Birds were not only fates, from whose movements in flight omens were drawn, but also spirits of fertility.  When the childless Indian sage Mandapala of the Mahabharata was refused admittance to heaven until a son was born to him, he “pondered deeply” and “came to know that of all creatures birds alone were blest with fecundity”; so he became a bird.

It is of interest, therefore, to find the Etana eagle figuring as a symbol of royalty at Rome.  The deified Roman Emperor’s waxen image was burned on a pyre after his death, and an eagle was let loose from the great pile to carry his soul to heaven.[199] This custom was probably a relic of seasonal fire worship, which may have been introduced into Northern and Western Syria and Asia Minor by the mysterious Mitanni rulers, if it was not an archaic Babylonian custom[200] associated with fire-and-water magical ceremonies, represented in the British Isles by May-Day and Midsummer fire-and-water festivals.  Sandan, the mythical founder of Tarsus, was honoured each year at that city by burning a great bonfire, and he was identified with Hercules.  Probably he was a form of Moloch and Melkarth.[201] Doves were burned to Adonis.  The burning of straw figures, representing gods of fertility, on May-Day bonfires may have been a fertility rite, and perhaps explains the use of straw birth-girdles.

According to the commentators of the Koran, Nimrod, the Babylonian king, who cast victims in his annual bonfires at Cuthah, died on the eighth day of the Tammuz month, which, according to the Syrian calendar, fell on 13th July.[202] It is related that gnats entered Nimrod’s brain, causing the membrane to grow larger.  He suffered great pain, and to relieve it had his head beaten with a mallet.  Although he lived for several hundred years, like other agricultural patriarchs, including the Tammuz of Berosus, it is possible that he was ultimately sacrificed and burned.  The beating of Nimrod recalls the beating of the corn spirit of the agricultural legend utilized by Burns in his ballad of “John Barleycorn”, which gives a jocular account of widespread ancient customs that are not yet quite extinct even in Scotland:[203]

    They laid him down upon his back
      And cudgelled him full sore;
    They hung him up before a storm
      And turned him o’er and o’er.

    They filled up a darksome pit
      With water to the brim,
    They heaved in John Barleycorn—­
      There let him sink or swim.

    They wasted o’er a scorching flame
      The marrow of his bones,
    But the miller used him worst of all,
      For he crushed him between two stones.

Hercules, after performing many mythical exploits, had himself burned alive on the pyre which he built upon Mount Oeta, and was borne to Olympus amidst peals of thunder.