the Phoenix

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the story in short –
This is one of Pythagoras’ stories about Natural Science that illustrate his sense that the natural world is in a constant state of change and is just generally totally weird. He gives the example of the phoenix as an exception to the rule that birds come from eggs. The phoenix, as he explains, reproduces from itself .

The phoenix does not eat seeds but lives on incense and on the sap of cardamons.
When it has lived for five hundred years it builds its own nest with its beak and talons at the top of a swaying palm tree and then, when it has lined the nest with fragrant wood, it lies down in it and dies among the perfumes.
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The young phoenix is born from the body of the old one, to live the same length of time and when it has grown strong enough to carry a burden, it picks up the nest which has been its father’s home and then his tomb and he carries the nest to Heliopolis in Egypt and lays it piously down on the steps of the Temple of the Sun. A.G.

N.B . … there is therefore no such thing as a phoenix egg

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Bk XV:391-417 Pythagoras’s Teachings: The Phoenix

Yet these creatures receive their start in life from others: there is one, a bird, which renews itself, and reproduces from itself. The Assyrians call it the phoenix. It does not live on seeds and herbs, but on drops of incense, and the sap of the cardamom plant. When it has lived for five centuries, it then builds a nest for itself in the topmost branches of a swaying palm tree, using only its beak and talons. As soon as it has lined it with cassia bark, and smooth spikes of nard, cinnamon fragments and yellow myrrh, it settles on top, and ends its life among the perfumes.

They say that, from the father’s body, a young phoenix is reborn, destined to live the same number of years. When age has given it strength, and it can carry burdens, it lightens the branches of the tall palm of the heavy nest, and piously carries its own cradle, that was its father’s tomb, and, reaching the city of Hyperion, the sun-god, through the clear air, lays it down in front of the sacred doors of Hyperion’s temple.


https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Metamorph15.php

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