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As for love of her offspring and care for their preservation, as soon as she perceives herself to be pregnant, she applies herself to building the nest, Cf. Mor. 494 a-b; Aristotle, Historia Animal. ix. 13 (616 a 19 ff.); Aelian, De Natura Animal. ix. 17. not making pats of mud or cementing it on walls and roofs like the house-martin Cf. 966 d-e supra.; nor does she use the activity of many different members of her body, as when the bee employs its whole frame to enter and open the wax, with all six feet pressing at the same time to fashion the whole mass into hexagonal cells, But the halcyon, having but one simple instrument, one piece of equipment, one tool - her bill and nothing else, co-operating with her industry and ingenuity - what she contrives and constructs would be hard to believe without ocular evidence, seeing the object that she moulds - or rather the ship that she builds. Of many possible forms, this alone cannot be capsizedAristotle (loc. cit.), on the contrary, seems to say (though his text is corrupt; see Thompson ad loc.): The opening is small, just enough for a tiny entrance, so that even if the nest is upset, the sea does not enter. or even wet its cargo. She collects the spines of garfish Belone was usually a term for the garfish and the needlefish, neither of which has spines of any size. Thompson (Glossary, pp. 31-32) rightly regards the meaning of belone here as indeterminable. Cf. also Mor. 494 a, which is almost certainly mistranslated in the L.C.L. edition. and binds and weaves them together, some straight, others transverse, as if she were thrusting woven threads through the warp, adding such bends and knots of one with another that a compact, rounded unit is formed, slightly prolate in shape, like a fisherman’s weel. When it is finished, she brings and deposits it beside the surging waves, where the sea beats gently upon it and instructs her how to mend and strengthen whatever is not yet good and tight, as she observes it loosened by the blows. She so tautens and secures the joints that it is difficult even for stones or iron to break or pierce it. The proportions and shape of the hollow interior are as admirable as anything about it; for it is so constructed as to admit herself only, while the entrance remains wholly hidden and invisible to others - with the result that not even a drop of water can get in. Now I presume that all of you have seen this nest; as for me, since I have often seen and touched it, it comes to my mind to chant the words Once such a thing in Delos near Apollo’s shrineHomer, Odyssey, vi. 162. That there was some religious mystery associated with the so-called nest is indicated by the close of Plutarch’s description. (Thompson on Aristotle, loc. cit.) I saw, the Altar of Horn, celebrated as one of the Seven Wonders of the World Cf. Strabo, xiv. 2. 5. because it needs no glue or any other binding, but is joined and fastened together, made entirely of horns taken from the right side of the head.Curiously enough, the Life of Theseus, xxi. 2 (9 e) says the left side. Now may the godApollo. From this point on the text of the rest of this chapter is very bad and full of lacunae. The restorations adopted here are somewhat less than certain. be propitious to me while I sing of the Sea SirenThis is not fulfilled and so is presumably an indication of another lacuna toward the end of Phaedimus’ speech, the location of which we cannot even guess. - and indeed, being both a musician and an islander, he should laugh good-naturedly at my opponents’ scoffing questions. Why should he not be called a conger-slayer or Artemis be termed a surmullet-slayer? Cf. 966 a supra. Since he well knows that Aphrodite, born of the sea, regards practically all sea creatures as sacred and related to herself and relishes the slaughter of none of them. In Leptis,Andrews suspects a confusion here and at Mor. 730 d with Lepidotonpolis on the Nile, not far below Thebes, apparently a focal point of a taboo on eating the bynni, allegedly due to its consumption of the private parts of Osiris when they were thrown into the river (cf. Mor. 358 b). you know, the priests of Poseidon refrain entirely from any sea food, and those initiated into the mysteries at Eleusis hold the surmullet in veneration, while the priestess of Hera at Argos abstains from this fish to pay it honour. For surmullets are particularly good at killing and eating the sea-hare, which is lethal to man. Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii. 45; ix. 51; xvi. 19; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ix. 155; Philostratus, Vita Apoll. vi. 32. It is for this reason that surmullets possess this immunity, as being friendly and life-saving creatures.
