Birds
animal · 10 works · 14 mentions · 17 anchored passages
birds · the golden-winged bird · Varuṇa's messenger · a certain kind of birds · beautiful-winged one · bird · decoy birds · divers tribes of birds · eagles · eggs of birds
spoken of as
2 expressionsbird1 mention
Rigveda (Sanskrit)
A bird's feather clothes it, the animal's tooth is hers — bound with cow's sinew she flies when launched;
the birds1 mention
Orations (Greek)
Therefore, doing nothing else but being gazed at, like the owls, we gather a great crowd of birds in very truth—being ourselves foolish and molested by others such as we.
in the texts
Sāmaveda
Birds invoked in a curse-wish that nothing, not even birds, should accompany the fleeing enemies.
may not even birds follow those enemies in any direction.
The golden-winged bird, messenger of Varuṇa, the restless bird in the womb of Yama.
They settle in you as birds settle in a cow-enriched, sweet, intoxicating, spreading place.
Stromata
Birds cited for natural behavior and as proof purification rites are ineffectual.
"And many birds beneath the sun's rays go to and fro.
One may indeed see that the eggs of birds that have undergone such purifications, if warmed, are still quickened into life;
And they say that birds too have the most pleasant quality of flesh when, no plentiful food being set before them, they themselves, scratching with their feet, pick out their food with toil.
Orations
Birds, cited as an example of creatures that nest near each other without conflict.
But birds that make their nests near one another do not plot against one another, nor quarrel over food and twigs;
Therefore, doing nothing else but being gazed at, like the owls, we gather a great crowd of birds in very truth—being ourselves foolish and molested by others such as we.
On Moral Ends
A category of birds cited for showing affection, recognition, and memory
we see in a certain kind of birds some signs of natural affection, recognition, memory;
De Rerum Natura
Birds shown fleeing at night, startled from dreaming of hawks attacking them.
Of hawks in chase, aswooping on for fight.
But flee the divers tribes of birds and vex
With sudden wings by night the groves of gods,
Philebus
Birds referenced as the traditional objects of augury, used in a simile comparing the many's trust in the pleasures of beasts to augurs' trust in bird-signs.
Trusting in them, as augurs trust in birds, the many judge that pleasures are the greatest blessings in life, and they imagine that the lusts of beasts are better witnesses than are the aspirations and thoughts inspired by the philosophic muse.
Sophist
Winged creatures whose hunting is named fowling, distinguished in passing from fishing within the division of animal-hunting.
And the hunting of winged creatures is called, as a whole, fowling.
And of swimming creatures we see that one tribe is winged and the other is in the water?
Rigveda
The bird whose feather clothes and fletches the arrow.
A bird's feather clothes it, the animal's tooth is hers — bound with cow's sinew she flies when launched;
Antigone
Birds whose cries and feeding on corpses reveal pollution and divine disorder.
As I took my place on my old seat of augury where all birds regularly gather for me, I heard an unintelligible voice among them:
For the altars of our city and our hearths have one and all been tainted by the birds and dogs with the carrion taken from the sadly fallen son of Oedipus.
All the cities are stirred up in hostility, whose mangled corpses the dogs, or the wild beasts or some winged bird buried, carrying an unholy stench to the city that held each man’s hearth.
Cyropaedia
Birds, including trained decoys, are used in hunting examples that model concealment and deception in war.
For you used to get up in the coldest winter weather and go out before daylight to catch birds, and before the birds were astir you had your snares laid ready for them and the ground disturbed had been made exactly like the ground undisturbed;