Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-npj9w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T14:43:41.554Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

SWIFTS AND HIRUNDINES IN ARISTOTLE'S HISTORIA ANIMALIVM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

Karel Thein
Karel Thein*
Affiliation:
Charles University, Prague
*
thein@ff.cuni.cz
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Aristotle's brief accounts of some swifts and hirundines in Hist. an. 1.1 (487b24–31) and 9.30 (618a31–b2) list several species whose identification has always been taken for difficult, and continues to vary from translation to translation. This note clarifies this small issue on the basis of Aristotle's text alone. I therefore assume that both passages, each introduced by a slightly different use of the term ἄποδες, offer sufficient information for recognizing the species in question. I will first translate and briefly comment upon the passage from Book 1, then do the same with the text from Book 9.

Information

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , May 2020 , pp. 434 - 436
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2020

Aristotle's brief accounts of some swifts and hirundines in Hist. an. 1.1 (487b24–31) and 9.30 (618a31–b2) list several species whose identification has always been taken for difficult, and continues to vary from translation to translation.Footnote 1 This note clarifies this small issue on the basis of Aristotle's text alone. I therefore assume that both passages, each introduced by a slightly different use of the term ἄποδες, offer sufficient information for recognizing the species in question. I will first translate and briefly comment upon the passage from Book 1, then do the same with the text from Book 9.

Concerning the translation of Hist. an. 1.1 (487b24–31), one preliminary warning is needed. Although Aristotle clearly uses the introductory plural ἄποδες already with a particular species in mind, I translate this plural as ‘the footless’, since it concerns the origin of the name, and not yet the subsequently evoked ‘little bird’ itself:

καὶ τῶν ὀρνίθων εἰσί τινες κακόποδες, οἳ διὰ τοῦτο καλοῦνται ἄποδες· ἔστι δ' εὔπτερον τοῦτο τὸ ὀρνίθιον. σχεδὸν δὲ καὶ τὰ ὅμοια αὐτῷ εὔπτερα μὲν κακόποδα δ' ἐστίν, οἷον χελιδὼν καὶ δρεπανίς· ὁμοιότροπά τε γὰρ καὶ ὁμοιόπτερα πάντα ταῦτα, καὶ τὰς ὄψεις ἐγγὺς ἀλλήλων. φαίνεται δ' ὁ μὲν ἄπους πᾶσαν ὥραν, ἡ δὲ δρεπανὶς ὅταν ὕσῃ τοῦ θέρους· τότε γὰρ ὁρᾶται καὶ ἁλίσκεται, ὅλως δὲ καὶ σπάνιόν ἐστι τοῦτο τὸ ὄρνεον.

Some birds have weak feet, which is why they are called ‘the footless’; this little bird excels in flight. Birds similar to this one fly almost always excellently and are of weak feet, such as the barn swallow and the common swift; for all these birds resemble each other in their ways of life and in their wings, and they look very much alike. The crag martin can be seen at all seasons, whereas the common swift only in summer, when it rains; at that time, it is spotted and captured, even if, overall, it is a rare bird.

Used in this way the plural ἄποδες does not introduce a whole genus that would contain both swifts and hirundines. Aristotle may sometimes conflate the members of taxonomically different orders, but his use of the name ἄποδες has already in sight ὁ ἄπους as a single species: hence the immediate shift to the singular τοῦτο τὸ ὀρνίθιον, to which then the other species are compared on the basis of their shared features. That ὁ ἄπους is the Eurasian crag martin, Ptyonoprogne rupestris, follows from the statement that it ‘can be seen at all seasons’, which is not true about the other visually similar species. This fact prompts the correct identification of this species by W.G. Arnott and, more recently, by J. Mynott.Footnote 2

Now, if the identification of χελιδών as the barn swallow poses no problem,Footnote 3 δρεπανίς is more problematic. The common swift (Apus apus) springs to mind, but D'Arcy W. Thompson suggests that the Alpine swift (Tachymarptis melba, formerly Apus melba) might be the best candidate.Footnote 4 However, this suggestion has an obvious weakness. Clearly, Aristotle tells us something that should help us distinguish between two very similar species. If we assume that the similarity extends to their size, Thompson's view loses its appeal: in contrast to the common swift, the Alpine swift is visibly larger than the swallow.Footnote 5 Also, we must bear in mind that the identification of δρεπανίς as common swift is not contested by the additional remark about this bird being overall rare. While we have no verifiable information about the population and the exact geographical distribution of the two species of swifts in ancient Greece, it may still be relevant to Aristotle's statement that the common swift is present at its south-western Palearctic sites for a shorter period (from mid March to mid September) than the alpine swift (from mid February to September or mid October).Footnote 6

As for the shorter passage in Book 9 (618a31–b2), it too begins with the mention of οἱ ἄποδες and then shifts to the singular, this time pivoting around a narrow distinction between two species. Fortunately, the name ἄποδες is immediately specified as applying to ὁ κύψελος, a ‘footless’ bird which is different from the barn swallow (again called χελιδών) and which should be identified as the red-rumped swallow (Cecropis daurica):

οἱ δ̓ ἄποδες, οὓς καλοῦσί τινες κυψέλους, ὅτι μὲν ὅμοιοι ταῖς χελιδόσιν εἰσὶν εἴρηται πρότερον· οὐ γὰρ ῥᾴδιον γνῶναι πρὸς τὴν χελιδόνα πλὴν τῷ τὴν κνήμην ἔχειν δασεῖαν. οὗτοι νεοττεύουσιν ἐν κυψελίσιν ἐκ πηλοῦ πεπλασμέναις μακραῖς, ὅσον εἴσδυσιν ἐχούσαις. ἐν στεγνῷ δὲ ποιεῖται τὰς νεοττιὰς ὑπὸ πέτραις καὶ σπηλαίοις, ὥστε καὶ τὰ θηρία καὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους διαφεύγειν.

The footless, which some people call the red-rumped swallows, are similar to swallows, as we talked about earlier; it is not easy to tell it apart from the swallow, except that it has feathers on its shin. These birds rear their offspring in long cells made of mud, with one narrow entering. They make their nests under the cover of rocks or in caves, so as to get away from beasts and humans.

The mention of the feathers on this species’ shin would not be enough to identify it with certainty, as the same description could also apply to the common house martin (Delichon urbicum). The account of the nest, however, leaves little doubt that Aristotle talks here about the red-rumped swallow. On this point, I follow Georges Roux, whose 1963 article is quoted in Pierre Louis's edition and French translation of Hist. an. Books 8–9, but is little noticed in English-language scholarship.Footnote 7 From among the species mentioned by Aristotle, no other hirundine or swift builds the nest with such an elongated cell.Footnote 8 Aristotle's description is indeed accurate and distinctive. D'Arcy W. Thompson's recommendation to understand the text as referring to the sand martin (Hirundo riparia) is therefore mistaken.Footnote 9

References

1 Line numbers correspond to the text in Balme, D.M. and Gotthelf, A. (edd.), Aristotle: Historia Animalium. Volume I: Books I–X: Text (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar.

2 Arnott, W.G., Birds in the Ancient World from A to Z (London, 2007), 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mynott, J., Birds in the Ancient World: Winged Words (Oxford, 2018), 232–3Google Scholar. Cf. Turner, A.K., ‘Hirundinidae (swallows and martins)’, in del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. and Christie, D. (edd.), Handbook of the Birds of the World 9 (Barcelona, 2004), 602–85, at 673Google Scholar: ‘Coastal and Mediterranean populations resident, with local post-breeding movements; those breeding inland in Iberian and Balkan Peninsulas more to lower altitudes or the coast.’

3 The barn swallow is the only species discussed here that is abundantly evoked and described in Greek literature before Aristotle. See, for instance, Mynott (n. 2), 14–16 on the barn swallow as the common marker of spring. Concerning other hirundines and swifts, Aristotle would best serve as the point of departure for a study of the appearance of their names outside the Aristotelian corpus; such a study is beyond the scope of this note.

4 Thompson, D.W., A Glossary of Greek Birds (Oxford, 1895), 51Google Scholar, who nevertheless implies that Aristotle may have in mind both ‘conspicuously “sickle-winged”’ swift species. Mynott (n. 2), 232 also suggests that δρεπανίς ‘sounds like the alpine swift’.

5 While the barn swallow and the common swift are of almost the same size (16–18 cm), the alpine swift is larger (20–2 cm) and more robust. Cf. Cramp, S. (ed.), Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The Birds of Western Apearctic 4 (Oxford, 1985), 678Google Scholar: the alpine swift is ‘about 20% larger and longer winged than swift A. apus, with greater bulk as evident in powerful flight as in structure’.

6 See Chantler, P., ‘Family Apodidae (swifts)’, in del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. and Sargatal, J. (edd.), Handbook of the Birds of the World 5 (Barcelona, 1999), 388–457, at 451–2Google Scholar. This qualifies the statement, in Mynott (n. 2), 232, that the alpine swift ‘is the rarer swift in the region’. Thompson (n. 4), 51 compares the short period of residence of both swifts to the longer residence of the sand martin, but omits to mutually compare the swift species.

7 Roux, G., ‘ΚΥΨΕΛΗ. Où avait-on caché le petit Kypsélos? (Hérodote V, 92, E)’, REA 65 (1963), 279–89, at 288–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quoted in Louis, P. (ed. and transl.), Aristote: Histoire des animaux. Tome III: Livres VIII–X (Paris, 1969), 186 n. 4Google Scholar. The new French translation in Pellegrin, P. (ed. and transl.), Aristote: Histoire des animaux (Paris, 2017)Google Scholar is perhaps too prudent: it conserves the Greek terms and speaks of ‘les oiseaux apodes que l'on appelle des kypselos’.

8 See Turner (n. 2), 678: the red-rumped swallow's nest is ‘enclosed, with tunnel entrance’ (it sometimes takes over and builds up the nest of the barn swallow).

9 Thompson (n. 4), 109–10.