In Hoole's translation of the "Orlando Furioso" of Ariosto we have both the mystic bird and its very indefinite home thus referred to:--
"Arabia, named the Happy, now he gains; Incense and myrrh perfume her grateful plains; The Virgin Phoenix there in seek of rest, Selects from all the world her balmy nest."
We get the same idea again in Fletcher's poem of "The Purple Island":--
"So that love bird in fruitful Arabie, When now her strength and waning life decays, Upon some airy rock or mountain high, In spicy bed (fix'd by near Phoebus' rays), Herself and all her crooked age consumes. Straight from her ashes and those rich perfumes, A new-born phoenix flies, and widow'd place resumes."
These two extracts speak respectively of the virgin and widowed phoenix. The latter idea can scarcely be correct; widowhood implies the loss of a mate, and the phoenix, we are told, is unique and alone in the world. Pliny and Ovid use the masculine pronoun. The former writer's account of him, her, or it will be found in the second chapter of his tenth book, and runs as follows:--"It is reported that never man was knowne to see him feeding; that in Arabie hee is held a sacred bird, dedicated unto the Sunne; that he liveth six hundred years, and when he groweth old and begins to decay, he builds himselfe a nest with the twigs and branches of the cannell or cinnamon and frankincense trees; and when he hath filled it with all sort of sweet aromiticall spices, yieldeth up his life thereupon. He saith, moreover, that of his bones and marrow there breedeth at first, as it were, a little worme, which afterwards proveth to bee a pretie bird. And the first thing that this young phoenix doth is to performe the obsequies of the former phoenix late deceased; to translate and carie away his whole nest into the citie of the Sunne, near Panchæ, and to bestow it there full devoutly upon the altar."
It was one of the venerable jokes of our fathers that a man hearing that a goose would live one hundred years, determined to buy one and see whether this really was so; but this simple plan does not seem to have occurred to any of the ancients, for while Herodotus affirms that the phoenix lives five hundred years, Pliny as plumply and roundly asserts as a matter beyond doubt or contradiction that it is six hundred. Another authority, more precise, though perhaps not more accurate, brings it, we see, to just one thousand four hundred and sixty one, the odd unit giving a delightful appearance of extreme accuracy and precision that seems to challenge one to gainsay it if he dare.