Various History

About pigeons ~

It is said that pigeons take turns brooding their eggs. When the chicks are born, the male spits on them to ward off the evil eye original: βασκανθῶσι (baskanthōsi). The belief that spitting could protect against "envy" or magical curses was a common folk remedy in antiquity., so they might not be bewitched by a bear original: δι' ἄρκτου (di' arktou). This likely refers to a folk superstition that bears could curse the young, or perhaps a reference to the constellation of the Great Bear causing bad luck.. The female lays two eggs; it is said the first is always male and the second is female. Pigeons give birth at every season of the year, so that they go into labor as many as ten times in a single year. An Egyptian account even claims that those in Egypt give birth twelve times.

Aristotle says that the pigeon and the wild dove are different; the pigeon original: περιστερά (peristera) is larger, while the wild dove original: πελειάδα (peleiada) is smaller. He also says that the male does not mount the female until he has first kissed her. Indeed, the females will not endure the company of the males without that preparatory kiss. He adds that females will even mount one another if they are deprived of a male mate, though they achieve nothing with each other except laying "wind eggs" Unfertilized eggs that can never hatch into chicks. from which no young are produced.

If we are to believe Callimachus A famous scholar and poet at the Library of Alexandria., the wood-pigeon, the pyrallis original: πυραλλίδα; a legendary bird often associated with fire., the common pigeon, and the turtle-dove are all quite different from one another. Indian accounts say that some pigeons in India have an apple-yellow color. Charon of Lampsacus An early Greek historian writing before Herodotus. says that white pigeons appeared at Mount Athos when the Persian triremes were destroyed there during the time of Cambyses Specifically referring to the shipwreck of the Persian fleet at the cliffs of Mt. Athos..

At Mount Eryx in Sicily, there is a venerable and holy temple of Aphrodite. At a certain time, the people of Eryx celebrate a festival called the Anagogia original: ἀναλώγια (analōgia), likely a variation of Anagogia, the "Departure" festival., and they say that Aphrodite is traveling across the sea from Sicily to Libya. At that time, the pigeons vanish from the area, as if they were traveling abroad with the goddess. For the rest of the year, however, it is agreed that a vast multitude of these birds frequents the goddess's temple. Achaean stories tell that Zeus himself changed his form into a pigeon when he fell in love with a woman named Phthia, who lived in the city of Aegium.

About Socrates when he drank the hemlock ~

When the ship from Delos had arrived The arrival of this sacred ship in Athens signaled that the religious period was over and the execution of Socrates could proceed. and it was necessary for Socrates to die, Apollodorus—a companion of Socrates—came to the prison. He brought with him a costly woolen tunic, an under-tunic, and a cloak of the same kind. He begged Socrates to put on the tunic and throw the cloak... The text ends mid-sentence as the page concludes.