THE PASTORAL BEES. 87 
in the Seventh Idyl — and comparisons in which 
comb-honey is the standard of the most delectable of 
this world’s goods. His goatherds can think of no 
greater bliss than that the mouth be filled with honey- 
combs, or to be inclosed in a chest like Daphnis and 
fed on the combs of bees; and among the delectables 
with which Arsinoé cherishes Adonis are “honey- 
cakes,” and other tid-bits made of “sweet honey.” In 
the country of Theocritus this custom is said still to 
prevail: when a couple are married the attendants 
place honey in their mouths, by which they would sym- 
bolize the hope that their love may be as sweet to 
their souls as honey to the palate. 
It was fabled that Homer was suckled by a priestess 
whose breasts distilled honey; and that once when 
Pindar lay asleep the bees dropped honey upon his lips. 
In the Old Testament the food of the promised Im- 
manuel was to be butter and honey (there is much 
doubt about the butter in the original), that he might 
know good from evil; and Jonathan’s eyes were en- 
lightened, by partaking of some wood or wild honey : 
“See, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlight- 
ened, because I tasted a little of this honey.” So far 
as this part of his diet was concerned, therefore, John 
the Baptist, during his sojourn in the wilderness, his 
divinity school-days in the mountains and plains of 
Judea, fared extremely well. About the other part, 
the locusts, or, not to put too fine a point on it, the 
grasshoppers, as much cannot be said, though they 
were among the creeping and leaping things the chil- 
dren of Israel were permitted to eat. They were prob- 
ably not eaten raw, but roasted in that most primitive 
of ovens, a hole in the ground made hot by building 
a fire in it. The locusts and honey may have been 
