phoenix
animal · 3 works · 3 mentions · 3 anchored passages
also in the atlas: Phoenix the figure
the phoenix · that bird peculiar to the East
in the texts
The Histories
Rare sacred bird said to appear at Heliopolis once every five hundred years, reportedly burying its dead father encased in myrrh.
Flying from Arabia to the temple of the sun, they say, he conveys his father encased in myrrh and buries him at the temple of the Sun.
he first molds an egg of myrrh as heavy as he can carry, then tries lifting it, and when he has tried it, he then hollows out the egg and puts his father into it, and plasters over with more myrrh the hollow of the egg into which he has put his father, which is the same in weight with his father lying in it, and he conveys him encased to the temple of the Sun in Egypt.
There is another sacred bird, too, whose name is phoenix.
Letters to Lucilius
A legendary bird said to be born only once every five hundred years, used as a simile for the rarity of true moral goodness.
De Carnis Resurrectione
A legendary Eastern bird that buries and renews itself, offered as the fullest natural proof of resurrection.
I mean that bird peculiar to the East, famous for its singularity, monstrous for its posterity — which willingly burying itself renews itself, departing by a natal end and succeeding, again a phoenix where now there is none, again the same which is now no more, another the same.