Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 16 (trans. Celoria) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) : "Among the people we call Pygmaioi (Pygmies) there was born a girl called Oinoe (Oenoe) who was of flawless beauty but she was graceless by nature and overweening. She cared not a rap for Artemis and Hera. She was married to one of the citizens, Nikodamos (Nicodamus), a good and sensible man, and gave birth to a child called Mopsos (Mopsus). And all the Pygmaioi, who loved to show kindliness, brought her many gifts to celebrate the birth of the child. But Hera found fault with Oinoe for not honouring her and turned her into a crane, elongated her neck, ordained that she should be a bird that flew high. She also caused war to arise between her and the Pygmaioi. Yearning for her child Mopsos, Oinoe flew over houses and would not go away. But all the Pygmaioi armed themselves and chased her away. Because of this there arose a state of war then as well as now between the Pygmaioi and the cranes."
Aelian, On Animals 15. 29 (trans. Scholfield) (Greek natural history C2nd A.D.) : "As to the race of Pygmaioi (Pygmies) I have heard that they are governed in a manner peculiar to themselves, and that in fact owing to the failure of the male line a certain woman became queen and ruled over the Pygmaioi; her name was Gerana, and the Pygmaioi worshipped her as a god, paying her honours too august for a human being. The result was, they say, that she became so puffed up in her mind that she held the goddesses of no account. It was especially Hera, Athena, Artemis, and Aphrodite that, she said, came nowhere near her in beauty. But she was not destined to escape the evil consequences of her diseased imagination. For in consequence of the anger of Hera she changed her original form into that of a most hideous bird and became the crane of today and wages war on the Pygmaioi because with their excessive honours they drove her to madness and to her destruction."
Ovid, Metamorphoses 6. 90 (trans. Melville) (Roman poet C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) : "The Pygmaea (Pygmy) matron's doom, her pitiable doom, when Juno [Hera] won the contest and transformed her to a crane and made her fight her folk, her kith and kin."
Were there any actual “Pygmy” ethnic groups that had beef with cranes or is this classic Ancient Greek racism?
