1Y8 APID^ — BEES. 



themselves to the ancient possession and custody of their 

 master."^ 



By the Greeks, Bees were accounted an omen of future 

 eloquence ;'^ the soothsayers of the Romans, however, deemed 

 them always of evil augury.^ They afforded also to the 

 Romans presages of public interest, "clustering, as they 

 do, like a bunch of grapes, upon houses or temples; pres- 

 ages, in fact, that are often accounted for by great events."* 

 The instances of happy omens afforded by swarms of Bees 

 are the following : 



''It is said of Pindar," we read In Pausanias' History of 

 Greece, "that when he was a young man, as he was going 

 to Thespia, being wearied with the heat, as it was noon, and 

 in the height of summer, he fell asleep at a small distance 

 from the public road; and that Bees, as he was asleep, flew 

 to him and wrought their honey on his lips. This circum- 

 stance first induced Pindar to compose verses."^ 



A similar incident is mentioned in the life of Plato : 

 " Whilst Plaio was yet an infant carried in the arms of 

 his mother Ferictione, Aristo his father went to Hymettus 

 (a mountain in Attica eminent for abundance of Bees and 

 Honey) to sacrifice to the Muses or Nymphs, taking his 

 Wife and Child along with him; as they were busied in the 

 Divine Rites, she laid the Child in a Thicket of Myrtles hard 

 by; to whom, as he slept {in cunis dormienti) came a 

 Swarm of Bees, Artists of Hymettian Honey, flying and 

 buzzing about him, and (as it is reported) made a Honey- 

 comb in his mouth. This was taken for a presage of the 

 singular sweetness of his discourse; his future Eloquence 

 foreseen in his infancy."^ 



From Butler's Lives of the Saints we have the following : 



"The birth of St. Ambrose happened about the year 340 



B c, and whilst the child lay asleep in one of the courts of 



1 Qiiot. in Xotes and Queries, x. 499. 



2 Harwood, Grec. Antiq., p. 200. 



3 Pliny, Nat. Hist., is. 18 * Ibid. 



5 Pans. m.<!t. of Greece, B. ix c. xxiii. 3. 



6 Stanley's Hist, of F/ulos., Pt. V. c. ii. p. 157, Lond. 1701. Cf. 

 Pliny, Nat. Hist., xi. 18. 



Vide Pierius, Hierogh/ph., p. 261-5. Populus regi suo obseques; 

 Rex; Kegnum ; Grata oloquentia ; Pocticse aincenitas; Futuri seculi 

 beatitude; Dulcium appetitus; Diutin-ntie valetudiiiis i)r<)sperita8 ; 

 Slerctrix ; Exoticre discipliuie ; Prophetuvum oracula, etc. 



