Curious Facts in the History of Insects; Including Spiders and Scorpions. / A Complete Collection of the Legends, Superstitions, Beliefs, and Ominous Signs Connected with Insects; Together with Their Uses in Medicine, Art, and as Food; and a Summary of Their Remarkable Injuries and Appearances.

by Frank Cowan

Thou alone art ever young.

Thine the pure immortal vein,

Blood nor flesh thy life sustain;

Rich in spirits—health thy feast,

Thou art a demi-god at least.

But the old witticism, attributed to the incorrigible Rhodian sensualist, Xenarchus, gives quite a different reason to account for the supposed happiness of these insects:

Happy the Cicadas’ lives,

Since they all have voiceless wives![865]

Plutarch, reasoning upon that singular Pythagorean precept which forbid the wife to admit swallows in the house, remarks: “Consider, and see whether the swallow be not odious and impious … because she feedeth upon flesh, and, besides, killeth and devoureth especially grasshoppers (Cicadas), which are sacred and musical.”[866]

The Athenians were so attached to the Cicadas, that their elders were accustomed to fasten golden images of them in their hair. Thucidides incidentally remarks that this custom ceased but a little before his time. He adds, also, that the fashion prevailed, too, for a long time with the elders of the Ionians, from their affinity to the Athenians.[867]