PHENIX, in Antiquity, a famous bird, which is generally regarded by the moderns as fabulous. The ancients speak of this bird as single, or the only one of its kind. They describe it as of the size of an eagle, having its head finely crested with a beautiful plumage, its neck covered with feathers of a gold colour, and the rest of its body, except the tail, purple, and the eyes sparkling like stars. They hold that it lives five or six hundred years in the wilderness; that when thus advanced in age, it builds itself a pile of sweet wood and aromatic gums, which it fires with the wafting of its wings, and thus burns itself; and that from its ashes arises a worm, which in time grows up to be a phoenix. Hence the Phoenicians gave the name phœnix to the palm-tree, because, when burned down to the root, it rises again fairer than ever.