Tzitzikas

"The forests were cleared to afford a prospect for observing whence came the auspices of the eagles, who fly higher than all other birds," writes Vico in New Science. He notes the architectural terminology that connects birds with pediments and battlements. Yet birds belong to the poetic age, "wings which the Greeks in their fables attached to all the physical objects signifying the heroic constitutions" along with barbarians in plumed helmets and Indians adorned with feathers. I don't remember whose idea it was as I come from a rather cycnical family, but I remember releasing my own birds as a child at the Wat Pho Temple. There is something to the bird.
And insects. It has been pointed out that both Callimachus in his Aitia prologue and Plato in the Phaedrus identify themselves with the cicada. In the latter work, Socrates and Phaedrus speak beneath a tree of cicadas (258e) Socrates posits are those who are older than the Muses (the musical Ligyans, λίγειαι Λιγύων 237a) and can bestow their wisdom from the Muses on men (259b-d). It is the listening to the music of the Muse-locusts that brings the gift of speaking. Except it is not any kind of listening: to merely be lulled by their voices they would fall asleep: to receive their message they must not be "moved by the charm of their Siren voices." (259a)
Both Callimachus and Plato invoke Calliope and strive to make the “sweetest” music, namely that of divine thought and philosophy. Those who are dear to and love the Muses are brought signs by them.
Imaginative Callimachus, too, discerns between sounds, not between being lulled and listening, but between the bray of the ass and song of cicada, for he wants to: "Sing living on dew drops, free sustenance from divine air" - like Plato's locust intermediaries who report on those "concerned with heaven ... whose music is sweetest". Passing their lives in philosophy (or song like C.).
This is a timeless answer to Vico's 3 ages, which may be the myth for the modern man: no monsters, but a new rewriting of history with more literal metaphors that the scientific man can understand. Myths are discarded as childish. Martial criticises Callimachus, "Here you will not find Centaurs nor Gorgons and Harpies ... But you, Mamurra ... you should read the Aitia of Callimachus." As Martial thought Callimachus the best Greek epigrammatist, he was really arguing for Mamurra to focus on things that may be seen in Rome: instead of thinking of the monsters of myth, observe the monsters that may be seen walking the city streets. Martial's dedications to the gods change with this shift in literary mode. The modern myth must draw from the streets. Or, man becomes his own myth in an allegory teaching moderation and measure. "And here we  have a luminous proof of the fact that the first fables were histories"




To see how man can become his own myth, we may note how Socrates retells the story of the λίγειαι, the Muse-locusts: "these locusts were once men, before the birth of the Muses, and when the Muses were born and song appeared, some of the men were so overcome with delight [259c] that they sang ... forgetting food and drink, until at last unconsciously they died. From them the locust tribe afterwards arose, and they have this gift from the Muses, that from the time of their birth they need no sustenance, but sing continually, without food or drink, until they die" - just like Callimachus' "sing living on dew drops".
But another story could be told. That of half the Ligyans standing aside during battle and singing. Or the Ligurian who helped Marius. What is the point of the story? The end, as Gadamer has shown about history, determines the beginning we perceive - and what we perceive, how we tell it.
By extension, flying, singing creatures, crickets, may be part fulfillment of New Science if they point to the golden mean.
In ancient Greece, crickets were kept "in little houses like singing birds in the apartments of women" for their song; it was fashionable to wear a golden cricket in the hair. Socrates connects them to the Ligyan-muses - but the Swan is connected to the people of Ligya, too, having brought from there "its dying song which was afterwards derided as a fable to the well  known seats of the god ... and at Delphi". There is something to the bird. And insects.
The poetry of the cicada may be kept, if we are not lulled to sleep by it. Just like Vico warns that, "Learned fools[fall] to ... false eloquence, ready to uphold either ... sides of a case indifferently ... malicious wits [turn] them into beasts made ... inhuman by the barbarism of reflection ... a base savagery, under soft words and embraces, plots against the life and fortune of friends". This calls to mind Dalrymple's contemporary observations that moral relativism can be the deception of an egotistical mind to mute conscience, and that the entitlement of rights replace the far deeper attitude of gratitude and mutual responsibility. Tzitzikas - the more difficult thing. To make sacrifices: staying awake on hot afternoons, hearing the conscience, being moved by the indebtment to others. Making the "sweetest" music administered to the needs of the day.



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