PEACOCKS. driven out of his kingdom by his brother. For the multitude of these birds is so great at Rome, that Antiphanes the comic poet, in his Soldier or Tychon, may seem to have been inspired by the spirit of prophecy, when he said—
When the first man imported to this city
A pair of peacocks, they were thought a rarity,
But now they are more numerous than quails;
So, if by searching you find one good man,
He will be sure to have five worthless sons.
And Alexis, in his Lamp, says—
That he should have devour'd so vast a sum!
Why if (by earth I swear) I fed on hares' milk
And peacocks, I could never spend so much.
And that they used to keep them tame in their houses, we learn from Strattis, in his Pausanias, where he says—
Of equal value with your many trifles,
And peacocks, which you breed up for their feathers.
And Anaxandrides, in his Melilotus, says—
Is't not a mad idea to breed up peacocks,
When every one can buy his private ornaments?
And Anaxilaus, in his Bird Feeders, says—
Besides all this, tame peacocks, loudly croaking.
Menodotus the Samian also, in his treatise on the Treasures in the Temple of the Samian Juno, says: "The peacocks are sacred to Juno; and perhaps Samos may be the place where they were first produced and reared, and from thence it was that they were scattered abroad over foreign countries, in the same way as cocks were originally produced in Persia, and the birds called guinea-fowl ([Greek: meleagrides]) in Ætolia." On which account Antiphanes, in his Brothers by the same Father, says—
They say that in the city of the Sun
The phœnix is produced; the owl in Athens;
Cyprus breeds doves of admirable beauty:
But Juno, queen of Samos, does, they say,
Rear there a golden race of wondrous birds,
The brilliant, beautiful, conspicuous peacock.
On which account the peacock occurs on the coins of the Samians.
71. But since Menodotus has mentioned the guinea-fowl, we ourselves also will say something on that subject. Clytus the Milesian, a pupil of Aristotle, in the first book of his History of Miletus, writes thus concerning them—"All
