Home › In Greece and Italy › In Greece and Italy (It is to be noted that Greek)

In Greece and Italy (It is to be noted that Greek)

It is to be noted that Greek literature treats mainly of the product of the bee rather than, as in India, of the bee itself; although in Greek mythology, as will be seen, the bee also occupies an indispensable place.

The honey of Hymettus is the most famous honey in the world.

It is, as Burroughs says, the classical honey of antiquity - only sharing the honor with the honey of Hybla and of Mount Ida.

Mount Hymettus is in Attica, not far from Athens, and the splendor of that ancient capital was reflected upon the neighboring thyme-covered mountain, illuminating its golden-banded bees as they gathered storied honey for the poets.

It is not in Attic Hymettus, however, that the bees had their origin. That honor belongs to the neighboring island of Crete, where the race of bees is fabled to have been born in a cavern in a high and all but inaccessible wall of rock on Mount Ida.

These bees were born to a great end, no less a one than the nourishing of Zeus, the father of the gods.

Kronos devoured his children as soon as they were born - as he still does all the children of earth - and when Zeus came into the world his mother Rhea, desiring to save his life, hid him away from his unnatural father on the island of Crete, where in a holy grotto she bore him, and In Greece and Italy where the bees and the goat Amalthea shared the honor of acting as nurses to the young deity, feeding him on milk and honey.

The Cretans, famous makers of bronze weapons, in order to drown the cries of the infant god and prevent his discovery by a relentless father, instituted their renowned and noisy weapon-dance and performed it about him.

For centuries the birth of the father of the gods among the friendly Cretans was celebrated by the weapon-dance at the observance of the festivals of Zeus. Moreover, in a certain grotto on Mount Ida, for ages there dwelt a band of copper-colored and very fierce bees, that successfully defended their store of holy honey from the approach alike of men and gods.

Yearly, upon the birthday of Zeus, a great fire was to be seen flaming out of the grotto, and Zeus himself watched over the little nurses of his infancy, punishing all who ventured to intrude upon them.

It once happened that four venturesome spirits thought to defy the power of the god and possess themselves of the holy honey, and to this end clad themselves from head to foot in close-fitting bronze armor and proceeded to scale the rocky wall.

But they had reckoned without their Zeus. The armor fell asunder from their bodies, Zeus thundered and drew forth his lightning, but the Fates and Themis held him back, for it was not decreed that any should die - though the angry god turned the sacrilegious four into birds. It is said the bees received as reward from the grateful god the art of storing honey in waxen cells for winter use, the power to form a community governed by wise laws, and also the beautiful golden bands on their bodies, as a mark of special favor.

Zeus, in ancient works of art, is often represented as accompanied by bees, which usually are near him upon the horn of plenty.

The oak-tree, sacred to the father of the gods, is also related to the bees, and in a somewhat curious manner. Because the bees fed Zeus, the tree dedicated to him returns honey to them.

At certain seasons the leaves of the oak are covered with honey-dew, believed by the ancients, as we know, to be an ethereal downfall from heaven, and from this circumstance came the saying, "Zeus rains honey." Hesiod tells us, referring, doubtless, to swarms of bees living in hollow oaks : - "Nor scythe nor famine on the righteous prey; Feasts, strewn by earth, employ their easy day; The oak is on their hills; the topmost tree Bears the rich acorn, and the trunk the bee."

During the golden age, when all were happy and all had enough, honey was, as it still is, distilled from the leaves of plants, particularly from oaks, and was frequently noticed by the ancient writers. Ovid, in his "Metamorphoses," thus refers to that blessed time : - "With milk and nectar were the rivers filled, And Honey from green Holly-okes distilled."

Virgil, promising the return of the golden age at the birth of a certain youth, gives the following beautiful description of the earth at that fortunate time: - "The very cradle shall pour thee forth attractive flowers. The serpent also shall die; and the poison's fallacious plant shall die; the Assyrian spikenard shall grow in every soil. But soon as thou shalt be able to read the praises of heroes, and the achievements of thy sire, and to understand what virtue is, the field shall by degrees grow yellow with soft ears of corn; blushing grapes shall hang on the rude brambles, and hard oaks shall distil the dewy honey." In Greece and Italy Strabo in his travels seems to have discovered favored lands where the golden age still lingered, though it is to be feared a vivid imagination helped color the picture. He tells us, "Hyrcania is very fertile, and extensive, consisting for the most part of plains, and has considerable cities dispersed throughout it. ... "The following facts are narrated as indications of the fertility of the country. The vine produces a metretes of wine; the fig-tree sixty medimni of fruit; the corn grows from the seed which falls out of the stalk; bees make their hives in the trees, and honey drops from among the leaves. "This is the case also in the territory of Matiane in Media, and in the Sacasene, and Araxene of Armenia." The bees continued to find joy in the oaks even after the golden age had passed, and Virgil sings thus of an enticing spot, in his description of a poetical contest between the shepherds Thyrsis and Corydon : - "Here Mincius hath fringed the verdant banks with tender reed, and from the sacred oak swarms of bees resound." The story of the bees on Mount Ida is not the only account given of their origin, for it is said that Melissa, a very beautiful woman, was transformed into a bee by Zeus, and that from her the bees received their classical name of Melissa.

Euhemerus, according to Columella, says that bees were bred from hornets and the sun, and were educated by certain nymphs to become nurses of the young Zeus, and that later the god gave them power to collect and store up for themselves the same food they had provided for him in his infancy. Still others say that Amalthea and Melissa were the two daughters of Melisseus, king of Crete, and that they took care of the young god, feeding him upon goat's-milk and honey.

Others again deny to Crete the honor of having produced the bees at all, and say they came forth in Thessaly, or on Mount Hymettus itself.

Nymphs and bees were very closely related, - nymphs, in fact, being but transformed bees; and we sometimes find the bees under their protection, as is told in the "Odyssey" in a description of a port in Ithaca: - "An olive tree With spreading branches at the farther end Of that fair haven stands, and overbrows A pleasant shady grotto of the nymphs Called Naiads. Cups and jars of stone are ranged Within, and bees lay up their honey there."

As in Hindu mythology, so in that of Greece and Italy, we find the bee intimately connected with the creative force in nature.