THE VIOLET AND ITS PEOPRIETOES. 307 



dered with black points, will become a fawn-coloured moth, 

 spotted with black, with a few silver eyes, and is called 

 Adippe.* 



These are the guests, the inhabitants, and the masters of 

 the violet. 



In vain the Athenians consecrated it to themselves, and 

 engraved it on tablets everywhere in the city of Athens 

 with it : in vain, according to Aristophanes, the orators 

 flattered the people, by calling them Athenians crowned with 

 violets — an epithet which I can only compare to one which 

 Homer so frequently bestows upon the Greeks, calling them 

 at least twenty times in the course of the Iliad, 'Eu/cv^/utScs 

 'AxaioC, the well-greaved Greeks : in vain, in some cities of 

 Germany, this flower is still consecrated to the coffins of 

 virgins; — the insects we have just seen are the masters of 

 the violet before men, and only leave them as much of it as 

 they do not want. 



* Argynnia Adippe. — Ed, 



