Pliny says, that “if a woman having a catamenia strips herself naked, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin, will fall off the ears of the grain!” This important discovery, according to Metrodurus of Scepsos, was first made in Cappadocia; where, in consequence of such multitudes of “Cantharides” being found to breed there, it was the practice for women to walk through the middle of the fields with their garments tucked up above the thighs.[843] Columella[844] has described this practice in verse, and Ælian[845] also mentions it. Pliny says further that in other places, again, it is the usage of women to go barefoot, with the hair disheveled and the girdle loose: due precaution, however, he seriously observes, must be taken that this is not done at sunrise, for if so the crop will wither and dry up.[846] Apuleius,[847] Columella,[848] and Palladius[849] relate the same story. Constantinus, likewise, whose verses, as translated in Moufet’s Theater of Insects, are as follows:
But if against this plague no art prevail,
The Trojan arts will do’t, when others fail.
A woman barefoot with her hair untied,
And naked breasts must walk as if she cried,
And after Venus’ sports she must surround
Ten times, the garden beds and orchard ground.
When she hath done, ’tis wonderful to see,
The caterpillars fall off from the tree,
As fast as drops of rain, when with a crook,