swan song

The swan song is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement. The phrase refers to an ancient belief that swans sing a beautiful song just before their death since they have been silent (or alternatively not so musical) for most of their lifetime. The belief, whose basis has been long debated, had become proverbial in ancient Greece by the 3rd century BC and was reiterated many times in later Western poetry and art. Swans learn a variety of sounds throughout their lifetime. Their sounds are more distinguishable during courting rituals and not correlated with death. Origin and description In Greek mythology, the swan was a bird consecrated to Apollo, and it was therefore considered a symbol of harmony and beauty and its limited capabilities as a singer were sublimated to those of songbirds. Aesop's fable of "The Swan and the Goose" incorporates the swan song legend as saving its life when it was caught by mistake instead of the goose but was recognized by its song. There is a subsequent reference in Aeschylus' Agamemnon from 458 BCE. In that play, Clytemnestra compares the dead Cassandra to a swan who has "sung her last lament". In Plato's Phaedo, the character of Socrates says that, although swans sing in early life, they do not do so as beautifully as before they die. He adds that there is a popular belief that the swans' song is sorrowful, but Socrates prefers to think that they sing for joy, having "foreknowledge of the blessings in the other world". Aristotle noted in his History of Animals that swans "are musical, and sing chiefly at the approach of death". By the third century BC the belief had become a proverb. Ovid mentions the legend in "The Story of Picus and Canens": It is also possible that the swan song has some connection to the lament of Cycnus of Liguria at the death of his lover, Phaethon, the ambitious and headstrong son of Helios and Clymene. (The name Cycnus is the Latinised form of the Greek, which means "swan".) Hyginus proposes in his Fabulae that the mournful Cycnus, who is transformed into a swan by the gods, joins the dirge of the amber-crying poplars, the Heliades, the half-sisters of the dead Phaethon, who also experienced a metamorphosis at the death of the reckless Phaethon.