Eagle and Crow. Photo: Stewart Dauber, 2016.
Brawn and Brains: An Avian Alliance (Phaedrus 2.6)
By Alethea Lam
Author’s Note:
The tortoise’s best-known appearance in fable might be as the embodiment of “slow and steady wins the race,” but in Phaedrus’s Aquila et cornix, “The Eagle and the Crow,” the shelled reptile meets a less happy end. The titular characters conspire to break open the tortoise’s natural armor via another tried-and-true principle: gravity.
Like many fables, Aquila et cornix weaves observed animal characteristics and behaviors into its plot. Golden eagles are known to feed on tortoises, especially in the eastern Mediterranean.1 As described in this poem, these birds of prey employ “an elaborate hunting technique consisting of lifting a tortoise and dropping it onto rocks to break open its hard shell.”2 According to Valerius Maximus, a contemporary of Phaedrus, Aeschylus was killed when an eagle, mistaking the Greek tragedian’s bald head for a rock, dropped a tortoise upon it. 3
Crows are also known to drop hard-shelled food like mussels in order to crack them open; research shows that these birds tend not to drop such objects from too high up because doing so increases the chances of kleptoparasites, whether other crows or birds of a different species, stealing the prize.4 It is not a huge leap of logic, then, to theorize that eagles’ tortoise-hunting tactics were borrowed from crows and that food obtained in this manner might end up in another bird’s claws, although in Aquila et cornix this outcome is intended.
Beyond observations from the natural world, this fable also incorporates political and military overtones into the plot. Phaedrus characterizes the crow as a consiliator maleficus (“nefarious advisor,” line 2) and magistrae (“teacher,” line 15) to a powerful figure, the eagle, perhaps as an oblique allusion to contemporary political figures. Meanwhile, the poet plays on the tortoise’s association with the testudo military formation by using the vocabulary of war and plunder, such as oppugnant (“besiege,” line 3) and abdidisset (“had withdrawn,” line 5). I have endeavored to reflect these themes in my translation choices.
Finally, I have translated this poem into prose to better capture the plot’s simplicity and dynamism while retaining the loftier elements of poetry in style. While the animal characters’ biological sexes are not made clear in the Latin, I have followed their grammatical genders and described them all as female.
Text
Contra potentes nemo est munitus satis;
si vero accessit consiliator maleficus,
vis et nequitia quicquid oppugnant ruit.
Aquila in sublime sustulit testudinem.
quae cum abdidisset cornea corpus domo 5
nec ullo pacto laedi posset condita,
venit per auras cornix et propter volans:
“Opimam sane praedam rapuisti unguibus;
sed nisi monstraro quid sit faciendum tibi,
gravi nequiquam te lassabit pondere.” 10
promissa parte suadet ut scopulum super
altis ab astris duram inlidat corticem,
qua comminuta facile vescatur cibo.
inducta vafris aquila monitis paruit,
simul et magistrae large divisit dapem. 15
sic tuta quae Naturae fuerat munere,
impar duabus occidit tristi nece.
Translation:
No one is sufficiently protected against the powerful; in fact, if a nefarious advisor approaches, whomever strength and wickedness besiege is destroyed.
The eagle lifted the tortoise high into the air. When the latter had withdrawn its body into its house of horn and, thus concealed, could not be harmed in any way, the crow arrives on the winds and, soaring nearby, says: “You’ve carried off some truly splendid spoil in your talons, but unless I teach you what you ought to do, it’ll wear you out with its burdensome weight, with nothing to show for it.”
Once a share is promised, the crow proposes that the eagle dash the sturdy shell from the lofty stars upon a boulder and, once that was smashed, enjoy the food without difficulty. Influenced by the cunning words of advice, in one fell swoop the eagle obeyed and distributed a sacrificial feast in abundance for her teacher. In this way she who had been protected by Nature’s gift, not being a match for these two, perished in this unhappy murder.
Alethea Lam (College ‘25) is a student at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in Classical Studies.
Endnotes:
- Jeff Watson, The Golden Eagle (Calton, Staffordshire, UK: T. & A. D. Poyser, 2010), 52.
- José M. Gil-Sánchez et al., “Predation impact on threatened spur-thighed tortoises by golden eagles when main prey is scarce,” Scientific Reports 12, no. 17843 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-22288-9.
- Valerius Maximus, Valerius Maximus: Memorable Doings and Sayings, Volume II, Books 6-9, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 374.
- John Davenport et al., “Mussel dropping by Carrion and Hooded crows: biomechanical and energetic considerations,” Journal of Field Ornithology 85, no. 2 (2014): 203.
Bibliography
Davenport, John, Michael J. A. O’Callaghan, Julia L. Davenport, and Thomas C. Kelly. “Mussel dropping by Carrion and Hooded crows: biomechanical and energetic considerations,” Journal of Field Ornithology 85, no. 2 (2014): 196–205. https://doi.org/10.1111/jofo.12060.
Gil-Sánchez, José M., Roberto C. Rodríguez-Caro, Marcos Moleón, María C. Martínez-Pastor, Mario León-Ortega, Sergio Eguía, Eva Graciá, Francisco Botella, José A. Sánchez-Zapata, Julia Martínez-Fernández et al. “Predation impact on threatened spur-thighed tortoises by golden eagles when main prey is scarce.” Scientific Reports 12, no. 17843 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-22288-9.
Valerius Maximus. Valerius Maximus: Memorable Doings and Sayings, Volume II, Books 6-9. Translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Watson, Jeff. The Golden Eagle. Calton, Staffordshire, UK: T. & A. D. Poyser, 2010.