A while back on the Classics list in a context I can’t recall, I mentioned that the populations of starlings and turkey vultures seemed to be on the increase in the area I live in (Southern Ontario). As it turns out, the starlings are actually declining, according to a piece in the Star, which also drops this little tidbit:
But a range of research and experience suggests the birds’ positive contributions deserve a hearing. Among other things, starlings are legendary songsters. Since the time of the ancient Romans, starlings have been kept as pets, often for their extraordinary singing capabilities. Emperor Nero and Agrippina had pet starlings that had vast singing repertoires and large vocabularies of human words.
Here’s what Pliny the Elder has to say about that:
Agrippina Claudii Caesaris turdum habuit, quod numquam ante, imitantem sermones hominum. cum haec proderem, habebant et Caesares iuvenes sturnum, item luscinias Graeco ac Latino sermone dociles, praeterea meditantes assidue et in diem nova loquentes, longiore etiam contextu. docentur secreto et ubi nulla alia vox misceatur, adsidente qui crebro dicat ea, quae condita velit, ac cibis blandiente.
(NH 10.59 via Lacus Curtius)
Agrippina, the wife of Claudius Caesar, had a thrush that could imitate human speech, a thing that was never known before. At the moment that I am writing this, the young Caesars have a starling and some nightingales that are being taught to talk in Greek and Latin ; besides which, they are studying their task the whole day, continually repeating the new words that they have learnt, and giving utterance to phrases even of considerable length. Birds are taught to talk in a retired spot, and where no other voice can be heard, so as to interfere with their lesson ; a person sits by them, and continually repeats the words he wishes them to learn, while at the same time he encourages them by giving them food.
I assume the ‘young Caesars’ are Nero and Brittanicus …
rogueclassicism 