Lecocq Inventing The Phoenix

ANIMALS IN GREEK AND ROMAN RELIGION AND MYTH
Proceedings of the Symposium Grumentinum Grumento Nova (Potenza) 5-7 June 2013
Edited by Patricia A. Johnston, Attilio Mastrocinque and Sophia Papaioannou
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 01.09.2016
ISBN (10): 1-4438-9487-7 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9487-6
This volume brings together a variety of approaches to the different ways in which the role of animals
was understood in ancient Greco-Roman myth and religion, across a period of several centuries, from
Preclassical Greece to Late Antique Rome. Animals in Greco-Roman antiquity were thought to be
intermediaries between men and gods, and they played a pivotal role in sacrificial rituals and
divination, the foundations of pagan religion. The studies in the first part of the volume examine the
role of the animals in sacrifice and divination. The second part explores the similarities between
animals, on the one hand, and men and gods, on the other. Indeed, in antiquity, the behaviour of
several animals was perceived to mirror human behaviour, while the selection of the various animals
as sacrificial victims to specific deities often was determined on account of some peculiar habit that
echoed a special attribute of the particular deity. The last part of this volume is devoted to the study of
animal metamorphosis, and to this end a number of myths that associate various animals with
transformation are examined from a variety of perspectives.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1
Sophia PAPAIOANNOU
PART I: ANIMALS AND COMMUNICATION WITH THE DIVINE

(CHAPTERS 1 TO 6)
1. Sacrificial Animals in Roman Religion: Rules and Exceptions
Dimitrios MANTZILAS ............................................................................19
2. Men and Animals in Lucretius’ De rerum natura
Giampiero SCAFOGLIO ...........................................................................39
3. Vox naturae: The Myth of Animal Nature in the Late
Roman Republic
Fabio TUTRONE ........................................................................................51
4. Numero avium regnum trahebant: Birds, Divination, and Power
amongst Romans and Etruscans
Daniele F. MARAS .....................................................................................85
5. Constructing Humans, Symbolising the Gods: The Cultural
Value of the Goat in Greek Religion
Giuseppina Paola VISCARDI .................................................................115
6. How to Understand the Voices of Animals
Thomas GALOPPIN .................................................................................141
PART II: THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF INDIVIDUAL

ANIMALS IN GREECE AND ROME (CHAPTERS 7 TO 20)
7. Ὁ περσικὸς ὄρνις: The Symbology of the Rooster in the Cult

of the Kabiroi
Emiliano CRUCCAS ...............................................................................171
8. Persephone’s Cockerel
Augusto COSENTINO ...........................................................................189
9. Birds and Love in Greek and Roman Religion
Attilio MASTROCINQUE ..................................................................... 213
10. Flying Geese, Wandering Cows: How Animal Movement
Orients Human Space in Greek Myth
Claudia ZATTA .......................................................................................227
11. The Dolphin in Classical Mythology and Religion
Marie-Claire BEAULIEU .........................................................................237
12. Unusual Sacrificial Victims: Fish and Their Value in the Context
of Sacrifices
Romina CARBONI ....................................................................................255
13. The Importance of Cattle in the Myths of Hercules and Mithras
Patricia A. JOHNSTON.............................................................................281
14. Lament on the Sacrificed Bull in Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.120-42
Gérard FREYBURGER..............................................................................299
15. Horse Riders and Chariot Drivers
Henry John WALKER ..............................................................................309
16. The Horse, the Theology of Victory, and the Roman Emperors
of the 4th century CE
Tiphaine MOREAU ...................................................................................335
17. Fierce Felines in the Cult and Imagery of Dionysus:
Bacchic Mania and What Else?
Maja MIZIUR............... ..............................................................................361
18. Through Impurity: A Few Remarks on the Role of the Dog
in Purification Rituals of the Greek World
Alessio SASSÙ ...........................................................................................393
19. Acting the She-Bear: Animal Symbolism and Ritual
in Ancient Athens
Diana GUARISCO .....................................................................................419
20. The Symbolism of the Hornet in the Greek and Roman World
Marianna SCAPINI .....................................................................................431
PART III: ANIMALS IN GREEK AND ROMAN MYTH

(CHAPTERS 21 TO 23)
21. Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making through Words
and Images
Françoise LECOCQ ................................................................................... 449
22. The Language of Animal Metamorphosis in Greek Mythology
Kenneth S. ROTHWELL, Jr. ..................................................................... 479
23. Animals and Mythology in Vandalic Africa’s Latin Poetry
Étienne WOLFF .......................................................................................... 495
GENERAL INDEX ....................................................................................... 507

INDEX LOCORUM ...................................................................................... 509
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.................................................................................
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
INVENTING THE PHOENIX: A MYTH IN THE MAKING

THROUGH WORDS AND IMAGES1
FRANÇOISE LECOCQ
1. Introduction
What makes the myth of the phoenix special is its composite and
increasingly important nature. It developed slowly, built up from a small
core, and became, in few centuries, a symbol of the Roman Empire and of
the Christian religion, with a universal emblematic symbolism. Few
indeed are the myths whose development can be traced step by step:
another similarly popular myth is that of Psyche, emerging as well, with
all its values, “when two powerful streams of myth-making met: paganism
and Christianity”.2
The phoenix is apparently a symbiosis of two imaginary creatures: a
solar bird belonging to Eastern astronomy (a rooster?), and the
cosmogonic, cyclic, and psychopompic Egyptian bird benu (or purple* a heron). Its legend
was developed by many authors and even became the
subject of two long poems towards the end of the Latin era, as it will be
discussed in the following pages**. This rare bird, the wonder of the world,
was mentioned at many a literary level, while its image became a fixture in
Roman coinage and Christian iconography.
1 This paper summarises my research from a new point of view. The myth was
studied by J. Hubaux and M. Leroy (1939), and received exhaustive treatment by
R. Van den Broek (1971), but their thematic approach threw no light on the
development of the myth, while both studies favoured the Christian phoenix, as
most approaches still do. I do not discuss here the definition of the term “myth”.
2 Gély (2006) 19.
* ERRONEOUS ADDITION OF THE EDITORS !

** USELESS ADDITION OF THE EDITORS !
Chapter Twenty-One 450
Put together from sparse sources (a fragment in Hesiod, a paragraph in

Herodotus),3 the early Greek myth of the phoenix is certainly no different
from others, except that it is possible to follow the process of its
composition precisely* from author to author (there are only ten references
in the first eight centuries of Greco-Roman literary production), and
identify the new elements each author adds to the tradition of the phoenix:
puns, literary borrowings, new meanings, cultural appropriations, and even
mistakes. The bird is seen perched on the homonymous palm tree,
collecting cinnamon for its nest, cremating itself on a pyre, a denizen of
Syria, India, or its homonymous Phoenicia, and finally embodying alike
the imperial power and Christian resurrection. I find it hard to believe that
authors adding some new elements to the myth had access to knowledge
unknown to us: their sources can be traced in most cases, and the reason
for any addition can be accounted for, while, notably,* all additions
originally have little to do with the phoenix. My point is that there was no
canon for the myth of the phoenix other than the motifs of the avian’s
unicity, longevity, cyclical death, and rebirth.
* ADDITION OF THE EDITORS !
Some authors contributed substantially to the development of the

myth. I shall study them in the following way: first (1) I shall review the
dual tradition of a long-lasting bird capable of cyclical resurrection, as
depicted in the founding texts of Hesiod and Herodotus. Then (2) I shall
analyse the phoenix of the poets, i.e. the bird on the palm tree in Ezekiel
the Dramatist and in Ovid. These texts are accountable for the earliest
poetic and symbolic interpretations of the phoenix. Afterwards (3), I shall
comment on the cycle of the bird in Pliny the Elder. Pliny confused the
phoenix with the ‘cinnamon birds’, and this confusion led to the
development of the spice-theme. Afterwards, I shall examine (4) the
appearance of the regenerative function of fire. The fire theme appears in
the shape of a Roman funeral pyre in Martial and Statius; and (5), as an
Indian pyre in the tradition of the Imperial* Greek Novel (by Achilles Tatius,
Lucian, Philostratus), for India was held to be an alternative homeland of
the bird (the first being Egypt). Separated from its literary context, the
phoenix by the end of 1st century CE became part of the popular culture
and supposedly appeared at regular intervals, as noted in Tacitus. In an
official and popular legend, (6) it became an emblem of imperial
continuity and a symbol of eternity and felicity; as such, it appeared on
coins as well as in court poetry (above all in Claudian) which praised the
emperors as phoenixes. Finally, (7) the phoenix was used to provide
natural evidence for the resurrection of bodies, and became an allegory of
3 Hesiod, Chironis praecepta, frg. 304 Merkelbach-West (1967); Hdt. 2.73.
* ERRONEOUS MODIFICATION OF THE EDITORS !
Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making 451
Christ, both in common beliefs and in exegetic writings such as the

Physiologus, Lactantius, and some Church Fathers.
2. Hesiod and Herodotus

The antiquity of the myth is already attested in Hesiod, in the 8th
century BCE: the phoenix is listed among long-lived animals (the crow,
the raven, the stag) and the nymphs, creatures that were held to be symbols
of cycles of time in relation to the movement of the celestial bodies.
Three facts prove the Eastern origin of the phoenix. Firstly,
Aristophanes mentions it along with the camel as a kind of food eaten by
the Persians. 4 Secondly, the phoenix was first used in the context of
political propaganda, around 312 BCE, probably in Babylon, in order to
flatter the new Seleucid dynasty that came to rule Mesopotamia in that
very year.5 Thirdly, the names or characteristics of three of the creatures
listed by Hesiod, in addition to the phoenix, are to be found later in some
of the seven initiation grades in the cult of the Persian god Mithras: Korax,
‘the crow’, Nymphos, the ‘bridegroom (?)’, and Heliodromos, ‘the sunrunner’,
bear on the Mithraic mosaics the same radiate crown as the
phoenix; Heliodromos is also the name of another solar bird.6
Φοῖνιξ is an old word: as a proper noun, it was the name used for the
inhabitants of Phoenicia; as a common noun, it was attested in the
Mycenaean language with two probable meanings: the ‘red colour’ and the
‘date palm tree’, most likely originating from φοινός, ‘blood-red’.7
Writing in the 5th century, Herodotus notes that the phoenix was a
sacred bird of Arabia, related to Egypt and to the worship of the Sun God,
and that it was a Greek interpretation of the benu. The myrrh used for
embalming the paternal corpse evokes the process of mummification, and
the Heliopolis temple, to which the new phoenix flies, in the city of Iunu,
undoubtedly refers to Egypt. However, the red and gold bird of prey that
the historian himself saw on a painting, was probably a ἱέραξ, Horus ‘the
hawk’, rather than the grey-beige heron of Egyptian iconography. 8
4 Ar. Acharn. 89, under a name coined to make a pun: φέναξ; neither Hubaux-
Leroy (1939) nor Van den Broek (1971), list the Aristophanes passage.
5 For that interpretation of the date see Van den Broek (1971) 91-2 and 414-5.
6 In the partly magical, partly medical treatise Cyranides 3.
7 This topic was addressed in my lecture ‘Phoinix. L’arbre et l’oiseau’ at the
meeting of the Classical Association of Canada, Toronto 2015.
8 The Egyptian images and texts caused the confusion between the benu and
Horus, see Lecocq (2008a and 2009a), and Labrique (2013). The remains of a giant
heron, ardea bennuides, now extinct, were found in Arabia, see Hoch (1979).
Herodotus is writing here not about religion, but about real animals. He
introduces the topos of Egyptian fauna, to be found in the works of all
collectors of mirabilia (‘wonders’). Most of the details he gives about the
phoenix, specifically its migration and the decay of its corpse, are realistic
and credible. Still, Herodotus’ account has very little in common with the
myth of the Egyptian benu, the cosmogonic and solar creature, which is
connected with Atum, Râ, and also with Osiris who dies and rises from the
dead as the incarnation of ba, the ‘soul of the deceased’. The benu only
appeared on some images and in texts of prayers, not in narratives. All the
evidence suggests that the real nature and meaning of the divine bird were
not understood by the Greek historian.9
Herodotus regards the phoenix as a unique bird that every 500 years
comes back to life in exactly the same form. This figure does not seem to
tally with any of the calculations made about the life cycle of the Hesiodic
phoenix. Herodotus does not mention any appearance of the bird. One
must wait for Pliny the Elder to have some dates proposed,10 and for
Tacitus to come across an Egyptian periodicity.11 Herodotus’ brief narrative,
further, does not mention the revival of the bird, nor does it shed light on
the habitat, the habits, or even the etymology of its name; even so, thanks
to Herodotus’ account the phoenix entered Greek literature.
The two first Greek phoenixes have very little in common. Hesiod and
Herodotus use the same name for their otherwise rather different birds, and
the brevity of both narratives and the sparseness of information therein
fired the imagination of later authors. Herodotus provides the hard core of
the future myth: he speaks of a red, sacred, solar bird, unique, periodically
dying and rising from itself, migrating towards a temple of the Sun and
carrying the body of its father in a egg of myrrh (or, later, in a nest). The
possible confusion of Herodotus about the species of the phoenix—he
mentions a bird of prey rather than a wader—had long-lasting consequences:
it was only when it appeared on Roman coins during the Empire that the
phoenix recovered its heron shape. After Herodotus it is rarely mentioned
in Greek texts: two references in Greek Comedy12 and a 16-line-long
passage by Ezekiel the Dramatist (2nd century BCE) are the only sources
on the phoenix until the late 1st century BCE.
9 Only Laevius (1st c. BCE) seems to have spoken of the phoenix as a constellation,
namely the morning star, in his mysterious calligram, Phoenix, a figuratum text in
the shape of a wing (in Charisius, Ars grammatica 4.6).
10 Nat. Hist. 10.5.
11 Ann. 6.28.
12 Aristophanes (n. 4 above) and Antiphanes, fr 175 Kock (1880).
3. From Ezekiel the Dramatist to Ovid

Ezekiel the Dramatist and Ovid differ widely in their texts and
contexts. The former, a Greek-speaking Jewish dramatist who lived in
Alexandria in the 2nd century BCE, describes an extraordinary bird
appearing to the messenger of Moses in the Biblical oasis of Elim, during
the flight from Egypt.13 The latter, a Latin poet of the Augustan Age,
inserts an account of the life and death of the phoenix in a series of natural
metamorphoses reported to the Roman king Numa Pompilius by the Greek
philosopher Pythagoras.14 Both Ezekiel and Ovid speak of the phoenix as
an avian that is perched on the homonymous palm tree, and make the bird
a symbol, for they create an image that was meant to last, a sort of a
speaking picture, giving significance to a legend that had none until then.
The fragment of the tragedy of Ezekiel that mentions the phoenix
mentions a “wonderful” red bird inhabiting a palm tree grove.15 Φοῖνιξ
was an amphisemous term, referring to both the bird and the tree. Modern
critics believe that the word had to do with the blood-red hue, the colour of
the dates of the phoinix dactylifera. On the other hand the Phoenician
people probably took their name from their profession, being the suppliers
of the purple dye. The image of the phoenix perched on the homonymous
tree—and sometimes living in the homonymous country, Phoenicia—was
the result of this ambiguity.
Another addition to the phoenix myth was the ekphrastic description of
the bird, which resembled that of an artwork with precious stones. We may
regard it as the combination of two legendary and inseparable birds, the
orion and the catreus, supposedly seen by Alexander the Great in India.16
Ezekiel’s phoenix also combined in its physique the attributes of three
familiar birds: the eagle, king of the fowl of the air, the cock, the Persian
harbinger of the sunrise, and the pink flamingo of the Nile. Imaginary
creatures are commonly seen as hybrids. The head of this phoenix had a
kind of coxcomb and its legs were of the same colour as the legs of the
flamingo. Its song was more melodious than that of the dying swan,
possibly in recollection of a musical instrument that also had the name
φοῖνιξ. Not least, the phoenix was a familiar topic for student exercises at
the schools of rhetoric until well into Late Antiquity.17
13 Exagoge frag. 17.253-269 Jacobson (1983).
14 Met. 15.392-409.
15 There is only a description of the bird, with no name.
16 Cleitarchus in Strabo 15.69 and Aelian. N.A. 17.23.
17 See Colomo (2013).
Ezekiel’s third addition was the characterization of the phoenix as the

king of the air, with other birds in attendance. That image was perhaps
drawn from the giant benu bearing the pharaonic crown, and became
standardised when the bird came to symbolise Roman imperial power.
Several emperors or generals were to be compared to it, as we shall see.
The fourth contribution of Ezekiel to the reinvention of the phoenix
myth developed around a pun on the triple meaning of the Greek term
Φοῖνιξ, which in addition to the name of the bird, was also the national
name for the denizen of Phoenicia, and also the name of the Hebrew
country and homeland of the red dye. In fact this may not be just a two-,
but a four- or five-tiered polysemy. In Ezekiel’s text, the phoenix acquires
religious symbolism in the context of the Jewish worldview and becomes a
favourable omen for the return to the Promised Land.18 Since rhetoric,
hybridisation, puns, and symbolism ignited Ezekiel’s inventiveness, there
is no reason for presupposing other unknown sources.
Ovid played with the homonymy bird/tree, but also added to the myth
by associating the phoenix with the parrot in a funerary context. He
expatiated on the theme of spices, and introduced, among other aromatics,
cinnamon, which eventually became the emblematic spice of the phoenix.
The poet also established a parallel between the cycle of resurrection of
the bird and that of the Roman Empire, of which the phoenix would
become an official symbol.
In the Amores19 the abode of the bird is a grove of holm oaks in Hades,
but in the Metamorphoses20 the phoenix lives in a palm tree (palma in
Latin). The bilingual Romans were able to discern the a pun here:* The palm
tree was the tree of Apollo, the Sun god, the Heliopolis Titan, and also a
μακρόϐιος, ‘long-lived’, plant.21 The Amores passage has to do with the
funeral of a parrot. The poet introduces the phoenix among other birds,
including the crow, a bird renowned from the time of Hesiod for its
longevity. As a denizen of India, the colourful parrot was soon to be
replaced by the phoenix as the Indian bird, particularly in the Greek
novels. The context of Amores 2.6, illustrating the elegiac theme of
mourning for a dead pet, was to be imitated by Statius, who depicted both
birds consumed on a pyre made of perfumed substances.22 No trace of fire
18 The link between the bird and the country was to become explicit later in
Lactantius (Carmen de ave phoenice, 65-6).
19 2.6.49-58.
20 15.392-409.
21 Dionysius of Alexandria (summarised in Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio
evangelica 14.25.4).
22 Silv. 2.4.
is attested in Ovid, although various translations or comments often

assert the contrary. In Ovid’s version the dead parrot descends to the
Elysian Fields, and there, is greeted by other birds: swans, peacocks,
doves, all of them ‘pious’23 and, unlike the phoenix, real animals.24
The phoenix’s piety—and hence its presence in that particular context
of mourning—can most likely be explained by the way it is believed to
pay its last respects to its father. Piety towards parents was one of the
archetypal Roman virtues: the founding father of Rome, pious Aeneas,
while fleeing Troy, carried his father on his shoulders (Aen. 2.707ff.), as
did the phoenix. During the reign of Augustus, that virtue received special
prominence and Vergil praised it in the Aeneid. Like Herodotus, the source
summarised by Pliny the Elder, a Roman senator named Manilius, 25
highlighted how the young bird honours the deceased father. Filial piety
became associated with the phoenix so closely that, centuries later, it gave
rise to a controversy between Christians and pagans.26 The controversy
was especially prominent in Egypt, for * In Egyptian iconography the falcon
(Horus) or the vulture (Isis) were often represented seated on the mummy
of Osiris, Horus’ father.
* ERRONEOUS INTERPRETATION OF THE EDITORS !
The concept of purity, noted in Ovid, was related to the diet of the
bird.27 Senator Manilius, quoted by Pliny, wrote that nobody ever saw the
phoenix eat. Does that mean abstinence from food, just as the solitary bird
abstains from sexual activity, or does it imply that the phoenix consumed a
special kind of food? A possible parallel may be that of the porphyrio, i.e.
the gallinule, which supposedly eats only when in hiding.28 Later authors
elaborated on the topic: for Lactantius, the food of the phoenix was the
mythological nectar and ambrosia; for Claudian, the phoenix consumed
the breeze, after the manner of the Persian bird rhyntakes, or perhaps after
the chameleon, associated with the phoenix by Ovid. Most likely,
however, we are confronted with a case of contamination by proximity.29
23 Am. 2.6.3: piae volucres.
24 Which may cause one to wonder what the phoenix is doing among them.
25 Nat. Hist. 10.3-5. The work of this author, contemporary of Sulla and otherwise
unknown, is lost.
26 Origen, Contra Celsum 4.98.
27 Met. 15.397, unguibus et puro nidum sibi construit ore, a phrase that describes
how the bird builds its nest, includes the expression puro... ore, which refers to the
diet of the bird.
28 Athenaeus 9.388d.
29 I define as “contamination by proximity” the case in which an external and
independent element became integrated with the phoenix myth, just because it was
close to the name of the phoenix in a text. See Lecocq (2009b) and (2012).
In Ovid, the notion of a pure beak pointed to the Pythagorean vegetarian

diet of a Golden Age when men shed no blood, not even to feed
themselves. In reality nobody knows how the tradition of the pure phoenix
originated; most likely*
* ADDITION OF THE EDITORS !
Maybe a bilingual pun is again involved: the traders called
φοῖνιξ καθαρός, ‘clean dates’, the choice dates sold without stalks, as
opposed to the φοῖνιξ ῥυπαρός, ‘dirty dates’, the dates which were sold in
bunches, just the way they were picked: this pun stresses the tie between
the bird and the tree.30
The phoenix was also unicus, ‘unique’, and that adjective characterised
the bird for a long time. 31 The term vivax phoenix, the ‘ever-living
phoenix’ in Amores 2.6.54 emphasises the longevity of the avian through a
play on sound, which was later revived by Statius.32
Ovid dwelt on spices as the main diet of the phoenix, but also as the
material used for the nest, thus replacing the Herodotean egg of myrrh.
Pliny, again following Manilius, nested the bird in cassia and
frankincense. Ovid added cardamom, nard, and cinnamon.33 At the same
time he engaged in wordplay by fashioning pairs of one plain and one
composite word that featured the simple word as one of its compounds,
such as the amomum/cinnamomum pair, or Syria/Assyria, the alleged
homeland of the phoenix, both terms referring to the same country, also
identified as Phoenicia.34
In the last book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the phoenix appears at the
end of the speech by Pythagoras, and is listed as one of several natural
wonders 35 that go through palingenesis; it is the last example in
Pythagoras’ discourse on the death and rebirth of cities and empires,
including the reincarnation of Troy in Rome, the future greatness of which
Pythagoras predicted. The prophecy came true in the course of Book 15,
culminating in the apotheosis of Caesar and the eulogy of pious Augustus:
this is the first instance of the phoenix being made by analogy, or at least
through textual proximity, an image of the long reign of Rome and its
hereditary transmission of power. To this one may add an association of
the bird with Roma aeterna, the ‘eternal Rome’, a label later advertised by
Martial and the imperial mint, as we shall see.
30 See Mayerson (2001).

31 See Lecocq (2013b).
32 Silv. 3.2.114.
33 Cassia is a false kind of cinnamon, while cinnamomum zeylanicum is the real
one (a superior variety from Ceylon).
34 These spices were most likely used to cover up the foul smell from the decaying
corpse, as is explicitly stated in Ambrose, Hexaemeron 5.23.79.
35 As in Aenesidemus of Cnossos, quoted in Diogenes Laertius 9.79.
Ovid’s account of the phoenix in Metamorphoses 15.392-409

considerably modified and enriched the myth, without even describing the
bird. Ovid was the first author to play with the double meaning of the
Greek φοῖνιξ, translated in Latin as phoenix and palma, and created a new
and long-lasting image by situating the bird on a palm tree. Piety and
purity were added as attributes, making the bird a holy creature, with a diet
and a style of its own. Enlarging on some rational narrative elements (nest,
food), probably in the wake of Manilius, Ovid built on the close
relationship of the phoenix to spices, especially cinnamon (not exclusive of the palm tree)*,
* OMITTED BY THE EDITORS !
and connected the bird to Aeneas and Rome: its cyclical eternity seemed to be the
consequence of its virtues. This process of cultural appropriation disentangled the bird
from Egypt and made it Roman, just as the Ezekielian phoenix had become Jewish.
4. Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder mentions the bird several times in his Natural History,
particularly in books 10 and 13, treating respectively birds and trees. His
main pieces of information, however, seem to contradict each other.
Regarding the association between the phoenix and the palm tree, he
identifies the bird with an Alexandrine type of palm tree called syagros,
because both are singularis, ‘the only one of its kind’, another bilingual
pun (Nat. Hist. 13.42). Pliny used as his main source the lost book of the
Roman author Manilius (Nat. Hist. 10.3-4). Manilius was the source of
several of the details about the phoenix, including the question about its
food, but also the presence of a worm between the older and the younger
bird (Nat. Hist. 10.4), and some computations about its cycle, together
with the dates of its supposed appearances. In Manilius, Egypt is replaced
with Panchaia as the country of the phoenix’s residence. Elsewhere in the
Natural History (11.121) the bird is described differently, with cinnamon
prevailing over all other aromatics, as a result of confusion with the
legendary cinnamon birds: the source of Pliny said that ‘cinnamon’ was a
Phoenician, i.e. Semitic, word.36
In Aenesidemus,37 a worm was mentioned in the same list of animals
as the phoenix, and Manilius made it part of the bird’s legend. Is it a
coincidence or a case of contamination by proximity, as we already
observed in the case of the bird’s food, and will again see with regards to
the fire that consumes it? The conceptual proximity of the worm to the
36 See Lecocq (2011c).

37 See n. 35.
phoenix does not seem paradoxical: decay naturally engenders vermin,

here a worm at* as the first stage in a process of metamorphosis which
implicitly likens the bird to a butterfly. Along similar lines, fly eggs give
forth maggots;38 and bees were born from the corpses of bulls.39 In Ovid,
the phoenix appears in a similar list. The worm will sometimes be found in
the ashes of the bird, after the addition of the fire to the legend, as in the
poem of Lactantius (Carmen de ave phoenice 101-8), defying all logic. It
would wrap itself in a cocoon like a silkworm, before becoming a chick.40
Or was it the worm eating away the wood inside the bark of the cinnamon
twig, as asserted by Theophrastus?41
Manilius sent the bird to Heliopolis, although the city was not in
Egypt, but near Panchaia, 42 a region close to Arabia, according to
Pomponius Mela, who referred to it just before mentioning the phoenix.43
Ovid, too, mentioned the place in his Myrrha legend—myrrh being named
after her—44 and made it the land of aromatics: cardamom, cinnamon,
costus, and frankincense—the same list as for the phoenix, barring one
item. 45 Manilius seemed to inscribe the phoenix in an Eastern, non-
Egyptian cycle 46 (perhaps the Hesiodic cycle): 47 it stretched over 540
years,48 i.e. 60x90 years in a Babylonian computation, on a sexagesimal
scale. The return of the bird marked the revolution of the so-called Great
Year, i.e., the universal cycle corresponding to the time it took for celestial
bodies to complete their trajectories and return to their original positions.
The bird was soon to be spotted in Egypt, under Tiberius, and in Rome,
under Claudius, during whose time a fake phoenix was displayed in the
forum.49
38 A fly is by nature needed to pollinate the date palm trees (artificial pollinisation
can also be made by man): another contact between the tree and the bird?
39 See, for example,Vergil, Georg. 4.281-314 and 548-58.
40 Ancient authors were never disturbed by the incompatibility of the two versions.
41 Hist. Plant. 9.5.3.
42 In Pliny, Nat. Hist. 10.4: totum deferre nidum prope Panchaiam in Solis urbem.
43 Panchaia: Pomp. Mel. Chorogr. 3.81; phoenix: Pomp. Mel. Chorogr. 3.83-4. In
Diodorus Siculus (17.50.4), the grove of Panchaia is an oasis of palm trees
harbouring many birds.
44 Met. 10.307-10: (...) sit dives amomo / cinnamaque costumque suum sudataque
ligno / tura ferat floresque alios Panchaia tellus / dum ferat et myrrham.
45 Met. 10.307-10; another case of contamination by proximity?
46 Pliny, Nat. Hist. 7.153.
47 See n. 5.
48 Still, some critics propose that here Manilius may be correcting a corrupted text.
49 Tiberius: Tacitus, Ann. 6.28, and Dio Cassius 58.24.1; Claudius: Pliny, Nat.
Hist. 10.5.
How could one recognise the phoenix from the other exotic birds?
Pliny depicts it twice. Just before the excerpt from Manilius, Pliny
describes a purple bird of prey, similar to that of Herodotus with
Ezekielian details, such as iridescent feathers and a crop, plus a plume
(Nat. Hist. 10.3). And a book later, he mentions the difference between the
double-plumed phoenix and the single-plumed peacock (Nat. Hist.
11.121). This apparently realistic plume is a loan from another bird, the
Egyptian benu, a heron conventionally shown with a crop and two plumes;
it is another case of hybridisation. The fresco showing a phoenix in the
tavern of Euxinus at Pompeii displayed a large pigeon sporting some tufts
on its head and under its throat, probably in order to give it a supernatural
look.50
Concerning spices, Pliny mistook the phoenix for the so-called
“cinnamon bird” described by Herodotus and Aristotle:51 I have discussed
how Pliny misinterpreted Herodotus, who mentioned the Phoenician
people while noting that the word κιννάμωμον was Semitic.52 Pliny is
known to have made such mistakes more than once; that one, although
spotted by his followers, left its mark: from then on, the phoenix became
indissolubly associated with cinnamon. The phoenix is presented perched
on the crags where cinnamon birds build their nests with cinnamon twigs.
Claudian spoke of the phoenix with these twigs in its claws;53 Sidonius
Apollinaris never failed to mention cinnamon with the phoenix,
particularly in his description of the triumphant procession of Bacchus as
the conqueror of India, in which the phoenix marched among prisoners,
carrying a tribute of cinnamon.54 The transference of the bird to India,
where the cinnamon actually came from, just like the colourful parrot and
the peacock, became commonplace both in poetry and fiction.55
Pliny, however, in the 10th book of his Natural History, where he
spoke about the phoenix, did not mention the cinnamon pyre that appeared
later in the myth, but in a later book he referred to the ashes of the phoenix
50 See Lecocq (2009a). I owe the reading to Pr. Daniel Ogden who has noticed the
same thing for another legendary creature, the dragon snake (see Ogden 2013).
51 Hdt. 3.111 (ὄρνιθας μεγάλας, ‘great birds’), Aristotle, H.A. 616a6-13 (τὸ
κιννάμωμον ὄρνεον, ‘the cinnamon bird’).
52 See Lecocq (2011c).
53 Epistula ad Serenam 2.16. The phoenixes on the coin of Hadrian and on the
Orpheus mosaic at Piazza Armerina maybe holding a cinnamon branch; see
Lecocq (2009a).
54 Carmina 22.50-1.
55 See Lecocq (2011a).
as a remedy.56 He knew about the element of the fire in the myth, either
when the bird, in the process of its rebirth, was cremated, or else when the
paternal corpse was cremated. The cremation theme is recorded in other
imperial authors. Mela mentions the cremation of the remains on the altar
of the Sun in a funeral rite.57 And, in Lucan’s Bellum Civile 6.680, the
witch Erichtho uses the ashes of the phoenix in her magic recipe to bring a
corpse back to life: Pliny jokes about that rather uncommon commodity.58
5. The pyre of the phoenix

The fire was introduced into the myth in the 1st century CE, in place of
the decay theme. For some scholars, the fire was an early element in the
legend, because the phoenix is a solar bird. Still, the putrefaction came
first in the myth, and the flames were secondary. The fire, like the worm,
may have entered the legend by contamination of proximity: in the list of
Aenesidemus, the πυρίβιον (a ‘creature living in the fire’, like the
salamander), the worm, and the phoenix were mentioned in succession,
one after the other.59
Other possible causes for the origin of the fire can be found in
religious and funeral rituals, or in philosophical thought. In ancient
religions, fires burned on altars, and the Greeks practiced the holocaust
sacrifice, in which the sacrificed animal was completely consumed by fire.
In Egypt, they embalmed their dead, just as Herodotus wrote about while
referring to the paternal phoenix; in Greece, they buried the dead, while in
Rome, they cremated them.60 The first Latin texts mentioning the fire
dated back to the 1st century CE, just as the practice of cremation was
becoming common in Rome, at least for people of importance and for the
imperial family, given the exorbitant price of spices. Some considerations
on the cycle of the bird were also part of the philosophical considerations
on the age of the world and on its end. The Stoics, who exercised great
influence in Rome, believed that the world would end in a conflagration.
The myth developed further, with ashes and flames appearing in the texts
of Pomponius Mela, Lucan, Pliny, and Martial.61 In Statius, for the first
56 Nat. Hist. 29.29.
57 Pomp. Mel. Chorogr. 3.83-4.
58 See n. 56.
59 See n. 35.
60 Thus Aenesidemus, in Diogenes Laertius 9.79.
61 Pomp. Mel. Chorogr. 3.83-4, Lucan, BC 6.680, Pliny, Nat. Hist. 29.29, Martial,
Epigram. 5.7.1.
time, the phoenix ascended a pyre, out of which it was reborn.62 No

structuralist theory of “the raw and the cooked”63 is necessary to account
for the phenomenon, and there is no Egyptian reference for that purely
Roman fire.
Martial was the first to compare the destruction of a city by fire (i.e.
that of Rome under Domitian) to the burning nest of the phoenix. He
prayed to Vulcan, the god of fire, to spare Rome from further destruction
by fire. The comparison was taken up whenever cities had to be rebuilt
after destructions due to disasters, fires, or earthquakes, such as Smyrna.
Aelius Aristides also dwelt on polysemy, because the city of Smyrna bears
the Greek name of the myrrh, σμύρνα.64 In the 6th century, the Christian
poet Venantius Fortunatus congratulated Bishop Leontius for rebuilding
the churches of Bordeaux after their collapse or destruction by fire, and he
pronounced them fortunate to have suffered the same fate as the mythical
bird.65
Martial’s contemporary Statius wrote another funeral oration for a
parrot.66 In Ovid, the bird was buried, while in Statius it was cremated on a
pyre of aromatics. The final image of the poem is not the Indian parrot, but
the phoenix. Later authors tried to offer some reasonable explanation for
the cause of the fire that consumed the phoenix, attributing it mostly to the
sun’s rays.67 In the same poem, Statius mentioned the phoenix bird next to
the homonymous tutor of Achilles,68 with whom common points were to
be found.69 More importantly, the poet introduced a play on words and
sounds: the comparative felicior evoked a play on phonetics, fenix felix
(the diphthong oe was no longer heard), a ‘blessed phoenix’. The
wordplay is itself engraved on the walls of a Pompeii tavern next to a
depiction of a bird, which is thus identified.
Another theme tied to the imperial phoenix is happiness as a result of
its longevity. Even though this association is never clearly explained, it
soon became a leitmotiv, not only in the phoenix phraseology, but also—
alongside the recurrent themes of eternity and the Golden Age—in the
propaganda spread by imperial coinage. In the imperial titulature, felix
often featured alongside pius, ‘pious’, the main epithet of the phoenix.
62 Silv. 2.4.
63 See Lévi-Strauss (1964).
64 Orationes 21.268 Dindorf (1829).
65 Carmina 1.15.41-52.
66 According to Statius’ testimony, in Silv. 3.2.
67 Lactantius, Carmen de ave phoenice 97; Claudian, Phoenix 55-7.
68 Silv. 3.2.96 and 114.
69 Perhaps on the basis of a Homeric allusion (Il. 9.446); see Lecocq (2011a).
People named Felix, including the fellow whom the graffito fenix felix of
Pompeii maybe have referred to—a candidate in some municipal
elections—were to be associated with our bird.70 The homelands of the
phoenix, Arabia and later India, were usually called felix, meaning
primarily, ‘fertile’. Lactantius had the bird residing in a paradise-like locus
felix, ‘blessed land’ (Carmen de ave phoenice 1).
The poems of Martial and Statius belong to different literary genres
and offer different descriptions of the phoenix and its favourite spices: as a
result of the popularity of these poems, however, the bird soon found a
home in Rome. It was later to be seen, along with the tiger and the
elephant, as an inhabitant and attribute of India, its new homeland, in the
novels or on some mosaics.71
6. The Indian novel of the phoenix

The phoenix is not attested in the Latin novels,72 but it appears in about
half of their Greek counterparts. Achilles Tatius followed the Herodotean
tradition of a bird with no fire, settled in Ethiopia. Lucian and Philostratus
imagined a pyre in India; Heliodorus left it to his readers, as these
countries, both situated on the borders of the world, were often associated
in imaginary—and even geographical—representations.
There are many notable affinities between the phoenix and India: the
bird is alternately seen as a synthesis of the Indian orion and the catreus (in
Ezekiel), as one of the colourful birds of that country (in Pliny), and as the
new Ἰνδικὸς ὄρνις, ‘Indian bird’, or the Gangeticus ales, ‘bird of the
Ganges’, rather than the parrot or the peacock (in Lucian, Philostratus,
Aelius Aristides, and Ausonius). 73 The phoenix was endowed with
exceptional longevity, like some of the Indian populations, and lived an
ascetic life, like some of the wise men there who similarly were marked by
70 As in the anonymous Carmen de resurrectione ad Flavium Felicem.

72 See Lecocq (2011a). There is an allusion to the phoenix in the dinner of
Trimalchio, in the depiction of a wild boar served with dates and stuffed with
living birds; this topic was addressed in my article ‘The palm tree, the phoenix and
the wild boar: scientific and literary reception of a strange trio in Pliny the Elder
(Nat. Hist. 13.42-3) and in the Satyricon (40.3-8)’, to be published in the
Proceedings of the Conference Reception of ancient myths in ancient, modern and
postmodern culture (Łódź, 2015).
73 The ‘Indian bird’ is the parrot in Aristotle, HA 8.12, and the phoenix in Aelius
Aristides, Orat. 45.107; Lucian, Navigium 44; Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 3.49.
The ‘bird of the Ganges’ is the peacock in Columella, RR 8.8.10, and the phoenix
in Ausonius, Gryphus 16, Epistula 20.9.
their vegetarian diet and self-immolation by fire. The bird, therefore,

joined the Indian real and imaginary fauna, along with rhinos and golddigging
ants. In the novel of Lucian, the main character imagined himself
discovering India and its marvels,74 just as Apollonius of Tyana did, with
Philostratus portraying the magus among the Brahmins, and providing a
description of the griffin next to our bird.75 Some Christian writings, such
as the Syriac Physiologus, rubber-stamped the relocation of the phoenix in
India. Achilles Tatius (Leucippe et Clitophon 3.24-25), while remaining
faithful to Egypt and to the Herodotean tradition of the decay and of the
egg of myrrh, introduced four new elements, the reason and meaning of
which remain difficult to appraise: a priest examining the ἀπόρρητα
(‘secret parts’?) of the phoenix; the bird’s own funeral oration; a truce; and
a radiate crown. Several explanations have been put forward to identify the
rationale behind these four features, and one cannot exclude a touch of
humour, since the sexual organs of birds (the ἀπόρρητα) are hardly
visible. 76 Another evidence of humour was also given by Heliodorus
(Aethiopica 10.4): one of his characters told a friend, who had to bring his
mistress a flamingo, that he was fortunate she had not asked for a phoenix.
Furthermore, the song of the dying swan (a bird originating in India), was
a theme of rhetorical value, and it featured in funeral speeches, just as
conventional as the description of the phoenix; the death song in
Philostratus might have been taken up by Lactantius and Claudian. I think
that there is also another level of significance: a mise en abyme, because,
for Christians, the phoenix was a symbol of the resurrection, not only in
apologetics, but also in funeral speeches; Ambrose of Milan used it for his
brother Satyrus, and Eusebius of Caesarea for the emperor Constantine.77
As for the interruption of military activities as a consequence of the
return of the bird, the question is whether it can be seen (through the study
of a papyrus that reportedly mentions this)78 as historical evidence for
some set festival actually celebrated in the country,79 or just as a literary
device aimed at inserting the story on the benu-phoenix into the narrative.
Finally, the radiate crown of the phoenix was unprecedented in
literature, but this does not necessarily mean that it did not have its own
74 See n. 74 73.
75 See n. 74 73.
77 Ambrose, De excessu fratris sui 2.59; Eusebius, Vita Constantini 4.72.
78 See Gualandri (1974) 297-8; Herodotus spoke of an annual Sun fest in
Heliopolis (2.59).
79 And, if so, according to which cycle was it celebrated? Was it the Sothiac
period, or the annual flooding of the Nile?
centuries-long history. It appears for the first time alongside the phoenix
on the coinage of Hadrian, but it might have been influenced by the corona
of the benu. Alternatively, it may be drawing upon Greek myth, namely,
the radiant crown of Helios-Apollo, or Egyptian symbolism, the solar disk,
the radiate crown in Tatius. Replacing a crest or tuft, this halo helped
identify the phoenix as the bird on the coins, much more distinctly than its
genitals.
7. The phoenix as an imperial symbol
Fiction aside, the phoenix appears just as often in Roman history,

always in connection with the Empire.80 That connection is allusive in
Ovid, expressly noted in Martial, and officially advertised under Hadrian,
the first emperor to issue a series of coins depicting the bird.81
There were numerous affinities between the phoenix and imperial
power. Ezekiel showed a royal figure with a retinue. Ovid made it a
natural example of palingenesis for King Numa, drawing a parallel with
that of empires. Martial made the bird an image of Rome rising from its
ashes. Because of its association with the fire of aromatics, the phoenix
became comparable with the eagle of apotheosis that rose from the
imperial pyre, and also with the peacock of Juno, which was associated
with the consecration of an empress. Moreover, it embodied and passed
down to its descendents the august virtues of pietas and felicitas, ‘piety’
and ‘happiness’, and it assumed the purple colour reserved for the
emperor. Its radiant crown was also reminiscent of the crown worn by the
sovereigns and by some new deities in the Roman pantheon, such as Sol
Invictus, ‘Unconquered Sun’, and Mithras. In this way, the bird became a
symbol for the virtues of the emperor, his funeral, dynastic succession, the
imperial and solar cult, as well as for Rome and the Roman Empire in their
cyclical renewal and everlasting duration.
The frequent occurrences in history and literature, enforced by their
proximity to some philosophical and political calendric speculations, made
the phoenix a symbol of the State, as emblematic as the eagle and the shewolf,
and its duration was to extend long after the fall of the Empire. This
powerful new symbolism of the phoenix was immortalised in a series of
images that date from that time and in the composition of a major Latin
poem that celebrated the emperor* is an imperial celebration, the Phoenix, by Claudian.
* ERRONEOUS CORRECTION OF THE EDITORS !
80 See Lecocq (2001).

81 See the plates in Van den Broek (1971).
The new coin depicting the phoenix, which was produced under
Hadrian, did not come from nowhere. The mythical bird was already
linked with some of the Julio-Claudian and Flavian emperors: its political
career began in Rome in the early 1st century CE. Some computations
were made in order to find out, and forecast, if not the date of the return of
the bird itself, at least the astronomical period it symbolised. Cornelius
Valerianus,82 Tacitus, and Dio Cassius mention the reign of Tiberius,83 and
Pliny the Elder that of Claudius for the public display of a false phoenix.84
According to Tacitus, Greek and Egyptian scholars were behind those
calculations, such as Chaeremon, an Alexandrine priest and Stoic
philosopher living at the time of Nero.85 The problem was that the elusive
bird, with a cycle of at least 500 years, appeared too often. Tacitus, who
gave the phoenix the Egyptian periodicity of 1461 years, known as Sothiac
or canicular, spoke of three appearances of the avian, during the reign of
three Pharaohs chronologically too close to each other, the last one being
Ptolemy III Euergetes. For Rome, politics and the calendar intersected.
Reading or predicting the future was a politically sensitive matter. As a
result, the advent of the phoenix routinely coincided with key dates or
anniversaries of the Respublica, such as the 20th centenary of Tiberius’
reign, his death, or the 8th centennial anniversary of the year traditionally
established as the year of Rome’s foundation, which fell during Claudius’
reign.
As a result of this propaganda, the phoenix acquired the status of
official political symbolism and as such was featured on some coins in the
following century: it signalled the end of one era and the beginning of a
new one, with a promise of bliss in the expected return of the Golden Age.
For Domitian and even for Tiberius, it meant going literally through the
flames, either the blaze of the burning city or in a funeral pyre.
The official image of the phoenix first appeared, as aforenoted, on
coins issued by Hadrian. If the Alexandrine coin of Antoninus εὐσεϐής,
‘the pious one’, had been the first one showing a phoenix, things would
have been clear: Censorinus pinpointed the year 139 as the opening year of
renewal of the Sothiac period.86 On the coin, the benu or purple* heron is
featured as Αἰών, the ‘Great Year’, as can also be seen on the Saqqara
ceremonial tunic (1st or 2nd century CE) participating in an Isiac theogamy
within a cosmic context. The head of the bird is vulture-like, and the
* ERRONEOUS ADDITION OF THE EDITORS !
82 Mentioned in Pliny, Nat. Hist. 10.5.
83 See n. 50 49.
84 Nat. Hist. 10.5.
85 Hieroglyphica, in Tzetzes, Chiliades 5.385.
86 De die natali 21.10.
hieroglyph representing a vulture means ‘year’. It stands on a hillock made

of twelve rocks, corresponding to the number of months in the solar year.87
But the new image appeared first during the reign of Hadrian. Why did
this happen?
Once he came to power, Hadrian had a gold coin minted in memory of
the deceased Trajan, showing the phoenix. There is no explanation for the
motives behind Hadrian’s choice of this symbol. A propaganda message
must have been attached to new iconography, which people were supposed
to understand, regardless of their culture, religion, or country of origin:
they could be Romans, Greeks, Jews, or Egyptians.
With its long legs, the phoenix of Hadrian is a heron. Since there is no
colour on the coinage, the phoenix was to be identified by its shape, as
well as by two additional clues: the radiate crown as a token of sacredness,
and the legend—unfortunately missing in that case—that would explain
the symbolic meaning. One may doubt if the bird was easily recognisable,
since no literary text identified it as a heron.88 The halo does not appear in
any literary source before Achilles Tatius, who, being of a later date,
might have borrowed the motif from the coinage. Further, the heron had
no plume, which was incompatible with the halo: only the radiate crown, a
symbol of power in Greece and Rome, makes the identification of the
avian possible. There are more than seven rays, a sacred number; twelve
seems a more likely number, for there are twelve months in the solar year.
The second element of the image, the branch the bird holds in its
claws, gives no clue to its identity: is it a cinnamon twig from its nestpyre?
is it a palm twig from the homonymous tree? or (/and) is it perhaps
the palm or laurel of victory? Trajan made Arabia a Roman province, after
the successes of his general Aulus Cornelius Palma.89 The same twig is
observed on an Alexandrine coin of the Antonine period, showing the
phoenix, with the sacred ox Apis on the reverse; the benu was sometimes
shown perched on a willow or a persea.
Once identified, what interpretation was to be given to the animal?
Does it express hope of an afterlife for Trajan, shown on the reverse, after
his consecration? Does it communicate with assertiveness the continuity of
imperial power from the father to the—adoptive—son? Or does it express
Hadrian’s promise to be, like Trajan, optimus, ‘the best’ emperor, for his
subjects? The message is too rich; in the same image, funeral solemnity,
87 According to F. Labrique (2012).

88 Tacitus, the closest contemporary to the aureus, is imprecise (Ann. 6.28).
89 Palma was to be killed later, by order of Hadrian, so* and the reverse of the coin
celebrates Trajanus Parthicus (conqueror of Parthia), not Arabicus (conqueror of
Arabia).
* ERRONEOUS CORRECTION OF THE EDITORS !
filial piety,90 dynastic succession, and a renewal leading to a new era of

bliss, all intercross.91
This first series of coins with the mysterious bird on them were minted
in 118 CE. In 121-122, another aureus appeared, on which the phoenix
was a mere accessory. That coin depicted Αἰών, or a genius, a tutelary
deity, or Hadrian himself, carrying a radiant phoenix on a globe, inscribed
in the oval of the Zodiac and accompanied by the inscription Saeculum
aureum, ‘Golden Age’. There is no continuity, either iconographic or
symbolic, with the former coin. Yet the phoenix-on-the-globe type—
similar to the winged victory—was to last.92 A third coin of Hadrian, with
the inscription πρόνοια, ‘foresight’, was minted in Alexandria and showed
the haloed bird associated with a sceptre, which is another symbol of
sovereignty. There was no further depiction of the phoenix-in-majesty type
in the coinage before the reign of the sons of Constantine. Also, on these
imperial coins, the bird was never shown sitting on a palm tree or in a
flaming nest, as it will be depicted later on some mosaics. Numismatic
iconography and literary descriptions followed separate courses.
After the first phoenix of 139, the second Antonine phoenix was
definitely funerary, and the context was different from the father/son
relation depicted earlier. Faustina, Antoninus Pius’ deceased spouse, was
the first empress ever to be depicted on coins under the inscription
aeternitas, ‘eternity’, of the phoenix. A third coin with the phoenix on it,
minted ca. 159-160, no longer celebrated the eternity of the individual
soul, but again that of Rome.
Once the image of the phoenix on coins was stabilised, the search for a
meaning began, alternating between the glorification of a deceased
emperor and the symbolising of the imperial power by means of special
ties to certain important anniversaries. In the year 248, marking the
millenary celebration of the foundation of Rome, and in the years
immediately following, more coins with the phoenix on them were minted
by some short-lived emperors. Then, for the commemoration of the 20th
anniversary of his reign, in 326, the emperor Constantine had some bronze
coins minted, showing him as a sceptre-holding Jupiter proffering a
phoenix-topped globe to his heir: it was another case of hereditary
transmission of the imperial power and world sovereignty from father to
son. That date is supposed to be approximately that of Lactantius’ poem
90 Hadrian brought the ashes of the late Trajan back from the East to Rome.
91 See Lecocq (2001) and (2009a); Quet (2004).
92I have found a mistranslation of σφαῖρα (‘globe’), read as σφῦρα (‘hammer’),
giving in Latin: habens in pedibus malleolos (‘having small hammers in its feet’),
instead of: ‘with a globe at its feet’ (Ps. Epiphanius, Ad Physiologum 11).
on the bird, the Carmen de ave phoenice, a work devoid of political

symbolism—except for the choice of the topic—but full of hints to
Christianity. By that time, Constantine had established Christianity as the
State religion. Notably,* The phoenix had acquired a religious dimension as
early as the late 1st century CE. Christian authors saw in it an allegory of
the resurrection of Christ. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote the
Life of Constantine, also mentioned the bird in reference to the succession
of the emperor.93 Thus, the imperial bird identified with its Christian
counterpart on the coins minted by the sons of Constantine, who further
added the phoenix to the imperial banner (the labarum) next to the Chi
Rho Christogram.
* USELESS ADDITION OF THE EDITORS !
On these coins, the phoenix is seated on a kind of pyramid made of

rocks, if not a pile of wood or some bags of spices. If the hillock is not the
crag of the cinnamon birds, it may stand for the benben, the primordial hill
on which the benu landed when the world was created, provided that the
Romans were aware of that cosmogonic legend of Heliopolis.94 It may also
be the hillock symbolising the twelve-month-long solar year, as it does on
the Saqqara tunic, and perhaps on some mosaics in Syria.95 The coinage
dates from 346-450, and 348 marked the 11th centenary of the foundation
of Rome. A threatening Sibylline oracle foretold the fall of the Empire
“when the time of the phoenix will come to an end”.96
Besides Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and the sons of Constantine, who
used the image of the phoenix to advertise their reign, other emperors were
compared to the avian as well, including the prematurely deceased Julian,
who was compared to the phoenix by the orator Libanius;97 Avitus while
campaigning against Attila, by the poet Sidonius Apollinaris;98 Justin II,
by the poet Corippus;99 and, above all, the general Stilicho by Claudian, a
poet at the court of Honorius and the author of another long poem on the
phoenix, one hundred years after Lactantius. Claudian imitated Lactantius
up to a certain point. Claudian underscored the ‘persian’ appearance of the
phoenix which reminded him of the cock—called the περσικὸς ὄρνις—and
carefully avoided associations with Christianity. In Lactantius’ poem there
93 Vita Constantini 4.72. The fragment of Ezekiel on the phoenix is recorded in

another work of the same Eusebius (Praeparatio evangelica 9.29).
94 See Lecocq (2008a) 213-4.
95 The phoenix mosaic of Daphne (6th century) shows rocks similar to those of
Saqqara, but without the number twelve, and without the so-called eyes.
96 Oracula sibyllina 8.139: ἔνθεν ὅτ' ἂν φοίνικος ἐπέλθῃ τέρμα χρόνοιο.
97 Orationes 17.10.
98 Carmina 7.353-6.
99 In Laudem Iustini Augusti Minoris 1.349-52.
is more religion and spirituality than politics;100 Claudian’s text, on the

contrary, is clearly politically oriented. In all of Claudian’s poems the
phoenix stands not for the emperor himself but for the emperor-in-waiting
Stilicho, commander-in-chief and son-in-law of the late Theodosius, and
the regent on behalf of the young Caesars, Arcadius and Honorius.
Stilicho’s triumphant procession into Rome in 404 was likened to that of
the phoenix.101 In Minor poem 27, some specific details make the bird not
only a metaphor for Stilicho, but also an allegory of the Roman Empire
and the Roman peace, with allusions to some past and current events: thus
Claudian openly became a propagandist.102
8. The Christian appropriation of the phoenix
In Rome, the bird entered politics at about the same time that it entered
religion: Christ lived in the days of Tiberius, during whose reign a phoenix
supposedly appeared in Egypt. No author, however, noticed this until
much later.103 Still, the Christian appropriation of the bird predated its
imperial enlistment. In the days of Martial, Pope Clement I in an epistle
entered the phoenix in a list of some natural phenomena, such as the
alternation of day and night, or the growth of seeds.104 The fantastic side
has thus been removed, and the bird is no longer ranked among the unica
and ἀδύνατα—‘unique’ and ‘impossible’ things. Clement’s description of
the unique phoenix would later influence Eusebius of Caesarea for the
eulogy of Constantine.105
The mythological origin of the phoenix was uncontested: Photius
(Bibliotheca 126) blamed Clement for it. Only Tertullian seemed to add
some Biblical context to the phoenix legend when he quoted a Psalm, but
it was about the tree, not the bird: he transliterated the Greek φοῖνιξ as
phoenix (the bird), instead of translating it as palma (the palm tree).106
Ambrose, who mentions the phoenix and cites unspecified “Scriptures” as
his sources,107 either employs a vague phrase empty of content, or has in
100 See Gosserez (2013b, 119-38 and 151), for a political interpretation: Scipio
Africanus is to be seen behind the phoenixes of Lactantius and Claudian (Hercules
Oeteus, too, is a candidate for the symbolism behind Lactantius’ phoenix).
101 Claudian, De consulatu Stiliconis 2.415-20.
102 See Lecocq (2011b) et (2014a).
103 Coptic sermon on Mary, in Van den Broek (1971) 33-47.
104 Ad Corinthios epistula 1.25.
105 See n. 78.
106 De resurrectione carnis 13.
107 De excessu fratris sui 2.59.
mind Clement’s epistle, because all the Greek and Latin translators of the
Bible, from the Septuagint to Hieronymus and the Vulgate, saw a tree in
Job 29.18, the only verse that supposedly mentions the bird.108
The phoenix as an exemplum was popularised from the 2nd cent. CE
onwards, both in some apologetic treatises (Tertullian) and religious
poems109 and in the Physiologus bestiary, of which many translations and
variants were made initiating henceforth a tradition that would endure until
the Middle Ages. The Physiologus proposed an allegorical reading for the
characteristics of a series of animals, and warped their legends in order to
enhance their significance. Our bird, almost always in the top-ten list, was
undergoing yet another metamorphosis.
Some minor or major new details of metaphoric interest were added to
the myth, since the bird stood for the resurrection of Christ and, finally, for
his very nature. This gave rise to controversies: the phoenixes of the
Monophysites or the Gnostics had the smell of the pyre awaiting the
heretics.110 The phoenix was also to become a symbol for the Church and
the Virgin Mary. Pagans and Christians, Christians and Jews often
quarrelled over appropriation of the bird.
The founding text for the Christian phoenix was the epistle of Clement,
based on Herodotus and Pliny: the cultural and literary references of the
bishop of Rome were those of the Greek and Roman authors. But he was
the first to give the myth an explicit, rational interpretation: along these
lines, for instance, a coffin replaced the bird’s nest. The introduction of
some plausible eyewitnesses, a crowd and the priests of the Sun temple,
also deserves notice. Achilles Tatius either took up, or came up with the
same notion in his novel. The idea was to give credibility and, literally,
credence to the story of a bird no one ever saw, and whose existence some
people, like St. Augustine,111 would always doubt.
Over time, Christianity added new elements, more or less significant:
some plants, such as, for example, the Biblical vine branch; a change of
location, Lebanon, which would relate appropriately to Phoenicia—the
land of the cedars associated with the palm trees in the Bible—and, as a
108 See Lecocq (2014b): the rabbis in their commentary on the Genesis integrated
the phoenix into Paradise and into Noah’s Ark; the Masoretes even incorporated it
into Job 29.18, saying that the hebrew hôl, ‘sand’, means in this one and only
occasion the ‘phoenix bird’.
109 For example, the anonymous Carmen ad Flavium Felicem de resurrectione
mortuorum et de iudicio Domini, l. 133.
110 For the Monophysites, see Van den Broek (1971) 359; for the Gnostics, see
Tardieu (1973).
111 De natura et origine animae 4.33.
common noun, λίϐανος, meant the ‘frankincense’, a spice. The phoenix

now needed three days to rise again, and, in some versions of the
Physiologus, the resurrection took place at Easter, together with that of
Christ.
Words or elements already belonging to the myth acquired new
meanings in the context of Christian doctrine. Thus, the manna and dew—
the food of the bird in Ps.-Baruch—112 were the Biblical counterparts of
the nectar and ambrosia in Lactantius.113 The rejection of food became
asceticism, and the absence of sexuality, an apologia for virginity and
celibacy.114 The aureole was assimilated to that of Christ as the Sun of
justice, and to that of the saints. The fragrance of the aromatics turned into
the odour of sanctity. The palm became the symbol of the martyr and his
hope of an afterlife. The thousand-year life cycle blended with the
chiliastic doctrine. The wonderful Far Eastern land of spices was renamed
Paradise. The retinue of beasts evoked an Eden where all creatures live in
peace and harmony. Even the adjective μονογενής that Clement attached
to the phoenix, meaning, in the avian’s case, ‘self-begotten’, became an
official attribute of Christ (though with a different meaning). But the
Christian bird did not differ from its pagan ancestor.115
Nevertheless, the many common points between the pagan myth and
the emerging dogmas of the new religion left room for more invention, as
in the crypto-Christian poem of Lactantius, On the bird phoenix, an
ambiguous and much discussed piece. As will be observed for Claudian’s
poem in the following century, Lactantius’ poem was likewise fraught
with references to Classical mythology, several of which had significant
religious connotations: the locus felix, ‘blessed land’, the abode of the bird,
had been modelled on the Elysian Fields in Vergil, and it was a reminder
of the Golden Age, as well as of the Garden of Eden. Some details had a
special sense for Christians: the ritual bath of the bird (lines 25; 37-38)
evoked the baptism; the phrase ‘to recommend his soul’ (line 93)
suggested the prayer for the dead; the commendatio animae (‘the
commending of the soul’); the definition of the eternal life as ‘the blessing
of death’ (line 170) is also a reminiscence of Christianity. Alongside some
passages of sheer poetry, such as the description of the bird, playing with
all possible shades of red, many other points were ambivalent: the sexless
bird could be regarded as a paragon of the angelic life, and the absence of
112 Greek Apocalypse 6. The dew was already the food of the orion and the catreus.
113 Carmen de ave phoenice 111.
115 One recognises the bird not named by Avitus (De mundi initio 1.239) as the
phoenix, thanks to the Ovidian epithet vivax (Am. 2.6.54) and to the cinnamon.
a snake in the tree evokes, in a negative form, the temptation of Eve (line
72).
Its undeniably religious and somewhat cryptic message aside, the

poem of Lactantius, due to the status of its author, its uncertain* approximate date, and
the chosen topic, was linked to Constantine, the former follower of the god
Sol, the converted phoenix-emperor, who established Christianity as the
State religion. The political commitment of Lactantius was more discreet
than that of Claudian, his imitator, who rid his own poem, the Phoinix, of
all Christian allusions, in order to focus on the imperial bird.116
* INAPPROPRIATE MODIFICATION MADE BY THE EDITORS !
Indeed, the only two recurring phoenixes in ancient iconography117

were the imperial and the Christian ones. Depending on date, location, and
meaning, the bird was depicted in funerary contexts, on some graffiti and
on unrefined paintings in the catacombs, or as an artwork on mosaics,
being a part, or sometimes the centre, of a large composition. The
Christian phoenix took the shape of a haloed bird, just as it has been
featured on the imperial coinage, but often perched on the homonymous
tree, itself a religious symbol, in the scenes of Adventus in gloria, ‘the
Coming in glory’ of Christ, in some churches, as well as in the scenes of
Traditio legis (Christ ‘giving the law’ to St. Peter), on some sarcophagi.
Such images were original creations, unrelated to Christian texts.118
9. Conclusion
An undeveloped myth between the 8th and 3rd cent. BCE, a myth in the
making from the 2nd cent. BCE to the 1st cent. CE, and an expanding myth
from the end of that century to the end of the Latin world, the phoenix
reached its heyday in the long poems of Lactantius and Claudian.
Originally a literary creature of oriental attributes and mythology * an oriental
creature (Hesiod) immersed in the Egyptian sources of the benu (Herodotus), it acquired
its full symbolic range in Rome,
after focusing simultaneously and independently on the two most important, and originally
opposite, historical figures, the emperor and Christ. For the former, the phoenix stood
for cyclical time and eternity; for the latter, it represented linear time and the
afterlife.
116 For a comparison between Lactantius and Claudian see Lecocq (2014a).
117 Van den Broek (1971), Lecocq (2009a) and Dulaey (2013) list a total of ca. 100
images from antiquity.
118 This topic was addressed in my article ‘The Phoenix bird in Paradise: Literature
and Iconography’, to be published in the Proceedings of the Conference Animal
Kingdom of Heaven (Konstanz, 2013, dir. I. Schaaf).
The imperial phoenix became part of the imperial ideology and political propaganda:
it gave an image to dynastic succession and neverending supremacy. The Christian phoenix
was fashioned in light of the apologetic and exegetical tradition, in order to relate to
the core of the Christian faith: the resurrection of the body, the definition of Christ,
the eternal afterlife. Both stem from an imaginary bird of no importance at first, which
gradually generated an intriguing myth, thanks to the polysemous word φοῖνιξ, which
often gave rise to wordplay in the texts of the Greek and Roman historians, poets,
naturalists, novelists, and Church fathers. From pagan to Christian literature, many
mechanisms were at work, amplifying the narratives and the meanings of the short history
of the phoenix: the polysemy (bird/palm tree/Phoenician/musical instrument), the literary
borrowings (the food, the song), the hybridisation (with the eagle, the cock), the
bilingual puns (φοῖνιξ/palma, καθαρός/purus, σμύρνα/Σμύρνα,
λίϐανος/Λίϐανος, syagros/singularis) and the phonetic wordplay (phoenix/felix),
the contamination by proximity (possibly the food, the worm, and the fire), and even some
mix-ups or mistakes (Herodotus and the sacred hawk Horus, Pliny the Elder and the
legendary cinnamon birds). As a result, the myth was continuously evolving and
becoming more elaborate as new features were added: the palm tree, the nest, the crag,
India as the abode of the bird, cinnamon as its main spice, flames and the funeral pyre,
an intrinsic purity and virginity.
Of course, the development of the phoenix myth as described above is somewhat
reductive. There is a long process of literary rewriting (imitations, variations,
elaborations, echoes), and reshaping leading to scholarly, religious, or popular
reinterpretations, making the phoenix Jewish, Christian, imperial (in Ezekiel, Clement,
Tacitus, the Physiologus, Lactantius, Claudian), or Indian (in the Greek novels), and
probably even Egyptian again (on the coins of Antoninus Pius and of the sons of
Constantine, and on some mosaics). Iconography played an important role when it came to
codification: a numismatic and a Christian type of phoenix were established, and the
exotic bird was now recognisable simply by its radiate crown and/or its vicinity to the
palm tree.
The elusive phoenix had an extraordinary and paradoxical destiny: it came into
being in ancient Rome, and remained long afterwards a State emblem and a Church icon.
Since then, the bird has lost its association with the palm tree, but the tie between bird
and fire became stronger, in imagination and iconography alike—more spectacular and
dramatic. The myth is still expanding today, especially in popular culture.119 Finally,
119 See Lecocq (2002) and (2014c).
modern and contemporary theorists, looking at the phoenix from a variety of perspectives,
including psychoanalysis, structuralism, feminism and gender studies, overinterpret the
avian, and, in doing so, add new aspects to the myth.120
Appendix: Literary Sources on the Phoenix
Achilles Tatius, Leucippe et Clitophon 3.24-5.

Aelius Aristides, Orationes 21.268; 45.107 Dindorf (1829).
Aenesidemus of Cnossos, in Diogenes Laertius 9.79.
Ambrose, Hexaemeron 5.23.79; De excessu fratris sui 2.59.
Antiphanes, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta 175 Kock (1880).
Aristophanes, Acharnians 89.
Augustine, De natura et origine animae 4.33.
Ausonius, Epistula 20.9; Gryphus 6.
Carmen ad Flavium Felicem de resurrectione mortuorum et de iudicio Domini, l. 133.
Claudian, De consulatu Stiliconis 2.415-420; Epistula ad Serenam 2.16;
Carmina minora 27: Phoenix.
Clement I, Ad Corinthios epistula 1.25.
Coptic sermon on Mary, in Van den Broek (1971) 33-47.
Corippus, In Laudem Iustini Augusti Minoris 1. 349-52.
Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio evangelica 9.29; Vita Constantini 4.72.
Ezekiel the Dramatist, Exagoge frag. 17.253-269 Jacobson (1983).
Heliodorus, Aethiopica 10.4.
Herodotus, 2.73.
Hesiod, Chironis praecepta, frg. 304 Merkelbach-West (1967).
Lactantius, Carmen de ave phoenice.
Laevius, calligram Phoenix, in Charisius, Ars grammatica 4.6.
Libanius, Orationes 17.10.
Lucan, BC 6.680.
Lucian, Navigium 44.
Manilius (a Roman senator), in Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 10.4-5.
Martial, Epigram. 5.7.1.
Oracula sibyllina 8.139.
Origen, Contra Celsum 4.98.
Ovid, Amores 2.6; Metamorphoses 15.392-409.
120See Lecocq (2013a) and (2015); in short, current scholarship invented three
phoenixes: a phoenix being originally and intrinsically the bird of the spices, a
phoenix sexed, even feminine, and the phoenix figure of the poet.
Philostratus, Vita Apollinii 3.49.

Photius, Bibliotheca 126.
Physiologus, Greek, Latin and Syriac versions.
Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 10.3-5; 11.121; 13.42-3; 29.29.
Pomponius Mela, Chorographia 3.83-4.
Ps.-Baruch, Greek Apocalypse 6.
Ps.-Epiphanius, Ad Physiologum 11.
Satyricon 40, 3-8.
Sidonius Apollinaris, Carmina 7. 353-6; 22.50-1.
Statius, Silvae 2.4; 3.2.
Tacitus, Annales 6.28.
Tertullianus, De resurrectione carnis 13.
Venantius Fortunatus, Carmina 1.15.41-52.
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ANIMALS IN GREEK AND ROMAN RELIGION AND MYTH

PART I: ANIMALS AND COMMUNICATION WITH THE DIVINE

PART II: THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF INDIVIDUAL

7. Ὁ περσικὸς ὄρνις: The Symbology of the Rooster in the Cult

PART III: ANIMALS IN GREEK AND ROMAN MYTH

GENERAL INDEX ....................................................................................... 507

INVENTING THE PHOENIX: A MYTH IN THE MAKING

* ERRONEOUS ADDITION OF THE EDITORS !

Chapter Twenty-One 450

Put together from sparse sources (a fragment in Hesiod, a paragraph in

Some authors contributed substantially to the development of the

* ERRONEOUS MODIFICATION OF THE EDITORS !

Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making 451

Christ, both in common beliefs and in exegetic writings such as the

2. Hesiod and Herodotus

Chapter Twenty-One 452

Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making 453

3. From Ezekiel the Dramatist to Ovid

Chapter Twenty-One 454

Ezekiel’s third addition was the characterization of the phoenix as the

is attested in Ovid, although various translations or comments often

Chapter Twenty-One 456

In Ovid, the notion of a pure beak pointed to the Pythagorean vegetarian

30 See Mayerson (2001).

Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making 457

Ovid’s account of the phoenix in Metamorphoses 15.392-409

4. Pliny the Elder

36 See Lecocq (2011c).

Chapter Twenty-One 458

phoenix does not seem paradoxical: decay naturally engenders vermin,

Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making 459

Chapter Twenty-One 460

5. The pyre of the phoenix

Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making 461

time, the phoenix ascended a pyre, out of which it was reborn.62 No

6. The Indian novel of the phoenix

70 As in the anonymous Carmen de resurrectione ad Flavium Felicem.

Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making 463

their vegetarian diet and self-immolation by fire. The bird, therefore,

Chapter Twenty-One 464

7. The phoenix as an imperial symbol

Fiction aside, the phoenix appears just as often in Roman history,

80 See Lecocq (2001).

Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making 465

Chapter Twenty-One 466

hieroglyph representing a vulture means ‘year’. It stands on a hillock made

87 According to F. Labrique (2012).

Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making 467

filial piety,90 dynastic succession, and a renewal leading to a new era of

Chapter Twenty-One 468

on the bird, the Carmen de ave phoenice, a work devoid of political

On these coins, the phoenix is seated on a kind of pyramid made of

93 Vita Constantini 4.72. The fragment of Ezekiel on the phoenix is recorded in

is more religion and spirituality than politics;100 Claudian’s text, on the

8. The Christian appropriation of the phoenix

Chapter Twenty-One 470

Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making 471

common noun, λίϐανος, meant the ‘frankincense’, a spice. The phoenix

Chapter Twenty-One 472

Its undeniably religious and somewhat cryptic message aside, the

Indeed, the only two recurring phoenixes in ancient iconography117

Inventing the Phoenix: A Myth in the Making 473