HEMIPTERA. 103 
the Cicada: he saw in it nothing better than a hoarse and dis- 
agreeable sound :— 
** At mecum raucis, tua dum vestigia lustro, 
Sole sub ardenti resonant arbusta cicadis,”’ 
says the Latin poet in his “ Eclogues,” and repeats the same opinion 
in a verse in his ‘‘ Georgics : ”— 
“ Kt cantu querule rumpent arbusta cicadze.”’ 
The song of the Cicada, so sharp, so discordant, was, however, 
the delight of the Greeks. 
Listen to Plato in the first lines of “ Phedo:” “By Juno,” 
eries the philosopher-poet, ‘‘what a charming place for repose! 
. .. . It might well be consecrated to some nymphs and to the 
river Achelous, to judge by these figures and statues. Taste a 
little the good air one breathes. How charming, how sweet! 
One hears as a summer noise, an harmonious murmur accompany- 
ing the chorus of the Cicada.” 
The Greeks then had quite a peculiar taste for the song of the 
Cicada. They liked to hear its screeching notes, sharp as a point 
of steel. To enjoy it quite at their ease, they shut them up 
in open wicker-work cages, pretty much in the same way 
as children shut up the cricket; so as to hear its joyous cri-cri. 
They carried their love for this insect with the screaming voice so 
far as to make it the symbol of music. We see, in drawings emblem- 
atical of the musical art, a Cicada resting on strings of a cythera. 
A Grecian legend relates that one day two cythera players, 
Hunomos and Aristo, contending on this sonorous instrument, 
one of the strings of the former’s cythera having broken, a Cicada 
settled on it, and sang so well in place of the broken cord, that 
Hunomos gained the victory, thanks to this unexpected assistant. 
Anacreon composed an ode in honour of the Cicada. ‘‘ Happy 
Cicada, that on the highest branches of the trees, having drank 
a little dew, singest like a queen! ‘Thy realm is all thou seest 
in the fields, all which grows in the forests. Thou art beloved by 
the labourer ; no one harms thee; the mortals respect thee as the 
sweet harbinger of summer. Thou art: cherished by the muses, 
cherished by Pheebus himself, who has given thee thy harmonious 
song. Old age does not oppress thee. O good little animal, 
sprung from the bosom of the earth, loving song, free from suffer- 
