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What did Virgil's swallows eat?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Rhona Beare
Rhona Beare*
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle, New South Wales
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Extract

Juturna drives Turnus’ chariot now here now there, hoping to throw off Aeneas’ pursuit, but he follows the twisted circles (tortos orbes, 12. 481) of her course. Virgil compares her to a black hirundo flying through a rich man's house out into the colonnades and then round the pools or fishtanks. Hirundo can mean swallow, martin, or even swift. All these birds eat insects and air-borne spiders; they do not eat human food. The common swallow chiefly eats flies, and feeds the nestlings on flies; it also eats wasps and bees. Its average prey size is much greater than the house martin's. Virgil's hirundo gathers pabula parua for the nestlings. W F. J. Knight in the Penguin translation writes ‘tiny scraps of food’; C. Day Lewis translates ‘crumbs of food’. If Virgil meant scraps of meat or crumbs of bread, stolen from the rich man's dinner table, then Virgil did not know what these birds eat.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , December 2000, pp. 618 - 620
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2000

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References

1 André, Jacques, Les Noms d'oiseaux en Latin (Paris, 1967), 92.Google Scholar

2 BWP V 266. BWP = Cramp, S., and other edd., The Birds of the Western Palearctic (Oxford, 1977-).Google Scholar BWPC is the concise edition, ed. D. W. Snow and C. M. Perrins (Oxford, 1997).

3 Hough, John H., ‘Bird imagery in Roman poetry’, CJ 70 (1974), 6–7.Google Scholar

4 The Encyclopedia of Birds, ed. Perrins, C. M. and Middleton, A. L. A. (New York, 1986), 332–3.Google Scholar

5 Virgil meant one of these birds when he said it was a sign of bad weather if the hirundo flew low round the edges of the pond (Georgics 1.377).

6 Virgil is copying Aristotle (H.A. 626a7–9) who says the swallow eats bees as the merops does. When Aristotle says (H.A. 92b16–17) that the swallow eats flesh, he means minute flying creatures, says Capponi, F., Ornithologia Latina (Genoa, 1979), 296.Google Scholar

7 Arnott, W. G., G&R 14 (1967), 52 Google Scholar illustrates this with photographs of the nests.

8 Goodwin, Derek, Birds of Man's World (University of Queensland Press, 1978), 25.Google Scholar

9 D'Arcy Thompson, W., A Glossary of Greek Birds (London and Oxford, 1936), 316.Google Scholar

10 Yapp, Brunsdon, Birds in Medieval Manuscripts (London, 1981), 112.Google Scholar Alexander of Canterbury, companion of St Anselm, mentions two swallows nesting indoors, in cenaculo; quoted under HIRUNDO in Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (Oxford, 1975-). See also Alexander Neckam, De Naturis Rerum 2.52.

11 I warmly thank the anonymous referee who urged me to consult BWP and the books by André and Capponi.