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In Greece and Italy: Bion

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: "Those of them, I mean, who are quick-witted, and, like bees on the wing, light on every flower, and out of all they hear, gather inferences as to the character and way of life which are best for them."

Plutarch, in his "Life of Lycurgus," has the following: "Upon the whole, he taught his citizens to think nothing more disagreeable than to live by or for themselves. Like bees, they acted with one impulse for the public good, and always assembled about their prince."

And again, explaining how Greece was kept in voluntary obedience by her rulers, he says: "Thus bees, when their prince appears, compose their quarrels, and unite in one swarm."