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In Greece and Italy: Venus

Loud and piteous are his cries; To Venus quick he runs, he flies! "Oh, mother! - I am wounded through - I die with pain - in sooth I do!

Stung by some little angry thing, Some serpent on a tiny wing - A bee it was - for once, I know I heard a rustic call it so."

Thus he spoke, and she the while Heard him with a soothing smile; Then said, "My infant, if so much Thou feel the little wild-bee's touch, How must the heart, oh, Cupid! be, The hapless heart that's stung by thee?"

In Lang's translation of the "Idyls of Theocritus" we have a similar story thus rendered :- "The thievish Love, - a cruel bee once stung him, as In Greece and Italy he was rifling honey from the hives, and pricked his fingertips all; then he was in pain, and blew upon his hand, and leaped, and stamped the ground. And then he showed his hurt to Aphrodite, and made much complaint, how that the bee is a tiny creature, and yet what wounds it deals! And his mother laughed out, and said, 'Art thou not even such a creature as the bees? - for tiny art thou, but what wounds thou dealest!"" There are frequent allusions to Cupid mischievously overturning a bee-hive, and Albert Dürer has given us a most delightful picture of this event, in which Venus appears coming to the rescue of the naughty child.

Moschus, in one of his idyls, causes Venus thus to describe the lost Cupid whom she is trying to find : "The child is most notable; thou couldst tell him among twenty together; his skin is not white, but flame colored; his eyes are keen and burning; an evil heart and a sweet tongue has he, for his speech and his mind are at variance. Like honey is his voice, but his heart of gall; all tameless is he, and deceitful, the truth is not in him, a wily brat, and cruel in his pastime."

Venus too received libations of honey, to which Empedocles thus refers : - "Venus was their only queen.

Her they propitiate and duly worship With pious images, with beauteous figures Skilfully carved; with fragrant incenses, And holy offerings of unmixed myrrh, And sweetly smelling frankincense; and many A pure libation of fresh golden honey They pour'd along the floor."

The word "honey or other words derived from it were used as terms of endearment by the ancients, very much as they are used by us to-day. We hear of a " puer mellitus " and a "puella mellita," the classical form of "Honey" so commonly used by our Southern negro when addressing children or beloved adults.

Cupid was also the honey-bird, or honey-bee. There were eyes as sweet as honey." 66 And the lover, quite in modern southern United States dialect, addressed his beloved as "my little honey," "my honied one."

Cities and districts were also frequently named from honey, as Melitonus in Pontus, Melitaia in Thessaly, Melita in Sicily, Meliteria in Cappadocia, Melitussa in Illyria, and Melissurgis in Macedonia. Melita was also the classical name of Malta.

Some kinds of honey possess an intoxicating quality when used fresh, as well as after being mixed with water and fermented to form the drink called mead, so popular among the Northern nations.