WORKS.
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- ↑ A neck-streak'd nightingale.] Ποικιλοδειρον, with variegated throat. This has not been thought appropriate to the nightingale. Tzetzes and Moschopolus interpreted the term by ποικιλοφωνον, with varied voice; a very forced construction; yet it is adopted by Loesner, who renders it by canoram. Ruhnken proposes the emendation of ποικιλογηρυν, which is synonymous. Others have doubted whether αηδων, which is literally singer, might not apply to some other bird, as the thrush, which is defined by Linnæus, "back brown, neck spotted with white." But the name singer might have been applied to the nightingale by way of eminence. In fact I see no difficulty. Linnæus, indeed, describes the nightingale, "bill brown, head and back pale mouse-colour, with olive spots," and says nothing of the throat. Simonides, however, speaks of χλοραυχενες αειδονες, green-necked nightingales, which might justify Hesiod's epithet. Bewick in the "British Birds" thus describes the luscinia: "the whole upper part of the body of a rusty brown tinged with olive; under parts pale ash-colour; almost white at the throat." A more ancient ornithologist has a description still more nearly approximating to the term of Hesiod; and it seems evident that there is more than one species of nightingale.
"Luscinia, philomela, αηδων.
"The nightingale is about the bigness of a goldfinch. The colour on the upper part, i. e. the head and back, is a pale fulvous (lion, or deep gold colour) with a certain mixture of green, like that of a red-wing. Its tail is of a deeper fulvous or red, like a red-start's. From its red colour it took the name of rossignuolo,
whom Hesiod inveighs, are therefore simply a kind of nobles, who exercised the judicial office in Bœotia; like the twelve of Phœacia mentioned in the Odyssey. See Mitford's History of Greece, vol. i. ch. 3.
