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In Greece and Italy: Aristæus

Aristæus, the father of bee-culture, was the son of Apollo, and an offering was brought to Apollo as the god of the bees on the 24th of July.

In Greece and Italy Aristæus was born to Apollo by the river nymph Cyrene, and was initiated into the mysteries of bee-keeping by no less a one than Ceres herself. It was he who taught the art to mankind. - It was he, too, who discovered the method - said to have originated with the Egyptians - of procreating bees from dead cattle, thus replacing his lost swarms. Virgil tells the story of the renewal of Aristœus' bees in his fourth "Georgic."

Having lost them through disease and famine, Aristæus appealed to his mother Cyrene for aid, and visited her in her dwelling under the river Peneus.

She sent him to Proteus, of many forms, whose wisdom could only be evoked when, in spite of his quick transformations into frightful shapes, he had been captured and securely bound.

Aristæus subdued Proteus and learned, in consequence, that the loss of his bees was a punishment for an offence he had committed against Eurydice, unwittingly causing her death and arousing the vengeance of Orpheus and the wood nymphs.

When Aristæus returned with this information to Cyrene, she told him what he must do to regain his bees.

It is the old story, supposed to have come from Egypt, of the birth of bees from the carcass of a sacrificed bull. Virgil causes Cyrene thus to speak : - "Single out four choice bulls of beauteous form, which now graze for you on the tops of green Lycæus; and as many heifers whose necks are untouched by the yoke.

For these erect four altars at the lofty temples of the goddesses; from their throats emit the sacred blood, and leave the bodies of the cattle in the leafy grove. "Afterwards, when the ninth moon has displayed her rising beams, you may offer Lethæan poppies as the funeral rites to Orpheus, venerate appeased Eurydice with a slain calf, sacrifice a black ewe, and revisit the grove." Aristæus did all these things, and when the appointed time came revisited his sacrifices. "But here they beheld a sudden prodigy, and wonderful to relate; bees through all the belly hum amidst the decomposed bowels of the cattle, pour forth with the fermenting juices from the burst sides, and in immense clouds roll along; then swarm together on the top of a tree, and hang down in a cluster from the bending boughs."

The legends of Aristæus were spread far and wide through many countries, and the belief of the springing of bees from the carcass of a dead animal was also widespread; in later years it penetrated even to England and came over to America, so that at the present time there are those living who, if they do not believe the story, yet repeat it with a puzzled feeling as not quite daring wholly to discredit it. There is no doubt, as has been said, that the story is symbolical of the renewal of life upon earth, and of the springing of life from apparently dead matter, or the resurrection of the soul after death. The bee, symbolizing the spirit or soul of man which at death escapes from the body, was believed to be immortal. Virgil thus refers to the belief is the immortality of the bee: - "Some have alleged that a portion of the divine mind, and a heavenly emanation, may be discovered in bees; for that the Deity pervades the whole earth, the tracts of sea, and depth of heaven; that hence the flocks, the herds, men, and all the race of beasts, each at its birth, derive their slender lives. Accordingly, they affirm that all of them, when dissolved, return and are brought back thither here- In Greece and Italy after; nor is there any room for death; but that they mount up alive each into his proper order of star, and take their seat in the high heaven."