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In Greece and Italy: Nestor

Homer compares a great army to a swarm of bees, but his bees are the wild, rock-dwelling tribes, as in the second book of the "Iliad," where Nestor calls to arms the host: - "So spake he, and led the way forth from the council, and all the other sceptred chiefs rose with him and obeyed the shepherd of the host; and the people hastened to them. Even as when the tribes of thronging bees issue from some hollow rock, ever in fresh procession, and fly clustering among the flowers of spring, and some on this hand and some on that fly thick; even so from ships and huts before the low beach marched forth their many tribes by companies to the place of assembly."

In the first book of the "Iliad" honey is used by Homer in the poetical sense so often used by his successors, where he describes Nestor: - "Then in their midst rose up Nestor, pleasant of speech, the clear-voiced orator of the Pylians, he from whose tongue flowed discourse sweeter than honey."

In Greece and Italy Hesiod, some eight hundred years B. c., was well acquainted with hive-bees, understood the art of bee-keeping, and was fond of using the drone to point a moral. In his "Works and Days" we learn that - "Still on the sluggard hungry want attends; The scorn of man, the hate of Heaven impends; While he, averse from labor, drags his days, Yet greedy on the gains of others preys; E'en as the stingless drones devouring seize With glutted sloth the harvest of the bees."

Still more severe is another reference to the drones in which our poet casts a very unchivalrous lance at the fair sex. He tells us that Vulcan fashioned a maid of azure eyes at Jove's behest, because the All-Father, being angry with mankind for having received from Prometheus the heavenly fire, desired to do them an injury, and the greatest injury the mighty intellect of the great god could devise was to give them woman. This first woman, this maid of azure eyes, was of surpassing loveliness, and was adorned by Minerva herself. When she was presented, "On gods and men in that same moment seized The ravishment of wonder, when they saw The deep deceit, the inextricable snare.

From her the sex of tender woman springs :

Pernicious is the race: the woman tribe Dwell upon earth, a mighty bane to man:

No mates for wasting want, but luxury:

And as, within the close-roof'd hive, the drones, Co-operative in base and slothful works, Are pamper'd by the bees, these all the day, Till sinks the ruddy sun, haste on the wing, 'Their murmuring labors ply,' and still cement The white and waxen comb; those lurk within The close hive, gathering in their maw the fruit Of others' labors; such are womankind :

They, whom the Thunderer sent, a bane to men, Ill helpmates of intolerable toils."

This sad example has been followed by later writers. Æschylus, like Homer, used the bees in a simile of the army in his tragedy of "The Persians," where the chorus tells us, "For all the host that drive the steed, and that tramp along the plain, hath gone off like a swarm of bees, along with the leader of the army, having crossed the ocean promontory common to both continents, united to either side."

In a fragment of one of the unknown plays of Euripides preserved to us by Athenæus, we meet again the figure for eloquence used by Homer, - "E'en should the Phrygian God enrich my tongue With honeyed eloquence, such as erst did fall From Nestor's or Antenor's lips."