Phoenix. Marvelous bird that, according to popular ideas, lived for several centuries, and in dying produced from the marrow of its bones a small worm that formed a new phoenix .

The Egyptians, says Herodotus in his Euterpe, have a bird that they consider sacred, and I have seen only in paintings. In addition, it is not seen often in Egypt, since, if one is to believe the people of Heliopolis, it appears there only every five or six centuries, and only when its father is dead. They say that it is the size of an eagle, that it has a beautiful crest on its head, its neck feathers golden, the others purple, the tail white mixed with rosy quills, eyes that glitter like stars. When, with the weight of many years, it sees its end approach, it builds a nest out of wood and myrrh, in which it dies. From the marrow of its bones a worm is born, out of which another phoenix is formed. The first care of this one is to render to his father the honors of the sepulcher; and this is how he does it, according to this same Herodotus.

He forms out of myrrh a mass in the form of an egg: he then lifts it, to determine if he has enough strength to carry it. After this test, he hollows out the mass, places in it the body of his father, which he covers again with myrrh; and when he has made it the same weight that it was before, he carries this precious burden to Heliopolis, to the temple of the sun. It is in the deserts of Arabia that it is said to be born, and its life is supposed to last between five and six hundred years.

The ancient historians counted four apparitions of the phoenix : the first during the reign of Sesostris; the second during that of Amasis; the third during the third of the Ptolemies. Dion Cassius gives the fourth as a premonition of the death of Tiberius. Tacitus places this fourth apparition of the phoenix in Egypt during the empire of Tiberius; Pliny has it fall in the year of the consulate of Quintus Plancius, who lived until the year 36 of the common era; and he adds that the body of this phoenix was carried to Rome, that it was displayed in the great square, and that the memory of it was preserved in the public registers.

Let us render justice to the ancients who spoke of this fabulous bird. They did so only in a way that destroyed their own account. Herodotus, after having recounted the story of the phoenix , adds that it seems very improbable to him. Pliny says that no one in Rome doubted that this was a false phoenix that had been presented to them; and Tacitus comes to the same conclusion in his narrative.

The fabulous view of the phoenix is found to be accepted among the Chinese, says Father du Halde in his description of China. They have not been so closed off from the rest of the world as not to have borrowed several opinions from the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Indians, since they attribute to a certain bird of their country the property of being unique and of being reborn from its ashes.