In Greece and Italy 297 



In another vein the poet with a gleam of fun causes 

 the herdsman who has been rejected and ridiculed by a 

 city damsel thus to describe himself when indignantly tell- 

 ing his story to his mates ; — 



" Shepherds, tell me the very truth ; am I not beautiful? 

 Mine eyes were brighter far than the glance of the gray- 

 eyed Athene, my mouth than even pressed milk was 

 sweeter, and from my lips my voice flowed sweeter than 

 honey from the honeycomb." 



In his lament for the poet Bion, Moschus sings, — 



" Thy sudden doom, O Bion, Apollo himself lamented, 

 and the Satyrs mourned thee, and the Priapi in sable 

 raiment, and the Panes sorrow for thy song, and the 

 fountain fairies in the wood made moan, and their tears 

 turned to rivers of waters, and Echo in the rocks laments 

 that thou art silent, and no more she mimics thy voice. 

 And in sorrow for thy fall the trees cast down their fruit 

 and all the flowers have faded. From the ewes have 

 flowed no fair milk, nor honey from the hives, nay, it hath 

 perished for mere sorrow in the wax, for now hath thy 

 honey perished, and no more it behoves men to gather the 

 honey of the bees. 



" Begin., ye Sicilian Muses, begin the dirge.'" 



Besides the poets' use of the bees we have the more 

 serious writers constantly employing them as emblems of 

 a well-governed state and as symbols of colonization and 

 of social and domestic economy, while the poor drones are 

 everywhere anathematized and held up as examples of all 

 that is pernicious in a community. 



Plato, in his great work, " The Republic," has given to 

 bees an important place in illustrating the needs and 

 ordering of a state, and in one place, in speaking of how the 

 minds of youth are affected by what they hear of vice and 

 virtue, he uses a simile very common in all ages ; he says : 



