IN THE TIME OF VIRGIL 167 



APICULTURE IX THE TIME OF VIRGIL 



By GEORGIA WILLIS READ 



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THE science of apiculture, as it is understood to-day, is the slow 

 growth of centuries of human observation and investigation. For 

 unnumbered ages it has been a work of interest to man to reclaim these 

 singularly untamable insects from the state ferce naturce to that domitce 

 natures, as the legal phrase has it — to render their natures sufficiently 

 tractable to enable man to appropriate to himself the benefits of their 

 toil. Though bees have responded to the process of domestication less 

 readily than almost any other of the forms of wild life which man has 

 subjected to his control — since even to-day, after thousands of years 

 of cultivation, they slip back easily and completely into their aboriginal 

 state when opportunity offers — man's efforts to this end have been un- 

 remitting, his interest in this task has never flagged. Who knows but 

 that the missing link or an even more remote progenitor sacked the city 

 of the bees for its rich spoil, and handed down to man the instinct for 

 this conquest ? Always within the memory of man, at any rate, as the 

 ancient Romans used the phrase, meaning thereby always within the 

 bounds of tradition, honey has been esteemed as a delicacy for the 

 table, and as a valuable condiment in wine-making. The ancient Egyp- 

 tians, whose very cities have long since crumbled to dust, prized their 

 swarms of bees, which they kept in earthenware vases much as the 

 natives of Africa and Asia do to-day ; while it is by no means uncommon 

 to find in histories of ancient races mention of honey as a dainty and a 

 thing of price. 



By the time that Virgil wrote his rambling treatise on bees, on their 

 characteristics and their manners, their habits and their needs, api- 

 culture was recognized as an important branch of husbandry. In 

 Virgil's estimation it ranked apparently with the more universal inter- 

 ests of agriculture, the raising of crops and the care of cattle, since 

 of the four books that he wrote on this group of subjects, one is entirely 

 devoted to the culture of bees. In it he gives with patient, painstaking 

 care, a complete guide to practical beekeeping as it was understood in 

 those days, and adds, one can not help thinking for his own pleasure 

 primarily, countless charming apicultural fancies and fables which he 

 had heard. Though the theories as to the life and habits of bees which 

 were held by the most intelligent men of that age, bear no stamp of that 

 absolute and unimpeachable precision which exact science imparts to 

 any subject, one can but marvel at the frequent correctness of their 



