The bird long
contests among the Egyptians with the still received serpent symbol of
power. But the Draconian image of evil is established in the serpent
Apap; while the bird's wings, with the globe, become part of a better
symbol of deity, and the entire form of the vulture, as an emblem of
purification, is associated with the earliest conception of Athena. In
the type of the dove with the olive branch, the conception of the spirit
of Athena in renewed life prevailing over ruin is embodied for the whole
of futurity; while the Greeks, to whom, in a happier climate and higher
life than that of Egypt, the vulture symbol of cleansing became
unintelligible, took the eagle instead for their hieroglyph of supreme
spiritual energy, and it thenceforward retains its hold on the human
imagination, till it is established among Christian myths as the
expression of the most exalted form of evangelistic teaching. The
special relation of Athena to her favorite bird we will trace presently;
the peacock of Hera, and dove of Aphrodite, are comparatively unimportant
myths; but the bird power is soon made entirely human by the Greeks in
their flying angel of victory (partially human, with modified meaning of
evil, in the Harpy and Siren); and thenceforward it associates itself
with the Hebrew cherubim, and has had the most singular influence on the
Christian religion by giving its wings to render the conception of angels
mysterious and untenable, and check rational endeavor to determine the
nature of subordinate spiritual agency; while yet it has given to that
agency a vague poetical influence of the highest value in its own
imaginative way.
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