Beast

Sources : Cinnamologus

Herodotus [c. 484 – c. 425 BCE] (Histories, Book 3.111) As for cinnamon, they gather it in a fashion even stranger. Where it grows and what kind of land nurtures it they cannot say, save that it is reported, reasonably enough, to grow in the places where Dionysus was reared. There are great birds, it is said, that take these sticks which the Phoenicians have taught us to call cinnamon, and carry them off to nests built of mud on the mountain crags, where no man can approach. The Arabian device for defeating the birds is to cut into very large pieces dead oxen and asses and other beasts of burden, then to set these near the eyries, withdrawing themselves far off. The birds then fly down (it is said) and carry the morsels of the beasts up to their nests; which not being able to bear the weight break and fall down the mountain side; and then the Arabians come up and gather what they seek. Thus is cinnamon said to be gathered, and so to come to Arabia from other lands. - [Godley translation]

Aristotle [ca. 350 BCE] (De animalibus Book 8, chapter 14.2): And the natives of those places say that there is a cinnamon bird, and that they bring the cinnamon from the same places as the bird, and that it makes its nest of it. It builds its nest in lofty trees and among their branches, but the natives of the country tip their arrows with lead, with which they destroy the nests, and then pick out the cinnamon from the other material. - [Cresswell translation, 1887]

Pliny the Elder [1st century CE] (Natural History, Book 10, 50): In Arabia a bird called cinnamologus makes a nest of cinnamon twigs; the natives bring these birds down with arrows weighted with lead, to use them for trade. - [Rackham translation]

Aelianus [170-230 CE] (On the Characteristics of Animals, Book 17, chapter 21): I have heard that the Cinnamomus is a bird; also that it fetches twigs of the tree that bears its name from the ends of the earth and builds nests in places which our historians, Herodotus and others, describe. And these birds seem to like constructing their couches and lodgings among sheer crags. Accordingly, those who are anxious to obtain these twigs shoot heavy arrows, that go with a tremendous whizz from a bowstring strained to the utmost, at the nests. And the nests are shattered and the twigs come tumbling down, and they are the celebrated Cinnamon. - [Scholfield translation]

Gaius Julius Solinus [3rd century CE] (De mirabilibus mundi / Polyhistor, Chapter 33.15): The cinnamologus is likewise a bird of Arabia. It weaves its nest from cinnamon fruits in the highest trees. Since the nests are inaccessible, owing to the height and fragility of the branches, the inhabitants aim at the heaps with leaden darts. They sell what they pull down for high prices, because merchants esteem this cinnamon more than others. - [Arwen Apps translation, 2011]

Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 7:23): The cinnamologus is also a bird of Arabia, called thus because in tall trees it constructs nests out of cinnamon [cinnamum] shrubs, and since humans are unable to climb up there due to the height and fragility of the branches, they go after the nests using lead-weighted missiles. Thus they dislodge these cinnamon nests and sell them at very high prices, for merchants value cinnamon more than other spices. - [Barney, Lewis, et. al. translation]

Thomas of Cantimpré [circa 1200-1272 CE] (Liber de natura rerum, Birds 5.25): The cynamologus, as Solinus says, is a bird in Arabia, which builds its nest in the highest trees, with a spherical and narrow entrance - as Aristotle says – from the fruits of cinnamon trees. At the nest of which, since it is not easy to reach because of the height and fragility of the branches, they shoot down the precious accumulations of cinnamon with leaded arrows from the ground. - [Badke translation/paraphrase]