Parrot Culture. Bruce Thomas Boehrer

of this affair, there appeared columns of servants carrying parrots in cages (Athenaeus 5.201b). Apart from the obvious luxury of this spectacle, it conveyed a political point, for the elder Ptolemy had accompanied Alexander to India and back. The birds that returned with him served as a reminder of that connection, and perhaps as a way of linking the new Ptolemy with Alexander’s achievements.

      If this was the intended effect of the display, it seems to have worked, at least in the long run. Alexandria became the center of the parrot trade for the classical Mediterranean (Wotke 931), and parrots became a popular marker of privilege in ancient society, increasingly associated with kings and emperors. When the news spread that Julius Caesar’s adopted nephew Octavian had defeated Mark Antony at the battle of Actium (31 B.C.), thereby ensuring that he would become the emperor Augustus, at least one parrot appeared among his well-wishers, greeting him with the words “Hail Caesar, conqueror and leader!” (Macrobius 3.30; my translation). This was a calculated appeal to the victor’s largesse, of course; it takes a long time to teach a parrot to say anything, so the bird’s greeting offered powerful evidence of its owner’s loyalty. In this case, the ploy worked, and Octavian bought the bird from its owner for a handsome sum. But another fortune-hunter used a raven for the same purpose, with less than ideal results:

      It happened that a man appeared before Caesar with a raven, which he had taught to say, “Hail Caesar, conqueror and leader!” Caesar, marveling, bought the dutiful bird for twenty thousand coins. But a companion of the bird’s trainer, who had received nothing of this generosity, declared that the trainer had another bird, too, which Caesar demanded to see as well. When brought forward, it greeted him with the words “Hail Antony, conqueror and leader!” (Macrobius 3.30; my translation)

      The bird-trainer evidently had been hedging his bets.

      Not to be outdone by such yokels, Greek and Roman poets also began to employ the parrot in the endless derby for imperial patronage. Writing in the first century B.C., the Greek Crinagoras set the tone here with an effusive epigram:

      The parrot that talks with human voice, taking leave of his wicker cage, flew to the woods on his many-coloured wings, and ever assiduous in greeting famous Caesar, did not forget that name even in the mountains. All the birds, sharpening their wits to learn, strove among each other which should be the first to say “Chaire” [Hail] to the god. Orpheus made the beasts obey him in the hills, and now every bird tunes its voice for thee, Caesar, unbidden. (9.562)

      The parrot’s praises are a projection of the poet’s own sycophantic ambitions, which others strove to outdo in their turn. Petronius (d. A.D. 66), for instance, amidst his duties as Roman magistrate and party-companion of the emperor Nero, took time to compose an epigram spoken by a parrot whose wondrous abilities associated it not only with the Latin language but with the gods themselves: “My birthplace was India’s glowing shore, where the day returns in brilliance with fiery orb. Here I was born amid the worship of the gods, and exchanged my barbaric speech for the Latin tongue. 0 healer of Delphi, now dismiss thy swans; here is a voice more worthy to dwell within thy temple” (18). And, capping these performances in turn, in A.D. 85 the poet Martial flattered the emperor Domitian by composing a deft couplet uttered by a parrot that had taught itself to sing Caesar’s praises.

      Like the philosophers of their day (and Martial, at least, had clearly been reading Pliny), these poets seem torn between wonder at the parrot’s powers of speech and an urgent desire to put the bird in its place. As an eastern miracle, it becomes a proper companion for Caesar and Apollo, even displacing the sungod’s swans. But it is also in dire need of domestication, exchanging its “barbaric speech” for Latin, learning to praise Caesar or to name others at Caesar’s direction. As it happens, this exquisite combination of eminence and inferiority gives perfect expression to the circumstances of a poet in pursuit of royal patronage. The parrot’s marvelous eloquence sets it apart from other beasts, thereby marking the poet’s own aspirations to distinction and uniqueness. But its status as a pet of the powerful marks, at the very same time, the humiliation of the poet’s own life of service. Like the parrot, the poet is an articulate beast torn between two incompatible images of himself.

      In practice, this conflict could lead to painful consequences. Despite the advantages of his friendship with Nero, and despite—perhaps even because of—his own energy and talent, Petronius was eventually forced to commit suicide by his imperial patron. Likewise, despite their beauty and value, Marcus Aquilius Regulus had his son’s parrots slaughtered at his funeral pyre. To serve well, one must please well. That, at least, is one implication of a fable by Aesop (c. 600 B.C., with many later attributions, of which this tale is one) that again casts a parrot in the role of household servant, having to deal with the inevitable politics of the workplace:

      A man who had bought a parrot let it fly freely in his house. The parrot, who was tame, jumped up and perched in the hearth, and from there began to cackle in a pleasant way. A house-ferret, seeing him there, asked him who he was and from whence he came. He replied:

      “The Master went out to buy me.”

      The house-ferret replied:

      “And you dare, most shameless creature—newcomer!—to make such sounds, whereas I, who was born in this house, am forbidden by the Master to cry out, and if sometimes I do, he beats me and throws me out of the door.”

      The parrot replied:

      “Oh, go for a long walk [i.e., get lost]! There is no comparison to be made between us. My voice doesn’t irritate the Master as yours does.”

      This fable concerns all malevolent critics who are always ready to throw the blame on to others. (355)

      Figure 1. A wall painting from Roman North Africa, depicting a parrot with cherries

      And for the most part, parrots seem to have pleased the ancient Greeks and Romans surpassingly, so much so that one classicist has claimed “there was a fashionable cult of parrots in Imperial Rome” (Douglas 90). No doubt the birds were popular, and not just for their voices. They seem to have been a standard feature of public ceremonies, along with “white blackbirds, and other unusual things of that sort” (Varro 3.9.17). Pliny records that a talking raven received a public funeral in Rome in A.D. 36 (Natural History 10.122–123); no such accounts of public parrot funerals survive, but the raven’s example suggests their possibility. And the stunning appearance of parrots made them a standard subject of pictorial representation, so that they begin to turn up regularly in the ancient visual arts. Often they appear simply as eye candy, as in a wall painting from El-Djem in Tunisia that depicts a parrot on a tree branch, reaching forward with its beak to grasp a cluster of cherries (Figure 1). In like spirit, a mosaic from Naples shows two parrots and a dove perched on a bowl of water, being eyed covetously from below by a cat; among his other fantasies, Pliny believed that parrots and doves enjoyed a special friendship (Pliny 10.207).

      But elsewhere, painters and artisans encourage the association of parrots with India and its mythic wonders, which they transform in the process into a species of household ornament. The silver-gilt Dish of Lampsacus, for instance, is decorated with an elaborate relief depicting at its center an enthroned female figure whose headdress and clothing identify it as India personified (Toynbee 59–60). Surrounding this figure is a variety of exotic fauna, including apes, leopards, and, immediately to the left of the figure, a parrot. The result is an allegorical grouping in which the beasts of India serve as attendants upon a queen or goddess representing the region as a whole. As a luxury item, the dish embodies a desire to possess the exotic, even if only at second hand, and to turn it into domestic property.

      Figure 2. Detail of the Dionysus Mosaic from Cologne, showing two parrots harnessed to a miniature cart (courtesy of the Romisch-Germanisches Museum, Cologne)

      Then again, there is the so-called Dionysus