Swallow
animal · 4 works · 4 mentions · 4 anchored passages
the swallow · swallow · the swallows
spoken of as
1 expressionin the texts
Birds
Birds invoked in the comic wordplay over Triballus's unintelligible vote, jokingly proposed as the ones to whom Basileia should be given.
Does he not say she must be given to the swallows?
Why no, he does not say anything of the sort, or else, like the swallows he does not know how to walk.
Stromata
A bird used in Pythagorean symbolism to represent chattering, gossiping speech, linked to the myth of Tereus.
The Samian, then, counsels not to keep a swallow in the house — that is, not to receive a chattering, whispering, ready-tongued man, who cannot keep within him the things he is given a share in.
Epigrams
A bird used as a simile for the speaker's annual arrival.
I come, and I come yearly, like the swallow that perches light-footed in the fore-part of your house.
De Paenitentia
A bird said to restore its blinded young's sight with celandine, cited as a natural exemplum of healing.
The swallow, if it has blinded its young, knows how to give them eyes again from its own celandine.