The Portuguese found such prodigious numbers of Ants upon their first landing at Brazil, that they called them Rey de Brazil, King of Brazil, a name which they now there bear.[581]
Mr. Southey states, on the authority of Manoel Felix, that the Red-ants devoured the cloths of the altar in the Convent of S. Antonio, or S. Luiz (Maranham, Brazil), and also brought up into the church pieces of shrouds from the graves; whereupon the friars prosecuted them according to
due form of ecclesiastical law. What the sentence was in this case, we are unable to learn. A similar case, however, the historian informs us, had occurred in the Franciscan Convent at Avignon, where the Ants did so much mischief that a suit was instituted against them, and they were excommunicated, and ordered by the friars, in pursuance of their sentence, to remove within three days to a place assigned them in the center of the earth. The Canonical account gravely adds, that the Ants obeyed, and carried away all their young, and all their stores.[582]
Annius writes, that an ancient city situate near the Volscian Lake, and called Contenebra, was in times past overthrown by Ants, and that the place was thereupon commonly called to his day, “the camp of the Ants.”[583]
Ctesias makes mention “of a horse-pismire (i.e. the bigger kind of them in hollow trees) which was fed by the Magi, till hee grew to such a vast bulke as to devour two pound of flesh a daye.”[584]
Martial has written the following beautiful epigram on an Ant inclosed in amber: “While an Ant was wandering under the shade of the tree of Phaeton, a drop of amber enveloped the tiny insect; thus she, who in life was disregarded, became precious by death.
“A drop of amber from the weeping plant,
Fell unexpected and embalmed an Ant;
The little insect we so much contemn
Is, from a worthless Ant, become a gem.”[585]