But as favour and hate were now withdrawn,
justice prevailed, and being questioned for crimes long since sufficiently
manifest, she executed with her own hand that vengeance, which was rather
too slow than too severe,
In the Consulship of Paulus Fabius and Lucius Vitellius, after a long
vicissitude of ages, the phoenix arrived in Egypt, and furnished the most
learned of the natives and Greeks with matter of large and various
observations concerning that miraculous bird. The circumstances in which
they agree, with many others, that, however disputed, deserve to be known,
claim a recital here. That it is a creature sacred to the sun, and in the
fashion of its head, and diversity of feathers, distinct from other birds,
all who have described its figure, are agreed; about the length of its
life, relations vary. It is by the vulgar tradition fixed at five hundred
years: but there are those, who extend it to one thousand four hundred and
sixty-one; and assert that the three former phoenixes appeared in reigns
greatly distant, the first under Sesostris, the next under Amasis; and
that one was seen under Ptolomy the third King of Egypt of the Macedonian
race, and flew to the city of Heliopolis, accompanied by a vast host of
other birds gazing upon the wonderful stranger.
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