On the Death of Satyrus

¹²⁹ Perchance you destroyed Icarus through some such teaching, because the youth, led on by your persuasion, imagined, it may be, that he had been a bird. By such means too have many old men been deceived so as to submit to grievous pain, having unhappily believed the fables about swans, and thought that they, while soothing their pain with mournful strains, would be able to transmute their gray hair into downy feathers.