BOOK IX. II. 1-3 



ornately than by Vergil, or more elegantly than by 

 Celsus.* Hyginus has industriously collected the 

 opinions of ancient authors dispersed in their 

 different writings ; Vergil has embellished the subject 

 with the flowers of poetry ; and Celsus has applied 

 the method of both the above-mentioned authors. 2 

 Therefore, we ought never to have even attempted to 

 discourse on this subject, did not the fulfilment of 

 the promise which we made call for the treatment of 

 this part of our subject also, lest the body of the 

 work begun, looked at as a whole, should appear 

 mutilated and imperfect, as if a limb had been cut off. 

 The tradition of the fabulous origin of the bees which 

 Hyginus has not passed over I would rather attribute 

 to poetic licence than submit to the test of our belief; 

 nor indeed is it a fit question for a husbandman to 3 

 ask whether there ever existed a woman of surpassing 

 beauty called Melissa, whom Jupiter changed into a 

 bee, or whether (as Euhemerus ^ the poet says) the 

 bees were bred from hornets and the sun, and that the 

 nymphs, the daughters of Phryxon,'' reared them, 

 and that soon after they became the nurses of Jupiter 

 in the Dictaean Cave <^ and that, by the gift of the 

 god, they had allotted to them the food with which 

 they themselves had reared their little foster-child. 

 Upon this story, though not unworthy of a poet, 

 Vergil touched briefly and lightly in a single line when 

 he said : 



'Neath Dicte's cave they fed the king of heaven.^ 



^ A Greek writer who flourished about 300 B.C. and wrote 

 a work Hiera Anagraphe, which rationalized mythology and 

 which was translated into Latin by Ennius. 



' This name is not otherwise mentioned in Latin literature. 



<* In Crete. « Georg. IV. 152. Dicta is Mount Sethia in Crete. 



429 



