Observe her labors, sluggard! and be wise.
No stern command, no monitory voice,
Prescribes her duties or directs her choice;
Yet timely provident she hastes away,
To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day;
When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain,
She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain.[507]
There is an old Eastern proverb, that “what the Ant collects in a year the monks eat up in a night,” which seems to be founded on the supposition that the Ants provide themselves with stores of food. Juvenal, also, observes, in his Sixth Satire, that “after the example of the Ant, some have learned to provide against cold and hunger.”[508]
“Since, therefore,” says Moufet, “(to winde up all in a few words) they (the Ants) are so exemplary for their great piety, prudence, justice, valour, temperance, modesty, charity, friendship, frugality, perseverance, industry and art; it is no wonder that Plato, in Phædone, hath determined, that they who without the help of philosophy have lead a civill life by custom or from their own diligence, they had their souls from Ants, and when they die they are turned to Ants again. To this may be added the fable of the Myrmidons, who being a people of Ægina, applied themselves to diligent labour in tilling the ground, continual digging, hard toiling, and constant
sparing, joyned with virtue, and they grew thereby so rich, that they passed the common condition and ingenuity of men, and Theogonis knew not how to compare them better than to Pismires, that they were originally descended from them, or were transformed into them, and as Strabo reports they were therefore called Myrmidons. The Greeks relate the history otherwise than other men do; namely, that Jupiter was changed into a Pismire, and so deflowered Eurymedusa, the mother of the Graces, as if he could no otherwise deceive the best woman, then in the shape of the best creature. Hence ever after was he called Pismire Jupiter, or, Jupiter, King of Pismires.…