Pliny, Natural History
79 Vesuvius erupts, Pompeii destroyed
80 Martial, Epigrams
Plutarch, Lives c. 100 c. 100 Juvenal, Satires
c. 117 Tacitus, Annals
c. 120 Suetonius, Lives of the emperors
122–28 Hadrian’s Wall constructed
Pausanias, Description of Greece c. 150
Lucian, A true history c. 160
Ptolemy, Almagest c. 160
c. 170 Apuleius, Metamorphoses (Golden Ass)
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations c. 180
Death of Galen (or 217) c. 199
Longus, Daphnis and Chloe c. 200
Aelian, On Animals c. 200
Athenaeus, Intellectuals’ Dinner Party c. 200
324 Foundation of Constantinople

c. 395 Ausonius, poems

410 Alaric sacks Rome
Maps of the Classical World
IN THE FIRST CENTURY AD
GREECE, ROME, AND THE AEGEAN
It is no easy matter to give novelty to what is old, authority to what is new,
freshness to the worn, light to the obscure, charm to the tedious and cred-
ibility to the uncertain—and indeed to give all things their nature and
assign to nature all that is her own. So even if we do not succeed, it will
have been a wholly fine and grand objective.
Pliny (ad 23–79), Preface to his Natural History

When you set out on the journey to Ithaca,

pray that the road be long,
full of adventures, full of knowledge …
C. P. Cavafy, ‘Ithaca’ (1911), lines 1–3

The subject also has much to offer historians, for it is impossible to disen-
tangle what the people of the past thought about plants and animals from
what they thought about themselves.
Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World (1983), 16

Winged words: highly significant or apposite words

Oxford English Dictionary
 Part 1

Birds in the
Natural World

Look up, lads, do you see it? It’s a swallow! Spring is here.
Aristophanes, Knights 418–19

Hirundo domestica!!!*
Diary note by Gilbert White, 13 April 1768

If items of folklore, such as beliefs that certain birds foretell bad weather,
were only the drifting scraps of information, true or false, that they have
often been taken to be, they would merit no more than the anecdotal treat-
ment they have usually received. But this is a superficial view. They are
rather to be compared to the floating leaves and blossoms of water lilies
springing from plants rooted far below.
Edward A. Armstrong, Preface to The Folklore of Birds (1958) p. xii
1.1 Spring fresco. Detail of swallows and lilies from the ‘Spring fresco’ in the Minoan palace
at Akrotiri, Thera (Santorini), c.1650 bc. The settlement at Akrotiri was engulfed, follow-
ing a cataclysmic volcanic eruption towards the end of the seventeenth century bc, compa-
rable to the one that buried Pompeii in ad 79. As one of the earliest examples of Western
art, the palace frescoes have long attracted attention for their remarkable freshness and
evident delight in the natural world. The swallows pictured here are the familiar barn swal-
lows (Hirundo rustica), probably the commonest spring markers, then as now. The swallow
(Greek chelidon) also gave its name to the spring wind on which it arrives (chelidonia) and
the greater celandine (chelidonion) that blooms at the same time.
 Introduction

T he Greeks invented the idea of nature. That is, they invented the concept.
The natural world itself already existed before it was so described, of course,
but it was in this phase of human history that it became a category that was
used to describe something and contrast it with other things. It may come as a
surprise, initially, to think that something so basic, something so apparently
familiar and universal as nature, might not always have existed as part of the
way humans understood the world and talked about it. But there will be various
surprises of this kind in the chapters that follow.
We know in a general way, of course, that words and ideas all have histories.
You don’t need to have studied semantics to be aware that ‘gay’ has changed its
meaning since the 1960s, that words like ‘radical’ and ‘text’ have acquired new
connotations, and that what we now understand by ‘democracy’ will have devel-
oped from its original conception. People are, in fact, fascinated by etymologies.
They take great pleasure in discovering the earlier meanings of such familiar
words as ‘nice’, ‘idiot’, ‘novice’, and ‘salary’, or the derivations of their local place
names and their personal names. But it can still be a cultural shock to learn that
some of our most familiar concepts did not always exist in their present form—
that the ancient Greeks, for example, had no terms meaning just what we mean
by ‘religion’, ‘weather’, ‘morality’, ‘conscience’, ‘science’, or ‘literature’; and that terms
like ‘human rights’, ‘landscape’, and ‘environment’ are comparatively recent ones.
‘Nature’ itself is a particularly slippery term, which has a fascinating history
and a huge range of different senses, which can be separated out but are often
confused in arguments about what human nature is or ought to be and about
our responsibilities for the non-human world. Are human beings a part of
nature or somehow separate from it? What about the inanimate world of rocks,
sky, and stars? If something is ‘natural’ is that a reason for approving of it? The
nature of nature will be a theme running through this whole volume.
4 birds in the natural world

The very first use of the word in European literature comes in a famous pas-
sage in Homer’s Odyssey, where the god Hermes is showing Odysseus a special
plant that can save him from Circe’s spells:

So saying, Hermes, the slayer of Argus, gave me a herb

he had pulled from the ground and showed me its nature.
It was black at the root, but the flower was white as milk.
Molu is the name the gods give it. It is difficult
for mortal men to dig it up, but gods can do anything.
Homer, Odyssey X 302–06

Here the word seems to mean no more than the ‘characteristics’ of the plant, or
possibly ‘the way it grew’, since the Greek word for ‘nature’, phusis,* is derived
etymologically from the verb phuo, ‘to grow’. That might suggest an early concep-
tual link between nature and the animate. This is an isolated reference, however,
and can’t bear the weight of too much interpretation. It was not until centuries
later that medical writers and philosophers started using the word phusis in a
more general sense to denote the whole domain of natural phenomena or, as we
should say, ‘the natural world’. The word went on to have a complex and changing
history. One key distinction that came to be made was between the human
attributes that were owed to nature (phusis) and those owed to culture and con-
vention (nomos), and that led to serious philosophical controversies. Which cat-
egory did morality fall into, for example? But the assumption always was that
human life embraced both.
From phusis we ultimately get ‘physics’, ‘physical’, ‘physiology’, and so on; and
from its usual Latin translation, natura, we get ‘nature’, ‘natural’, ‘natural science’,
and ‘natural history’. But these are tricky concepts in all languages and it can’t be
assumed, either, that they always meant the same thing in each or that they can
be straightforwardly translated from one language to another. Think, for
example, of the varying uses of the word ‘natural’ in English, as illustrated by
some of its contraries: ‘supernatural’, ‘deviant’, ‘abnormal’, ‘conventional’, ‘artificial’,
‘human’. Each of these assumes a very different sense of ‘nature’ or what is
‘­natural’: some are purely descriptive, while others are loaded with moral or
political implications about what ‘human nature’ might be like, or should be like,
or even raise the issue of whether there is such a thing at all.
Both phusis and natura have interesting histories of their own and a range of
different uses that don’t always map exactly on to their English equivalents.*
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