De sollertia animalium

But that my discourse may add its finishing touch and terminate, let me make the move from the sacred line [*](See Mor. 783 b with Fowler’s note; also 1116 e; Plato, Laws, 739 a; and Gow on Theocritus, vi. 18. The meaning is probably something like let me play my last trump, or commit my last reserve. ) and say a few words about the divine inspiration and the mantic power of animals.

It is, in fact, no small or ignoble division of divination, but a great and very ancient one, which takes its name from birds[*](Ornithoscopy or ornithomancy (Cf. Leviticus xix. 26); Latin augurium, auspicium. See also Plato, Phaedrus, 244 d, Phaedo, 85 b.); for their quickness of apprehension and their habit of responding to any manifestation, so easily are they diverted, serves as an instrument for the god, who directs their movements, their calls or cries, and their formations which are sometimes contrary, sometimes favouring, as winds are; so that he uses some birds to cut short, others to speed enterprises and inceptions to the destined end. It is for this reason that Euripides[*](Perhaps Ion, 159; Cf. also Mor. 405 d for the phrase.) calls birds in general heralds of the gods; and, in particular, Socrates[*](Plato, Phaedo, 85 b.) says that he considers himself a fellow-slave of the swans. So again, among monarchs Pyrrhus[*](Cf. Mor. 184 d; Life of Pyrrhus, x. 1 (388 a-b); Life of Aristides, vi. 2 (322 a); Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 45.) liked to be called an Eagle and Antiochus[*](Cf. Mor. 184 a. This Antiochus was not, strictly speaking, a king, but the younger son of Antiochus II.) a Hawk. But when we deride, or rail at, stupid and ignorant people we call them fish. Really, we can produce cases by the thousand of signs and portents manifested to us by the gods through creatures of land and air, but not one such can the advocate for aquatic creatures name.[*](This charge is answered in 976 c infra.) No, they are all deaf and blind[*](Cf. the fragment of Epicharmus cited above in 961 a.) so far as foreseeing anything goes, and so have been cast aside into the godless and titanic[*](Cf. Plato, Laws, 701 b-c (and Shorey, What Plato Said, p. 629); 942 a supra and Cherniss’ note (Class. Phil. xlvi, 1951, p. 157, n. 95); see also 996 c c infra with the note.) region, as into a Limbo of the Unblessed, where the rational and intelligent part of the soul has been extinguished. Having, however, only a last remnant of sensation that is clogged with mud and deluged with water, they seem to be at their last gasp rather than alive.