Talking beauties
Diffusion and popularity of parrots in Ancient Greece and Rome
p. 433-455
Résumés
Parrots are considered to have been imported from India into the Mediterranean area right after Alexander’s expedition. The extant sources, however, point to a later date and seem to indicate a route via the Erythraean sea and Egypt, rather than an inland path through the territories of the Seleucid empire. The bird’s popularity reached its peak after the Roman conquest of Egypt. Thanks to their exotic beauty and ability to speak, parrots replaced native corvids as the talking bird of choice in Roman cities and imagination.
On considère que les perroquets ont été importés depuis l’Inde vers la zone méditerranéenne immédiatement après l’expédition d’Alexandre. L’ensemble des sources, cependant, indique une date plus tardive et semble montrer une route passant par la mer Érythrée et l’Égypte, plutôt qu’un itinéraire continental à travers les territoires séleucides. La popularité de l’oiseau atteint son sommet après la conquête romaine de l’Égypte. En raison de leur beauté exotique et de leur capacité à parler, les perroquets ont remplacé les corvidés locaux comme oiseaux qui parlent par excellence dans les villes et la culture romaines.
Entrées d’index
Mots-clés : perroquet, perruche, diffusion, Grèce ancienne, rome antique
Keywords : parrot, parakeet, diffusion, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome
Texte intégral
Classical parrots or, better, parakeets
1The scholarly consensus holds that the only parrots known by the ancient Greeks and Romans were actually some species of parakeets (Psittacula) from India. Big parrots as the Grey African are nowhere mentioned nor depicted in classical sources,1 and no evidence is to be found about other eastern varieties present in the regions beyond India, except perhaps for the Myna bird.2 According to Arnott, the four following species are currently the most common parakeets in the Indian subcontinent:3
- the Ring-necked parakeet (Psittacula krameri) [pl. V, 30]. It is a small bird, virtually all green (but the male bird has a pink hindcollar) with a red bill;
- the Plum-headed (Psittacula cyanocephala) [pl. V, 31]. This bird is even smaller than the Ring-necked;
- the Blossomheaded (Psittacula roseata) [pl. V, 33], similar to the Plum-headed. The male has a reddish-purple head and black chin;
- the so-called “Alexandrine” variety (Psittacula eupatria) [pl. V, 32].4 This parakeet is very similar in appearance to the Ring-necked, but is much larger and displays a maroon shoulder patch which identifies the species, as in the Pompeii and Cologne mosaics (see below). It may also explain why Crinagoras (Greek anthology, 9.562 = 24 Gow-Page) describes the parakeet’s wing as “multicolored”.
2These were most likely the only parrots known in the ancient Mediterranean and were called altogether ψιττακοί/psittaci, without distinguishing between the different species. The Greco-Roman name of the bird family was probably derived from its Indian denomination (siptace) reported by Pliny (Natural history, 10.58), and was spelled in various ways: ψιττακóς was the most common form, but we also find βίττακoς (Ctesias, Eubulus), βύττακoς (Photius’ summary of Ctesias’ Indica, 688.fr.45.8 Jacobi), σιττακóς (Philodemus, On Poems, 2.20.3 Hausrath; Aelian, On the nature of animals, 16.2; Arrian, Indica, 15.8-9 citing Nearchos, fr.9 Jacobi), and σίττας (Hesychius, Alphabetical collection of all words, σ772). Other forms are feminine: ψιττάκη (Aristotle), σιττάκη (Philostorgius, Church history, 3.11, p. 42.17 Bidez). In Latin the denomination was always masculine (psittacus).
3According to Aelian (On the nature of animals, 13.18), parakeets were fed in the parks of Indian princes; they would freely fly and spontaneously gathered around the king. Aelian also remarks that psittakoi were not eaten in India, because Brahmins considered them sacred on account of their ability to speak.5
Earliest evidence
4The most ancient mention of the animal in Classical sources is no earlier than the very end of the 5th c. or beginning of the 4th c. BC.6 In a fragment from Ctesias’ Indica preserved by Photius we read for the first time of a bird called bittakos:7
Καὶ περὶ τοῦ ὀρνέου τοῦ βιττάκου, ὅτι γλῶσσαν ἀνθρωπίνην ἔχει καὶ φωνήν, μέγεθος μὲν ὅσον ἱέραξ, πορφύριον δὲ πρόσωπον καὶ πώγωνα φέρει μέλανα, αὐτὸ δὲ κυάνεόν ἐστι ὡς τὸν τράχηλον < … > ὥσπερ κιννάβαρι διαλέγεσθαι δὲ αὐτὸ ὥσπερ ἄνθρωπος Ἰνδιστί, ἂν δὲ Ἑλληνιστὶ μάθῃ, καὶ Ἑλληνιστί.
There is then a bird called bittakos, which has a human voice, is capable of speech, grows to the size of a little falcon and has a crimson face; it wears a black beard whereas its body is blue as far as the neck < but on its shoulder it is red > like cinnebar. It can converse like a human in Indian but, if taught Greek, it can also speak Greek.8
5Ctesias’ description is puzzling and the text is most likely corrupt. The colors do not seem to fit any type of known parakeet, unless we interpret κυάνεον as “greenish blue”: as such, the description may match the Plum-headed or Blossomheaded species.9 Cinnebar is vermilion and cannot be a good comparison for the color of the bird “up to its neck”. If we assume a lacuna in the text and accept the addition proposed by Bigwood (“on its shoulder it is red”), the Plum-headed would be most likely the one referred to by the author of the Indica.10
6Born in Cnidus (Caria), Ctesias lived for a long time at the Persian court, where he remained as a physician under the rulers Darius II and Artaxerxes II. Much of the information he gathered about India is probably based on reports by Persian visitors, Indian merchants, and envoys to the Persian court. His reports are notorious for recording any piece of information with credulity and a predilection for the marvellous.11 However, parakeets were possibly sent as valuable gifts to the Persian court by Indian vassals or diplomats and kept in the royal menageries. Ctesias might thus have actually seen a parakeet.12
7The second mention of the animal in Greek literature turns out in a fragment from a comedy by Eubulus (after 380 BC),13 where it appears, among other birds, as a great delicacy purchased for a feast. That such a rare species is included in the list may be a joke, although, as Bigwood puts it, “it must have been well enough known from the reports of visitors to Persia, or perhaps even from Ctesias’ description, for humorous allusions to be possible”.14 However, some centuries later, Apicius will mention the parrot in one of his recipes, saying that it is cooked in the same way as the flamingo.15
Reassessing the role of Alexander’s expedition
8Notwithstanding these few early references, the diffusion of the parakeet in the Mediterranean area does not seem to have occurred before the late Hellenistic Period. According to the evidence, the ancient Egyptians totally ignored the existence of the animal,16 and to the best of my knowledge no parrots are to be found in Jewish authors or art. It is common view that Alexander the Great was the one who made the bird popular in Greece, following the expedition to India, yet no source directly connects the Macedonian commander to the animal.17 Rice, who claims that the first parakeets were brought to the Greek world by Nearchos, does not present much evidence in support of his hypothesis.18 The statement by Arrian of Nicomedia he refers to actually points only to the fact that Nearchos reported on Indian sittakoi, considering them an astonishing wonder: “Nearchus recounts as a kind of marvel that parakeets are found in India, and what sort of bird a parrot is and how it utters a human voice” (Σιττακοὺς δὲ Νέαρχος μὲν ὡς δή τι θαῦμα ἀπηγέεται ὅτι γίνονται ἐν τῇ Ἰνδῶν γῇ, καὶ ὁποῖος ὄρνις ἐστὶν ὁ σιττακός, καὶ ὅπως φωνὴν ἵει ἀνθρωπίνην).19
9In addition, scholarly opinion about the role played by Alexander or Nearchos in introducing the species into Greece is contradicted by the fact that we have no evidence of parakeets from the late 4th c. BC, except for a brief mention in Aristotle. Even from the 3rd c. BC only one mention is known, which yet points towards the presence of parakeets in Ptolemaic Egypt rather than Greece (see below).20 Based on the extant evidence, neither Alexander nor any of his lieutenants can be held responsible for the introduction of the species into the Mediterranean area.
10As regards iconography, the most ancient depiction of a psittakos in Greek art comes form Pergamon and goes back to the mid-2nd c. BC. It was part of a floor mosaic (one of the earliest examples of mosaic made with cut tesserae) found in the “Altar chamber” of the Attalids palace (V stage; fig. 1a).21 Unfortunately, the panel parading a beautiful Psittacula eupatria (or “Alexandrine parakeet”) is a reconstruction, based on guaches by painters M. Lübke and Steinheuer, made by the Pergamon Museum in Berlin with pieces taken from different mosaics of the same excavated area.22
Fig. 1. a. Mosaic of a parrot (160-150 BC) from palace V in Pergamon (Berlin, Pergamon Museum, photo Deror Avi); b. Fresco depicting a parakeet in the domus Augusti (Rome, Palatine hill, courtesy of the Ministero della Cultura, Parco archeologico del Colosseo); c. Mosaic with parrots drinking at the fountain (80-60 BC) from Santa Maria Capua Vetere (Museo Archeologico di Napoli); d. Floor mosaic with river Nile landscape (2nd c. BC) from Villa Maccarani, Rome (Museo Nazionale Romano).

11This representation is quite isolated. No other depiction of a parakeet comes from that period. In order to find other images, we need to turn to the Roman art of the late 1st c. BC. All considered, it is my opinion that the parakeets, albeit known by the Greeks since the end of the 5th c. BC, had not yet been popularized in the early and mid-Hellenistic Period.
12Quite revealingly, Aristotle has not much to say about it. As Karttunen pointed out, if Aristotle had some information about the Indian fauna from Alexander’s campaign, it came too late to be used for him in his work.23 He touches upon the parrot only once, in the Historia animalium. After a section devoted to migratory species, Aristotle deals with the odd behavior of the eared owl (its habit to imitate human dance moves), to which he appends an observation about crook-taloned birds in general:24
Ὣλως δὲ τὰ γαμψόνυχα πάντα βραχυτράχηλα καὶ πλατύγλωττα καὶ μιμητικά καὶ γὰρ τὸ Ἰνδικὸν ὄρνεον ἡ ψιττάκη, τὸ λεγόμενον ἀνθρωπόγλωττον, τοιοῦτόν ἐστι καὶ ἀκολαστότερον δὲ γίνεται ὅταν πίῃ οἶνον.
In general all the crook-taloned birds are short-necked and flat-tongued and given to mimicry. For such too is the Indian bird, the psittàke, that is said to be human-tongued (and it becomes even more outrageous after drinking wine).25
13Apparently, the animal was still a rarity and basically renowned for its ability to reproduce the human voice. Aristotle’s last remark though,26 if original, seems to show that, somewhere (in India, or Persia, or in Greece itself), the animal was already kept for entertainment, possibly at dinner parties, as it will be centuries later in Rome.
14The circumstance alluded to is not impossible to imagine, as many birds in the wild are consumers of ethanol, a natural by-product of the fermentation process of fruit sugars. Ancient people were aware of this behavior and some hunters used to take advantage of it for their purposes: “Pigs get drunk when fed grape pomace, as do ravens and dogs when they eat the plant known as oinoutta, and monkeys and elephants when they drink wine. This is why people hunt monkeys and ravens when the animals are drunk, the former on wine, the latter on oinoutta.”27 Pet birds are no exception.28 Yet the parrot’s inability to behave while drinking wine in a symposium—which will be reported also by Pliny—could function as a further sign of its foreignness to the Greco-Roman civilization.
The Erythræan route
15Unfortunately, we are poorly informed about the Greek zoologists of the 3rd c. BC in whose treatises parrots may have been recorded and described. The only extant mention of psittakoi in the Mediterranean area at that time has been transmitted by Athenaeus, who preserves Callixeinos of Rhodes’ description of Ptolemy II Philadelphus’ grand procession in the stadium of Alexandria, which had taken place around 277-270 BC.29 According to Athenaeus-Callixeinos, the parade featured, among thousands of other precious items, also 150 men holding branches of trees loaded with any kind of wild animal and birds, and cages with parakeets, peacocks, guinea-fowls, pheasants, and other Ethiopian (birds),30 in great amount.31 The list appears within the section of the parade intended to represent Dionysos’ triumphal return from India.32 The fact that psittakoi are said to show up in cages among “other Ethiopian birds” poses a problem that will be addressed in the following pages. Of the paraded birds peacocks are definitely an Indian species like parrots, but imported much earlier by the Greeks (end of the 5th c. BC, according to Arnott);33 the guinea-fowl (Numida meleagris) is an African bird and the subspecies “Blue wattles” (Numida meleagris meleagris) in particular is from Ethiopia; phaesants (phasianoi, “birds of the Phasis”) were named after a river in Colchis, on the Black Sea.34
16Accumulation of mingled items in vast quantity was a typical marker of luxury in ancient time, and we should not attribute much significance to the sequence of items in Callixeinos’ description.35 However, the same idea of “Ethiopian” psittakoi lurks behind the fictional episode of the encounter between Alexander and the Queen of Meroe in the Alexander romance. According to this narrative, Alexander would have wanted to attack the Ethiopian kingdom of Meroe, which was ruled by Queen Kandake.36 In her response to Alexander’s proposal to meet her in Meroe, Kandake resists the Macedonian attempt and, trying to impress him by showing off her kingdom’s wealth, announces that she would send him ambassadors with precious gifts, among which different kinds of wild beasts: 350 elephants, 300 leopards, 80 rhinoceroses, 4,000 panthers, 6 man-eating dogs in cages, 300 huge bulls, 6 elephants’ tusks, 300 hides of leopards, 1,500 ebony rods. Parakeets are thus deemed Ethiopian animals together with sphinxes, i.e. the sphinx ape, a species commonly thought to live in Africa.37 They are both mentioned along with an amount of gold and 500 young Ethiopian slaves, and separately from the list of wild animals and wild animal products that follows, leaving the impression that they were (and were meant to be) tame animals.38
17The list of Kandake’s gifts is obviously a fake, and scholars have suspected it of being inspired precisely by the list of animals and items on display in Ptolemy’s Grand Parade in Alexandria.39 In his commentary to the text, K. Nawotka gives no credit to the account, condemning the entire episode as historically unreliable. According to him, Kandake’s land in the Romance appears as a conflation of African and Indian elements, “in line with those classical authors who tacitly assumed that all dark-skinned people (Aithiopes) lived in Africa”, including Indian people.40 There is little doubt that Ethiopia and India were often confused in ancient sources,41 and it might be true that in both lists (Ptolemy’s Grand procession and Kandake’s gifts) Indian and Ethiopian (as well as Cholchian) birds all stand in general for “eastern” species. As Parker points out, in the ancient world the link between an exotic commodity and its place of origins was part of the item value, but “this link often remained vague” because the final consumer would anyway confuse places such as China, India, or the Red Sea under a common umbrella of “Far East”.42
18However, in the case of the parakeets in particular, confusion about their place of origin may have arisen from their connection to the so-called “Erythræan Sea”, a spacial entity perceived as a geographical unit, which included the actual Red Sea, Persian Gulf and western part of the Indian Ocean.43 The prominence of the Erythræan Sea became particularly evident in the Roman era (from the 1st c. AD onwards), when regular maritime exchanges between Egypt and India were established. However, maritime traffic between Egypt and India had started increasing beforehand, under the Ptolemy dynasty. Ptolemy II himself founded the city of Berenike, named after his own mother, on the coast of the Red Sea; the city became in the next centuries one of the prominent ports for Indian goods via the “Erythræan” route.44 In time, with the progressive intensification of the traffic on this route, the Mare Erythraeum emerged as a geographical entity, with the coastal cities facing it intermingled into an area perceived as unified (fig. 2).45 As a consequence, many goods exchanged on that trade route could be alternatively labelled as Indian, Ethiopian or Arab.
Fig. 2. A 1658 map of the Indian Ocean, or Erythraean Sea, as it was in Antiquity. Composed by J. Jansson (Novus Atlas, Sive Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. In quo Orbis Antiquus, Seu Geographia Vetus, Sacra & Profana exhibetur, VI, Amsterdam, 1658), after a similar 1597 map published by A. Ortelius in his Parergon (photo Jan Janssonius).

19Despite their literary nature and disregard of accuracy, the two passages from Callixeinos and pseudo-Callisthenes are not totally void of historical interest. Alexander never travelled to Ethiopia and probably never attacked Meroe, but his successors’ interference with Ethiopian politics is well attested. Ptolemy II himself, in fact, tried to submit the kingdom of Meroe during his reign. Ethiopian animals and commodities mentioned in the Grand parade (including parrots) may actually reflect a Ptolemy’s claim of power over that part of the world, perceived as the very southern fringes of the Egyptian kingdom.
20Moreover, the relation between Ethiopia and psittaci recurs elsewhere in our sources. According to Pliny, the pretorians sent by Nero to explore the Ethiopian cities sailed up the Nile, taking note of the distances between the towns they encountered, thus solving longstanding disputes among contemporary geographers about the real distance between Syene and Meroe. Just past the island of Gagaudes, half way between Syene and Meroe, they started seeing “the first psittaci”:46
Certe solitudines nuper renuntiavere principi Neroni missi ab eo milites praetoriani cum tribuno ad explorandum […] verum omnis haec finita nuper disputatio est, quoniam a Syene d͞c͞c͞c͞c͞x͞l͞v͞ Neronis exploratores renuntiavere his modis: a Syene Hieran Sycaminon l͞i͞v͞, inde Tama l͞x͞x͞i͞i͞ regione Evonymiton Aethiopum, Primi c͞x͞x͞, Acinam l͞x͞i͞v͞, Pitaram x͞x͞i͞i͞, Tergedum c͞i͞i͞i͞. insulam Gagauden esse in medio eo tractu; inde primum visas aves psittacos et ab altera, quae vocetur Articula, animal sphingion, a Tergedo cynocephalos.
At all events an exploring party of praetorian troops under the command of a tribune lately sent by the emperor Nero reported that there was nothing but desert […]. But all this discrepancy has recently been ended, inasmuch as the expedition sent by Nero to explore the country have reported that the distance from Syene to Meroë is 945 miles, made up as follows: from Syene to Holy Mulberry 54 miles, from there to Tama 72 miles through the district of the Ethiopian Euonymites, to Primi 120 miles, Acina 64 miles, Pitara 22 miles, Tergedus 103 miles. The report stated that the island of Gagaudes is half-way between Syene and Meroë, and that it was after passing this island that the birds called parrots were first seen, and after another, named Articula, the sphingion ape, and after Tergedus dog-faced baboons.47
21Pliny clearly mentions the psittaci as resident birds along with the sphinx ape48 and the baboon mentioned next. It is remarkable that Pliny does not show any surprise about Nero’s explorers findings: on the contrary, the phrase inde primum visas aves psittacos et […] Sphingion […] cynocephalos conveys the idea that all three species were expected to show up somewhere around there—and they did, in fact.
22P. Schneider includes the passage in his list of instances attesting to the “intermingling” of India and Ethiopia, a direct consequence (as already mentioned) of the conceptualization of the Erythræan Sea as a geographical unit.49 However, Pliny’s statement is most likely to be based on the report written by Nero’s explorers a few years earlier. Noteworthy, in this respect, is the insistence on the adverb nuper in the text. If so, this passage would be evidence of Nubian/Ethiopian psittakoi recorded by a contemporary eye witness and should not be dismissed as a mere case of “confusion”.
23Schneider would probably object that the perception of a unified Eryhtræan area, with India and Ethiopia as neighboring countries, could have induced the explorers to see in Ethiopia what they would have expected to observe in India.50 Arnott, on the other hand, recalls that the Indian parakeet’s range currently “reaches […] into a strip of Africa extending from Gambia and Senegal across to central and southern Sudan and northern Ethiopia”,51 and puts some trust in Pliny’s report that a wild African population already existed in his times. Moreover, the Cyranides (Book 3, s. v. “ψίττακος”) also report on psittakoi in the Egyptian Thebais.52 If not native to the land, and thus a different kind of parrots, the psittaci seen by Nero’s explorers may have been colonies of “Indian” parakeets that had escaped (or been released) producing feral populations a long way from their original habitat, as it happened in recent times in many places.53
24As for how and when these populations of parakeets were introduced into Ethiopia, the fact may have occurred as earlier as the 3rd or 2nd c. BC, under Ptolemaic rulers, thanks to Indian or Arab merchants.54 According to the author of the Periplus Maris Erythraei (probably written in the 1st c. AD) the trade between India and Egypt had already a long history at his times: despite neither Greco-Roman nor Indian ships had dared to sail further than Arabia Felix, cargos would drop their loads in Arabia, where goods were exchanged.55 Parakeets may have been already part of the traded items.56 Alternatively, the feral/wild population observed by Nero’s explorers would have settled there recently, after a “regular” maritime route between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean was sailed by western merchants in the late 1st c. BC.57 If any of these assumptions hold true, one could imagine a scenario for the parakeet not different from that described by Parker for the elephant trade: whereas the ancient world’s most distinguished commander (i.e. Alexander) was associated with Indian parakeets, “those known first-hand in the Roman world were by the law of probability much more likely to have come from Africa.”58
25Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge no relics of parakeet skeletons have been found by zooarchaeologists in Meroe, nor in other Nubian sites excavated. Therefore no firm conclusion can be drawn. And yet, everything considered, it seems reasonable to assume that the diffusion of parakeets in the Mediterranean area occurred not earlier than the middle 3rd-2nd c. BC, much later than Alexander’s campaign to India, and along the maritime route via Ethiopia and Egypt rather than on the land route via Bactria and Mesopotamia.59
An increasing success
26Judging from literary evidence, the great popularity of the psittacus as a pet animal began in the wake of the Roman conquest of Egypt, and reached its peak in the Imperial Era. After Actium (31 BC), the Romans took over the maritime cities on the Red Sea coast, along with their network of trade contacts.60 In a famous anecdote,61 Augustus, on his way back to Rome after his victory over Antony and Cleopatra, ran into a raven who greeted him with the words “Hail Caesar, the victorious commander”. Flattered, he bought the bird for 20,000 sesterces. The news quickly spread around: other people instructed their birds to greet the imperator and offered them to him. According to Macrobius, Augustus purchased two corvi, one pica, and one psittacus. An epigram attributed to Crinagoras of Mytilene, and (if genuine) probably written during his stay in Rome,62 mentions a parrot who, escaped from its cage, flies to the woods and teaches other wild birds to utter χαῖρε in honor of Caesar:63
Ψιττακὸς ὁ βροτόγηρυς ἀφεὶς λυγοτευχέα κύρτον / ἤλυθεν ἐς δρυμοὺς ἀνθοφυεῖ πτέρυγι, / ἀεὶ δ᾽ἐκμελετῶν ἀσπάσμασι Καίσαρα κλεινόν / οὐδ᾽ἀν ὄρη λήθη ἤγαγεν οὐνόματος / ἔδραμε δ᾽ὠκυδίδακτος ἅπας οἰωνὸς ἐρίζων / τίς φθῆναι δύναται δαίμονι ῾χαῖρ᾽ ̒ἐνέπειν. / Ὀρφεὺς θῆρας ἔπεισεν ἐν οὔρεσιν, ἐς σὲ δε, Καῖσαρ, / νῦν ἀκέλευστος ἅπας ὄρνις ἀνακρέκεται.
A parrot, who speaks in human voice, left its wickerwork cage and went to the forests with wings looking like flowers, and all the time practising to greet glorious Caesar, did not forget it even on the mountains. And every bird, quickly taught, sped in rivalry, who would be the first to say ‘hail’ to the god. Orpheus bid beasts obey him on the mountains; but to you, Caesar, now every bird tunes its voice of its own accord.64
27Talking birds greeting the emperor became a custom in imperial Rome and a narrative topos65 in Latin literature. During a recent restoration of the domus Augusti on the Palatine hill the archaeologists found a fragment of fresco depicting a parakeet (fig. 1b).66 The fresco is deprived of its original context and the chronology of the cell in which it has been discovered is debated. Some archaeologists hold that it was depicted in post-Augustan times (possibly as late as under the Severan dynasty) when the cell would have been built subdividing a larger room in the domus of Octavian.67 The presence of parakeets in such an area is somehow expected, given the role of salutator regum that this bird had taken on in literature and popular culture since the 1st c. AD.68 According to Tammisto, some of the parakeets depicted in the “Colombario di Villa Pamphili” (ColVDP2) may date back to the early Augustan Age, but arguments for this assertion are not provided.69
28However, the iconography of the parakeet seems to have entered the repertoire of artists working in the Roman cities some decades before the diffusion of the real animal in the Italian peninsula,70 most likely through the influence of Pergamene and/or Alexandrian models.71 Interestingly, in a mosaic from Santa Maria Capua Vetere dating back to 80-60 BC the Hellenistic theme of doves drinking at a basin (a model created in the 2nd c. BC by Sosos of Pergamon)72 has been modified by adding a cat and two parrots to the scene (fig. 1c); yet the two exotic birds are depicted without accuracy, revealing that the artist was unfamiliar with the animal.73 The presence of a cat may point to an Alexandrian, rather than Pergamene, setting for this mosaic.
29Again connected with an Egyptianizing landscape, vivid parrots surround a Nilotic scene in a 2nd c. AD mosaic from Vigna Maccarani (on the Aventine hill; fig. 1d).74 It is a well-known fact that a sort of “Egyptomania” invaded Rome around the mid-1st c. BC, especially after Queen Cleopatra visited Rome as a Julius Caesar’s guest in 46-44 BC and much more so after Octavianus conquered the Ptolemaic kingdom.75 If the story of the parakeets’ diffusion sketched above is correct, it is then clear why the bird is connected to (and popularized along with) African-Egyptian, i.e. Alexandrian, rather than Indian, landscapes in Roman art.76
30A parakeet joins again Sosos’ doves in a mosaic found in a domus of the Augustan Period in Ostia,77 revealing that the popularity of the animal was increasing long before its actual diffusion over Italy. In the mid-1st c. BC in fact the “real” parakeet was still a paradoxon worthy to be shown in public ceremonies together with albino blackbirds “and other unusual things of that sort”.78 To Ovid the psittacus was still a rare animal (alitis […] rarae).79
31In the Imperial Period, when Egypt had become a Roman province, the popularity of the parakeet rose rapidily at the expenses of native talking birds such as the jay (pica), various corvids (corvus, cornix), and the starling (sturnus).80 As it is implicit in the anecdote about Augustus mentioned above, these were the talking birds commonly known to the Romans since the earliest times.81 That some rivalry came about between “Roman” talking birds and the exotic psittacus is evident in Pliny’s description. After praising the psittacus’ ability to utter not only human words, but even sentences (quidem etiam sermocinantes), he declares that the jay’s loquacitas (pronounciation?) is more distinct and articulated (expressior) than the parakeet’s. Then he goes on listing other native birds endowed with the ability to memorize and reproduce human words:82 besides jays (picae), who are so fond of human words that sometimes they die in an effort to pronounce them correctly (constat emori victas difficultate verbi), ravens, a crow, starlings and, quite surprisingly, also nightingales are mentioned.
32The main reason of the parakeet’s success over native talking birds, Pliny points out, lay in its exotic origins rather than in its ability to speak:83 in its skills at mimicking the human language, the Indian bird is not better than the picae, whose minor nobilitas is rather due to the mere fact that they do not come from abroad (quia non ex longinquo venit). No doubt it was its rarity and exoticism that made the psittacus particularly precious. Its provenance is regularly stressed in literary texts.84 To quote G. Parker again, “it is no exaggeration to say, in general, that Indian origins of any particular item, whether real or imagined, added value to it in Roman eyes”.85 As mentioned above, Apicius includes the parrot (along with the flamingo) among birds that are good to eat: if this is not just fanciful extravagance, it must have been a very expensive dish.
33Having a pet parrot was a sign of wealth for people like Corinna, Ovid’s beloved woman, and Statius’ friend, Atedius Melior. Both Ovid’s and Statius’ poems, composed to celebrate the death of two pet psittaci, emphasize the fact that the animal had come from the easternmost land on earth: Corinna’s bird was a “winged thing from Indian land of dawn […] a gift from the limits of the world” (eois imitatrix ales ab Indis […] extremo munus ab orbe datum) and Atedius’ parrot “the famed glory of the airy race […] the green ruler of the easternmost region of dawn” (aëriae celeberrima gloria gentis psittacus, ille plagae viridis regnator Eoae).86 Precious as they were, psittaci were preferably kept in metal cages, to prevent them from breaking out.87 The cage of Melior’s parakeet, in particular, was worthy of such a costly animal: Statius calls it a “happy prison” (beatus carcer) and describes it as made of ivory and silver, topped with a ruddy dome.88 Roman people loved the psittacus also for the brightness of its colorful plumage. Ovid speaks of its rari forma coloris, and describes the two different types of red (jasper-red and Punic-red) on its wings and beak;89 Apuleius praises the beauty of the red collar around its neck, bright as a golden necklace.90 The parakeet’s success over the native talking birds was thus ensured by a combination of beauty and exoticism. Not without a touch of his notorious flattery, Statius even claims that the parakeet’s aspect is superior to that of the most beautiful exotic birds such as peacocks, phaesants, and guinea-fowls.91
34In the 2nd c. AD the bird was so well known that, according to Arrian, it was no longer necessary to describe the animal to a Greco-Roman audience.92 The psittacus’ marvelous aspect had inspired not only poets, but also painters and mosaicists. Overall, although further research is still needed to draw a reliable conclusion, it seems that parakeets appeared in Greco-Roman art much more often than any native European talking bird. In a 1983 article, Dorsch listed no less than 108 representations of parrots from Greco-Roman Antiquity, of which 21 appear on wall paintings, 83 on mosaics, 3 on funerary reliefs, and 1 on a stucco work. The great majority of them is from the mid- and late Imperial Periods. Beside the 7 mosaics he studies, Tammisto lists 36 wall paintings with parakeets from the Vesuvian area, one from Pergamon, and 6 from Rome.93 Although the lists by Dorsch and Tammisto record some doubtful cases and need to be checked in light of more recent findings and interpretations, the contrast with the paucity of pictures of other talking birds is remarkable.94
Conclusion
35Parakeets were imported into Ptolemaic Egypt as early as the 3rd-2nd c. BC, but it is only in Roman times that the colorful bird started spreading in the Mediterranean area as a pet bird of choice,95 thanks to its talent for mimicry, its playful nature, and its exotic beauty. Its origins were located in India, but a further connection was made with the Erythræan Sea, on account of the route along which it was mainly traded. In Roman times, some naturalized populations of parakeets were most likely to be found in Ethiopia. Once introduced into Italy, the psittacus quickly became a status symbol for the wealthy Romans and, in time, it replaced native species as the talking bird par excellence in Western imagination.
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Notes de bas de page
1Unless Watson 2002, p. 394, is right in interpreting the bird carved on the wrist of a Sabazius’ bronze hand found in Pompeii (SAP 10486 “Complesso dei riti magici”, II.112, 1st c. AD) as a Grey (African) parrot (Psittacus erithacus L., 1758). The bird accompanying the “woman with child” motif in the iconography of Sabazius is otherwise interpreted as a bird of prey (e.g. Pompei. Pitture e mosaici, III, p. 20). Jennison 1937, p. 120, n. 1, doubtfully interprets the parrot among the animals reproduced on a silver dish found at Lampsacus as a Green African parrot (Poicephalus?).
2The talking bird κερκίων mentioned by Aelian (On the nature of animals, 16.3) might be the Myna bird, a species among which the variety Hill Myna is renown as the best talker: see Karttunen 1997, p. 205-206. Watson 2002, p. 359, identifies a Myna on a wall painting from the garden room of the House of the Gold Bracelet in Pompeii.
3Cf. Aelian’s report (16.2) that India had “three types of parrot” (Arnott 2007, p. 201).
4The species called Psittacus alexandri by Linnaeus (Systema naturae, 10th ed., 1758) corresponds in fact to the Red-breasted parakeet (or Moustached parakeet), not to the Alexandrine parakeet; the latter was first described by Linnaeus as Psittacus eupatria in the 12th edition (1766). As for the Red-breasted parakeet, the British ornithologist A. Newton (1829-1907) had already pointed out that this species is a native of southern India and Ceylon, and thus could hardly have been encountered by Alexander (apud Thompson 1936, p. 336).
5Perhaps reflecting an edict by emperor Aśoka (reported in some Hellenistic sources): Karttunen 1997, p. 204.
6A parrot shows up in Aesop, Fables, 244 Perry (Ψιττακὸς καὶ γαλῆ) whose date of composition is however impossible to determine.
7Ctesias, Indica, fr.45 Jacobi (apud Photios, Bibliotheca, 45a21-50a4). On the problems posed by the text of the fragment see Bigwood 1992. Gera 2007 lists the parrot among the puzzling figures of otherness in Ctesias’ work. Karttunen 1997, p. 202, and Nichols 2011, p. 21-23, hold that Ctesias had actually seen the bird.
8My translation.
9Karttunen 1997, p. 204 with n. 476-477, discusses the identification.
10The Blossom-headed must be ruled out, according to Bigwood 1992, p. 325, as this bird’s habitat lies too far to the East.
11Classical authors deemed him to be totally unreliable, but “several fragments show that […] Ctesias made attempt to find out the facts about the animals and plants of India and to explain its many wonders” (Karttunen 1989, p. 83).
12Representations of parakeets are quite rare in Persian art: Lewis – Llewellyn-Jones 2018, p. 269-270. A “Greco-Persian” gem dating back to the second half of the 5th c. BC is mentioned by Bigwood 1992, p. 326, n. 33.
13Fr.120 Kassel-Austin (= CAF 2F123).
14Bigwood 1992, p. 322.
15Apicius, On the subject of cooking, 6.6.1.
16Auth 2012, p. 79.
17That the Greeks first saw parrots during Alexander’s expedition to the Indus valley is a widespread opinion: Tammisto 1997, p. 270, n. 432; Bodson 1998b with further bibliography.
18Rice 1983, p. 94. As Karttunen 1997, p. 203, n. 464, points out, no evidence supports this opinion.
19Arrian, Indica, 15.8-9 (= Nearchos 133fr.9 Jacobi). My translation.
20According to Auth 2012, p. 97, it was Alexander who first introduced the parakeet into Egypt, and the same opinion is widespread among classicists and scholars of other fields of expertise. The “Alexandrine” epithet given to some varieties of Indian parakeets in modern times (see above, n. 4) may have played a role in establishing this belief.
21Berlin, Antikensammlung, Mos. 71.
22See the article by U. Kaestner in Picón – Hemingway 2016, cat. no 35, p. 130 (with further bibliography), Tammisto 1997, p. 95; Thomas 2016, I, p. 195-196.
23Karttunen 1989, p. 94-95.
24Aristotle, History of animals, 597b27-29.
25Translation by Balme 1991, p. 139.
26Toynbee deemed the sentence interpolated: if so, the insertion must have occurred prior to Pliny, who reports the same notion (Natural history, 10.117: in vino praecipue lasciva), clearly quoting Aristotle. See also Cyranides, 3.52. For psittaci at the human table see Statius, Silvae, 2.4.3-6.
27Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, 429d (translation by D. Olson), in a passage informed by Aristotle’s On Drunkenness.
28Tryjanowski et al. 2020, p. 9. On potentially rude parrots see Apuleius, Florida, 12.8-9.
29Rice 1983, p. 19 (text) and 95-99 for a comment on this section of the procession. A strong case for dating the pomp to winter 275 BC has been made by Foertmeyer 1988; the same conclusion has been recently drawn by Kuzmin 2018 (contra Rice 1983, p. 165, Kuzmin suggests a date before 276 BC).
30This same sentence is repeated in a slightly different form at 9.387d making it clear that the “Ethiopians” among birds of the first quote are Ethiopian birds. Rice 1983, p. 94-95, however, proposes to delete the problematic ἄλλοι and read εἶτ᾿ ἐφέροντο ἐν ἀγγείοις ψιττακοὶ καὶ ταῲ καὶ μελεαγρίδες καὶ φασιανοὶ, καὶ ὄρνιθες Αἰθιοπικοί, πλήθει πολλοί.
31Callixeinos of Rhodes, 627fr.2 Jacobi (apud Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, 5.201b; transl. Rice 1983, p. 19).
32On the assimilation between Dionysos and Alexander’s conquests of India in Ptolemaic Alexandria see Rice 1983, p. 82-86.
33Arnott 2007, p. 235.
34Ibid., p. 139 and 186.
35So has been claimed by Parker 2002, p. 58, for Roman luxury, but it holds true as well for the Hellenistic display of wealth in Callixeinos’ account of Ptolemy’s parade.
36In the real world Kandake wasn’t but the hereditary title of “Queen-mother” or “Sister-Queen” of Meroe, in the Ethiopian language (Kdke or Ktke) but the author of the Romance takes it to be a proper name. On the many historical and geographical inaccuracies in the Romance see Nawotka 2017, p. 211.
37On the problematic identification of the species see now Vespa 2022, p. 209-210, and Cuvigny 2023, p. 299-303.
38Slightly different is the list of Kandake’s gifts in the Syriac version, where the young Ethiopians are replaced by 500 ass-goats and followed by 200 parakeets and 200 apes.
39References in Nawotka 2017, p. 212-213.
40The “confusion” has its roots in Homer’s “double” Ethiopes, and had been enhanced throughout the centuries by authoritative writers (Schneider 2004, 2016). The main feature of this similarity was the presence of “Burnt face” people (Aithi-opes), but flora, fauna, hydrography and a set of shared mirabilia also played a role: Schneider 2016; Marcotte 2016. On the same confusion in the iconography of avifauna see Tammisto 1997, p. 269, n. 430.
41Karttunen 1989, p. 134-138; Schneider 2016. However, according to Rice 1983, p. 98-99, the presence of Indian as well as African elements in Ptolemy’s parade may have alluded to the tradition that associated both conquerors of India—Dionysos and Alexander—also with Arabia, Libya, and Egypt.
42Parker 2002, p. 61.
43On the inaccuracy of the ancient consumer’s geographical ideas about places which the purchased goods came from and the tendency to merge different routes and market places into a unified exotic “Orient” see Parker 2002 (particularly p. 84-86).
44Haaland 2014, p. 653. Maritime trading between southern Red Sea ports and India is archaeologically attested only from the 1st c. BC onward; a written report (Periplus Maris Erythraei) is later, dating back to the mid-1st c. AD: see Casson 1989, p. 7.
45Marcotte 2016.
46Pliny, Nastural history, 6.35 (184).
47Translation by Rackham 1942, p. 475-477.
48Also mentioned along with psittakoi in pseudo-Callisthenes: see above, p. 440. On the ape sphynx see, here, Vespa.
49Schneider 2016, p. 189.
50Ibid., p. 200.
51Arnott 2007, p. 201. See also Thompson 1936, p. 337. According to Jennison 1937, p. 120, n. 1, a silver dish found in Lampsacus and reproduced in E.H. Warmington (Commerce between Roman Empire and India, p. 143) seems to display African (not Indian) animals, among which a parrot.
52In Roman times, when the Cyranides were most likely composed, the Thebais was the region of the Upper Egypt, comprising Thebae, Berenike, Myos Hormos and Syene (right north of the ancient kingdom of Meroe).
53On the modern global diffusion of the parakeets see Pruett-Jones 2021; Paz 1987, p. 139; Masseti 2002.
54The psittaci mentioned by Pliny would have belonged to the African genus Poicephalus according to J. Desanges (apud Cuvigny 2023, p. 296, n. 37). According to certain sources the “monsoon route” between the Red Sea and India was discovered by the Greeks in the Ptolemaic Period, probably in the 2nd c. BC, under Ptolemy VIII (170-116 BC): Parker 2002, p. 81-82; Schneider 2016, p. 200. Around the same time Agatharchides of Cnidus (an official working in the Alexandrian chancellery) wrote his geographical work On Erythræan Sea: Marcotte 2016.
55Periplus Maris Erythraei, 26. On the coexistence of Indian, Arab and Greco-Roman ships and merchants in the ancient trade network of the Indian Ocean see Fauconnier 2012. On the trade between Ptolemaic Egypt and India, either through Arab and Indian intermediaries or directly, see Parker 2002, p. 69-70.
56Other evidence of wild/feral parakeets out of India is Diodorus Siculus (Historical library, 2.53.2), who alleges that psittakoi of colorful appearance were found in the furthest parts of Syria. According to Arnott 2007, p. 202, this “may imply that Ringed-necked Parakeets (wild or feral) already existed in Antiquity around the mouth of the River Euphrates just like today’s feral population in that area” (in this case, probably imported via the inland route, through Bactria). Karttunen 1997, p. 203, n. 467, rather takes Diodorus’ “farthest Syria” to refer to some African area. Ptolemy (Geography, 7.2.23) claims that white pittakoi lived in eastern Bangladesh and west Myanmar. This is a puzzling piece of information. According to Arnott, “today white Parrots in the wild (Cockatoos, Corellas) are confined to Australia and the islands east of Malaysia; if Ptolemy’s birds ever existed, they must have been either albinos or domesticated birds that had been brought or escaped from those islands and then settled in the areas specified by Ptolemy” (Arnott 2007, p. 202).
57According to archaeological remains and to Strabo (Geography, 2.5.12), who visited the new province of Egypt in 29-26 BC.
58Parker 2002, p. 51.
59The presence of “parakeet hunters” (or parakeet care workers?) among the members of a caravan travelling through the desert on the trail between Apollonopolis (on the Nile) and Berenike (on the Red Sea) in the 3th c. BC have been recently advocated by Cuvigny 2023, p. 293-294, on the basis of evidence from inscripted ostraca found in Bi’r Samūt. Many centuries later, the Egyptian Hellenized intellectual Olympiodorus of Thebes had a pet psittakós who accompained him in all his diplomatical journeys (fr.35.1 Blockley). Would the parrot be a marker of Olympiodorus’ Egyptian origins? Did he get it on his trip to Syene and the Nubian Blemmyes? It would be interesting to know where the vernacular denomination “Alexandrine” for the Ps. eupatria first originated. The epithet may be related to the city of Alexandria, as the place par excellence where parakeets had been traded for many centuries. In fact, in the report written by Alvise de Ca’ da Mosto in 1460 after his explorations of the western coast of Africa, two species of parrots are described: the first one, most likely a parakeet, is said to be “come quelli che vengono da Alessandria” (apud Veracini 2021, p. 17).
60On contemporary populations of Indian parakeets in the Mediterranean see Masseti 2002.
61Macrobius, Dream of Scipio, 2.4.29.
62Crinagoras, Greek anthology, 9.562 (24 Gow-Page = Ypsilanti). Ypsilanti (2018, p. 3 and 254-260) suspects that the author of the poem is instead Philip, due to the explicit use of the divine title (δαίμων) which does not seem to have been ever employed in addressing Augustus. However, Crinagora’s authorship cannot be ruled out. In the latter case, the epigram must have been composed after 25 BC, during Crinagoras’ third Embassy to Rome.
63I.e. Octavianus, if the epigram is by Crinagoras.
64Translation by Ypsilanti 2018.
65See Macrobius’ passage mentioned above and Statius, Silvae, 2.4.29-30. Pliny (Natural history, 10.60 [121]) has a corvus perform the same task. See Montero Herrero 2006, p. 123-125.
66The fragment has been discovered in 2014, during restoration works of the area, in the “vano 57” of the domus Augusti. Carettoni 1983, p. 374, already reported about “pappagalli” in the wall painting of a small room inside the “ambiente 1” of the domus Augusti which corresponds precisely to the cell currently called “vano 57”; but the red bird he saw, badly damaged, cannot seem to be any kind of parrot (in fact Iacopi 2007 mentions no parrots among the subjects portrayed in the wall paintings in the domus). I warmely thank R. Alteri for the precious information she kindly provided.
67If Tammisto 1997 (p. 287, n. 543) is right in advocating that some other painted images in the same area had been erroneously interpreted as parakeets, no parrots are present in the original iconographic program of the Augustan building on the Palatine.
68Pliny, Natural history, 10.117 (imperatores salutat).
69Tammisto 1997, p. 294, n. 585, and p. 249, n. 318. Catalli 1987 does not offer a complete description of the frescoes in the colombario discovered in 1984, nor does he determines their age. Tammisto 1997, p. 294, n. 585, and Dorsch 1983, p. 164-165, provide two lists of frescoes from different contexts and periods.
70The same “double introduction” (in iconography first, and only later in real life) seems to apply to the diffusion of Gallus gallus domesticus in Greece: Chandezon 2021.
71Tammisto 1997, p. 75-84, inclines toward a Pergamene (rather than Alexandrian) influence associated with the import of Hellenistic art from Asia Minor after the Mithridatic wars (p. 117). See also Thomas 2016, I, p. 204. For an overview of the parakeet in Hellenistic and Romano-Campanian mosaics to the early Augustan Age (8 mosaics) see Tammisto 1997, p. 72-84, 93-98, 117-120, 128-129, 294, n. 585. A list which includes also later mosaics in Dorsch 1983, p. 164-172.
72Pliny, Natural history, 36.184.
73Museo Archeologico di Napoli, inv. 9992, with the description by Pappalardo – Ciardiello 2010, p. 120; see also Tammisto 1997, p. 75-81.
74Museo Nazionale Romano, no 328.
75De Vos 1980.
76Surprisingly, no parrots were among the gifts brought for Augustus by the Indian ambassadors in 20 BC: Strabon, Geography, 15.1.73 (FGH 90 F100), Cassius Dio, Roman history, 54.9.8-10. On the episode see Montero Herrero 2006, p. 149-150. For a brief sketch of the increasing influence of Egypt onto Roman culture and for Nilotic landscapes in Roman art in particular see Versluys 2002.
77Tomassini 2016, p. 4-5; Tammisto 1997, p. 76-80.
78Varro, Agricultural topics, 3.9 (17).
79Ovid, The art of love, 2.6.9.
80On which see Kitchell 2020, p. 553-560.
81On pet corvids see Toynbee 1973, p. 273-276. Trimalchio’s guests were greeted by a pica in a golden cage, hanging over the threashold (Petronius, Satyricon, 28.8-9, with Blythe 2020).
82Pliny, Natural history, 10.58-60 (117-124).
83Apuleius (Florida, 12.7), on the contrary, contrasts the high quality of the psittacus’ imitation with that of another talking bird—probably a corvus—whose utterance nobody would mistake for a human voice. On Apuleian description, which involves some factual errors (such as the five toes in the best speaking parrots) and bespeaks a peculiar view of “Roman” exoticism see Hunink 2000; Sabnis 2014, p. 271-276.
84Pausanias, Description of Greece, 2.28.1 (Παρὰ δ᾽ Ἰνδῶν μόνων ἄλλα τε κομίζεται, καὶ ὄρνιθες οἱ ψιττακοί), and Solinus, Collection of curiosities, 53 (sola India mittit psittacum avem, colore viridi torque puniceum), insist on India as its only place of origin. For a postcolonial critique of the psittacus’ extreme foreignness see Sabnis 2014, p. 271-276.
85Parker 2002, p. 55.
86Ovid, The art of love, 2.6.1 and 38; Statius, Silvae, 2.4.24-5. Cf. Petronius, fr.45.1 Müller (Indica […] genuit me […] tellus).
87Is this the reason why the psittacus in Crinagoras’ epigram was able to fly out of its wicker cage (Greek anthology, 9.562.1)?
88Statius, Silvae, 2.4.11-14. See also Dionysius Periegetes, Description of the known world, 1.19 Garzya. On the aesthetics of caged birds in late Republican Rome see Jones 2013. On Ovid’s “parrot poem” and the imitation of it by Statius scholarship has flourished; among most influential studies: Cahoon 1984; Boyd 1987; Cahoon 1991; Myers 1990; Houghton 2000; Dietrich 2002; Myers 2002; Newlands 2005; Fréchet 2005; James 2006; Kronenberg 2016; Kronenberg 2017. An epitaph for a dead parrot dating to the late Hadrianic Period (from Phrygia) is published in Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua, IX, p. 438.
89Ovid, The art of love, 2.6.21-2. Blythe 2020 offers an overview of the colors of the parakeet in Latin language.
90Apuleius, Florida, 12.1-2.
91Statius, Silvae, 2.4.24-8.
92Arrian, Indica, 15.9.
93Dorsch 1983, p. 164-172; Tammisto 1997, p. 294, n. 585. See also Watson 2002, p. 393, with plates 303 and 131.
94No images of picae or sturni in Roman art are mentioned by Toynbee 1973, p. 275-276, and Arnott 2007, p. 200, remarks that “no certain representation of the Starling has been identified in ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman art”. However, L. Capaldo (in Ciarallo 1992, p. 26-28) identifies a pica (jay) in one of the paintings in the Pompeian “Casa del Bracciale d’oro”. A bronze figure of a raven is reported to be part of the British Museum collection (Toynbee 1973, p. 275); another one was part of a fountain in the Villa San Marco at Stabiae (Arnott 2007, p. 112). According to Tammisto 1997, p. 283, n. 508, the raven is “a rarely represented bird in Pompeian wall paintings” and none is present in the mosaics. A corvid appears in the Etruscan “Tomba di Tassinaia (Chiusi)” from the mid-3rd c. BC, most likely as an omen of death (Tammisto 1997, p. 107, n. 719). Corvids are depicted on warriors’ shields on Attic vases: Normand 2016, p. 50, n. 81-82. They occasionally appear on Roman coins and regularly on Mythras reliefs and in Celtic art: Arnott 2007, p. 112.
95Which did not spare it from getting harsh mistreatments: Pliny, Natural history, 10.117; Apuleius, Florida, 12.3-9.
Auteur
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Cristiana Franco
Università per Stranieri di Siena
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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