The Phœnix

The phoenix is a miraculous bird which, when it dies, rises from the ashes in a blazing fire. Again, it is a historian, Herodotus, who mentions in his work the Phoenix, which originated in Ethiopia. The boundary between the myths shared by the Greeks and the legends they heard from neighboring peoples is sometimes tenuous, colored with exoticism. Little wonder that works of fantasy populated their bestiary by drawing on various sources that are less firmly associated with the world of classical studies.