Black Swans
The phrase “Black Swan”’s earliest documented use is in Latin, from the 2nd-century Roman poet Juvenal’s characterization in his Satire VI of something being “rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno” (“a bird as rare upon the earth as a black swan”). When the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed by Romans not to exist. The English phrase “rare bird”, meaning an odd or exotic…












