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In classical times, the source of cinnamon was unknown to its occidental consumers. According to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, the Arabs:
“… say that large birds carry those dried sticks which we have learnt from the Phoenicians to call cinnamon… to nests which are made of clay and stuck on to precipitous sides of mountains, which man can find no means of scaling… they divide up the limbs of the oxen and asses that die and of their other beasts of burden, into pieces as large as convenient, and convey them to these places, and when they have laid them down not far from the nests, they withdraw to a distance from them: and the birds fly down and carry the limbs of the beasts of burden off to their nests; and these are not able to bear them, but break down and fall to the earth; and the men come up to them and collect the cinnamon.”
Similar legends about the source of the spice occurred throughout history. The 1st century Roman writer Pliny the Elder repeated this story, with some scepticism, adding that the Phoenix was said to be the main bird to collect cinnamon twigs, and that arrows loaded with lead were used to bring down the nests. However doubtful, he nevertheless reiterated this fable in his section on birds, saying that the Arabian bird was the “cinnamologus”, which we know to be entirely fabulous. This story continued to be copied until the 13th century.
Regarding the source of cinnamon, Herodotus said “where it grows and what land produces it they are not able to tell, except only that some say (and it is a probable account) that it grows in those regions where Dionysos was brought up.”
According to the Greek myths, Dionysus was reared in India. Pliny thought it came from “Æthiopia” which, in the Hellenistic cosmology, stretched along the south of the Indian ocean.The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a rutter (navigational handbook) from the early first millennium, knew nothing of cinnamon in India, but mentions the Horn of Africa as being the source of cinnamon.
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