Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

100 Magic [CH.
heralds of his immortals. This view is almost inevitable as long
as the bird is regarded as an omen pure and simple, as merely
portending the weather, the said weather being made or at least
arranged by some one else. There are not wanting signs however
that, beneath this notion of birds as portents, there lies an earlier
stratum of thought in which birds were regarded not merely as
Fig. 16.
portending the weather but as potencies who actually make it,
not, that is, as messengers but as magicians. This early way of
thinking comes out most clearly in the case of a bird who never
became the ' attribute ' of any Olympian, the homely woodpecker.
In the Birds of Aristophanes the Hoopoe asks Euelpides if
the birds ought not by rights to have the kingdom, since, as he
has admitted, they were there before Kronos and the Titans, yes,
and before Earth herself 1 . Yes
!
by
Apollo, says Euelpides, they
certainly ought and you had better be trimming up your beaks,
for you can't expect that
Zeus the pretender
;
11 make haste to surrender
The Woodpecker's sceptre he stole 2 .
1 Ar. Aves, 468
apxcubrepot Trpdrepoi re Kpovov /cat Ttrdvwv eylveade
Kal yijs.
2 Ax. Aves, 478
iravv Tolvvv XPV pvyx * p6 dpvKok&Trrr).
Peisthetairos and Euelpides go on to explain how divers birds were kings in divers