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SWIFTS AND HIRUNDINES IN ARISTOTLE'S HISTORIA ANIMALIVM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

Karel Thein
Karel Thein*
Affiliation:
Charles University, Prague
*
thein@ff.cuni.cz
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Extract

Aristotle's brief accounts of some swifts and hirundines in Hist. an. 1.1 (487b24–31) and 9.30 (618a31–b2) list several species whose identification has always been taken for difficult, and continues to vary from translation to translation. This note clarifies this small issue on the basis of Aristotle's text alone. I therefore assume that both passages, each introduced by a slightly different use of the term ἄποδες, offer sufficient information for recognizing the species in question. I will first translate and briefly comment upon the passage from Book 1, then do the same with the text from Book 9.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , May 2020 , pp. 434 - 436
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2020

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References

1 Line numbers correspond to the text in Balme, D.M. and Gotthelf, A. (edd.), Aristotle: Historia Animalium. Volume I: Books I–X: Text (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar.

2 Arnott, W.G., Birds in the Ancient World from A to Z (London, 2007), 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mynott, J., Birds in the Ancient World: Winged Words (Oxford, 2018), 232–3Google Scholar. Cf. Turner, A.K., ‘Hirundinidae (swallows and martins)’, in del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. and Christie, D. (edd.), Handbook of the Birds of the World 9 (Barcelona, 2004), 602–85, at 673Google Scholar: ‘Coastal and Mediterranean populations resident, with local post-breeding movements; those breeding inland in Iberian and Balkan Peninsulas more to lower altitudes or the coast.’

3 The barn swallow is the only species discussed here that is abundantly evoked and described in Greek literature before Aristotle. See, for instance, Mynott (n. 2), 14–16 on the barn swallow as the common marker of spring. Concerning other hirundines and swifts, Aristotle would best serve as the point of departure for a study of the appearance of their names outside the Aristotelian corpus; such a study is beyond the scope of this note.

4 Thompson, D.W., A Glossary of Greek Birds (Oxford, 1895), 51Google Scholar, who nevertheless implies that Aristotle may have in mind both ‘conspicuously “sickle-winged”’ swift species. Mynott (n. 2), 232 also suggests that δρεπανίς ‘sounds like the alpine swift’.

5 While the barn swallow and the common swift are of almost the same size (16–18 cm), the alpine swift is larger (20–2 cm) and more robust. Cf. Cramp, S. (ed.), Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The Birds of Western Apearctic 4 (Oxford, 1985), 678Google Scholar: the alpine swift is ‘about 20% larger and longer winged than swift A. apus, with greater bulk as evident in powerful flight as in structure’.

6 See Chantler, P., ‘Family Apodidae (swifts)’, in del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. and Sargatal, J. (edd.), Handbook of the Birds of the World 5 (Barcelona, 1999), 388–457, at 451–2Google Scholar. This qualifies the statement, in Mynott (n. 2), 232, that the alpine swift ‘is the rarer swift in the region’. Thompson (n. 4), 51 compares the short period of residence of both swifts to the longer residence of the sand martin, but omits to mutually compare the swift species.

7 Roux, G., ‘ΚΥΨΕΛΗ. Où avait-on caché le petit Kypsélos? (Hérodote V, 92, E)’, REA 65 (1963), 279–89, at 288–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quoted in Louis, P. (ed. and transl.), Aristote: Histoire des animaux. Tome III: Livres VIII–X (Paris, 1969), 186 n. 4Google Scholar. The new French translation in Pellegrin, P. (ed. and transl.), Aristote: Histoire des animaux (Paris, 2017)Google Scholar is perhaps too prudent: it conserves the Greek terms and speaks of ‘les oiseaux apodes que l'on appelle des kypselos’.

8 See Turner (n. 2), 678: the red-rumped swallow's nest is ‘enclosed, with tunnel entrance’ (it sometimes takes over and builds up the nest of the barn swallow).

9 Thompson (n. 4), 109–10.