'You lie,' says the wren, darting up a perch
and a half above the big fellow. The eagle was so angry to think how he
was outwitted by the wren, that when the latter was coming down he gave
him a stroke of his wing, and from that day the wren has never been able
to fly higher than a hawthorn bush." The swiftness of the eagle's flight
is spoken of in "Timon of Athens," (i. 1):

"an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,
Leaving no tract behind."[208]

[206] Quoted by Harting, in "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 24.

[207] Kelly's "Indo-European Folk-Lore," pp. 75, 79.

[208] Cf. "Antony and Cleopatra," ii. 2: "This was but as a fly
by an eagle."

The great age, too, of the eagle is well known; and the words of the
Psalmist are familiar to most readers:

"His youth shall be renewed like the eagle's."

Apemantus, however, asks of Timon ("Timon of Athens," iv. 3):

"will these moss'd trees,
That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels,
And skip when thou point'st out?"

Turbervile, in his "Booke of Falconrie," 1575, says that the great age
of this bird has been ascertained from the circumstance of its always
building its eyrie or nest in the same place. The Romans considered the
eagle a bird of good omen, and its presence in time of battle was
supposed to foretell victory. Thus, in "Julius Caesar" (v. 1) we read:

"Coming from Sardis, on our former ensign
Two mighty eagles fell; and there they perch'd,
Gorging and feeding from our soldiers' hands."

It was selected for the Roman legionary standard,[209] through being the
king and most powerful of all birds. As a bird of good omen it is
mentioned also in "Cymbeline" (i. 1):

"I chose an eagle,
And did avoid a puttock;"

and in another scene (iv. 2) the Soothsayer relates how

"Last night the very gods show'd me a vision,
... thus:--
I saw Jove's bird, the Roman eagle, wing'd
From the spungy south to this part of the west,
There vanish'd in the sunbeams: which portends
(Unless my sins abuse my divination),
Success to the Roman host."

[209] Josephus, "De Bello Judico," iii. 5.

The conscious superiority[210] of the eagle is depicted by Tamora in
"Titus Andronicus" (iv. 4):

"The eagle suffers little birds to sing,
And is not careful what they mean thereby,
Knowing that with the shadow of