24 . : 
bus vero alias apes“), that they congregated about the king in 
large clusters, just as bees do (Florentinus) etc. Another de- 
velopment of the myth consisted in asserting that, while bees 
came from oxen exclusively, wasps originated from asses, drones 
from horses, hornets from mules (Servius, ad Virg. Georg. 4). 
Others again make the wasps come from horses etc. In such 
a confusion of undigested assertions it is often difficult to dis- 
cern what the authors believed in, and what they merely repea- 
ted from hearsay. The usual excuse for such statements is 
the word ,they say‘ (aiunt), which is repeated constantly. Here 
again, Redi makes merry about it (p. 64): ,Antigonus, Pliny, 
Plutarch, Nicander, Aelian und Archelaus, quoted by Varro, 
teach us that wasps originate from putrid horses. Virgil asserts 
this not only about the wasps, but also about hornets. Ovid 
(Met. XV, 368) is silent about the wasps, and mentions only 
the hornets: 
Pressus humo bellator equus crabonis origo est. 
Thomas Moufet says that the harder fiesh of horses pro- 
duces hornets, the softer, wasps. But the Greek commentators 
of Nicander attribute this faculty not to the flesh, but to the 
skin; the condition however is that the horse should have been 
bitten by a wolf! Georgius Pachymeres affirms that the wasps 
originate neither from the flesh, nor from the skin, but from the 
brain. Lando says that hornets originate from the brain of 
asses. But Servius Grammaticus, mixing up everything (scon- 
volgendo ogni cosa) says that from horses come the drones, 
from mules the hornets, and from asses the wasps. Olympio- 
dorus, Pliny, Cardanus, Porta assert that the ass produces 
drones and beetles, but not wasps, and Horus in the twenty 
third chapter of the second book on Hieroglyphics, speaks of 
wasps, issued from the flesh of crocodiles; on the contrary 
Antigonus, in the twenty third book of his Historiae mirabiles, 
pretends that the crocodile produces not wasps, but terrestrial 
scorpions ete.“ (Notices about all the authors mentioned by Redi 
in the preceding passages, will be found in the Suppl. X.) 
