Reach’d to the ground of the extensive earth,
And golden knobs on them like grasshoppers.
The sound of the Cicada and that of the harp were called by the Greeks by one and the same name; and a Cicada sitting upon a harp was the usual emblem of the science of music. This was accounted for by the following very pleasing and elegant tale: Two rival musicians, Eunomis of Locris and Aristo of Rhegium, when alternately playing upon the harp, the former was so unfortunate as to break a string of his instrument, and by which accident would certainly have lost the prize, when a Cicada, flying to him and sitting upon his harp, supplied the place of the broken string with its melodious voice, and so secured to him an easy victory over his antagonist.[872]
To excel the Cicada in singing was the highest commendation of a singer, and the music of Plato’s eloquence was only comparable to the voice of this insect. Homer compared his good orators to the Cicadæ, “which, in the woods, sitting on a tree, send forth a delicate voice.”[873] But Virgil speaks of them as insects of a disagreeable and stridulous tone, and accuses them of bursting the very shrubs with their noise,—
Et cantu querulæ rumpent arbusta Cicadæ.[874]
Moufet says: “The Cicadæ, abounding in the end of spring,
do foretel a sickly year to come, not that they are the cause of putrefaction in themselves, but only shew plenty of putrid matter to be, when there is such store of them appear. Oftentimes their coming and singing doth portend the happy state of things: so also says Theocritus. Niphus saith that what year but few of them are to be seen, they presage dearness of victuals, and scarcity of all things else.…
“The Egyptians, by a Cicada painted, understood a priest and an holy man; the latter makers of hieroglyphics sometimes will have them to signifie musicians, sometimes pratlers or talkative companions, but very fondly. How ever the matter be, the Cicada hath sung very well of herself, in my judgement, in this following distich:
Although I am an insect very small,
Yet with great virtue am endow’d withall.”[875]