Note 386 — AGAMEMNON
E. H. (Edward Hayes) Plumptre translation
The species of swan referred to is said to be the Cygnus Musicus. Aristotle (Hist. Anim. ix. 12) describes swans of some kind as having been heard by sailors near the coast of Libya, “singing with a lamentable cry.” Mrs. Somerville (Phys. Geog., c. xxxiii. 3) describes their note as “like that of a violin.” The same fact is reported of the swans of Iceland and other regions of the far North. The strange, tender beauty of the passage in the Phædo of Plato (p. 85, a), which speaks of them as singing when at the point of death, has done more than anything else to make the illustration one of the commonplaces of rhetoric and poetry.