The Boys' and Girls' Pliny · the Elder Pliny
CHAPTER II. THE PHOENIX.
The same Manilius states also, that the revolution of the great year[166] is completed with the life of this bird, and that then a new cycle comes round again with the same characteristics as the former one, in the seasons and the appearance of the stars; and he says that this begins about mid-day of the day on which the sun enters the sign of Aries. He also tells us that when he wrote to the above effect, in the consulship of Licinius and Cornelius, it was the two hundred and fifteenth year of the said revolution. Cornelius Valerianus says that the phoenix took its flight from Arabia into Egypt in the consulship of Plautius and Papinius. This bird was brought to Rome in the censorship of the Emperor Claudius, being the eight hundredth year from the building of the City, and it was exposed to public view in the Comitium. This fact is attested by the public Annals, but there is no one who supposes that it was a genuine phoenix.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.