58 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society Vol. X 



jarred his ears, as they did those of Vergil. So Hercules con- 

 demned to perpetual dumbness all the Cicadas which entered his 

 bailiwick. 



Turn back to the Iliad, not less than i,ooo B. C. : "Just as the 

 scorched grasshopper flees from the burning field." This word, 

 Acris, means sharp, angular, spindling. Once upon a time 

 Aurora herself fell in love with with a handsome mortal, by name 

 Tithonus. Then at her prayer did Zeus himself bestow upon 

 him immortality. But the chief of the great Gods laughed in 

 his sleeve. He purposely omitted the factor of immortal youth. 

 Mayhaps in his wisdom he realized that love tires of immortality. 

 Tithonus grew into the lean and slippered pantaloon whose skinny 

 thighs afforded a too apt simile. Kindly Zeus transformed him 

 into a grasshopper. Thus Acris is the metaphor for spindle 

 shanks, its femur the scrawny thigh of the wizened old man. 



Aristophanes has plenty to say about the ravages by the Acris 

 of the cultivated fields. That they were voracious eaters of 

 plant life was a familiar everyday fact. In return, however, the 

 Greeks made use of them. Fried grasshoppers were a standard 

 summertime dish, and they were pickled for the winter. John 

 the Baptist, living five years in the wilderness, subsisted on 

 Acris* and wild honey. The passage is almost wholly misunder- 

 stood. The anthrene, the wild bee, deposits only a morsel of 

 honey. As for the grasshopper, did you ever try to catch them 

 without a net? The idea is that John lived a life of such priva- 

 tion that the day was rare when he got a satisfactory dinner. 



Socrates, quoted by Plato, on the last day of his life says of 

 the Acris that no man has seen them eat. Before the Muses 

 were born, they were men who delighted so much in their own 

 singing that they forgot to eat and finally starved. The Muses 

 turned them all into grasshoppers. Thereafter they ate nothing 

 but the dew, serving the Muses, praising their song and bringing 

 to them information of the sweet singers among mortal humanity. 

 Apparently Socrates, than whom, the Delphic oracle declared, 



* Of all the attempts to explain the New Testament none is more lament- 

 able than that to interpret " locust " as the fruit of a leguminous tree 

 known as St. John's Bread. 



