XXXVI.
WHY WILL BEES SOONER STING THOSE WHO NEWLY BEFORE HAVE COMMITTED WHOREDOM?
Is it not because it is a creature that wonderfully delighteth in purity, cleanliness, and elegancy, and withal hath a marvellous quick sense of smelling? Because therefore such unclean dealings between man and woman are wont to leave behind much filthiness and impurity, the bees both sooner find them out and also conceive the greater hatred against them. Hereupon it is that in Theocritus the shepherd pleasantly sendeth Venus away unto Anchises to be well stung with bees for her adultery:
1
And Pindar saith:
Thou little creature, who honey-combs dost frame, and with thy sting hast pricked false impure Rhoecus for his lewd villanies.
Now to mount Ida, to Anchises go,
Where mighty oaks and cypresses do grow;
Where hives and trees with honey sweet abound,
And both with humming noise of bees resound.
Quaestiones Naturales. Plutarch. ed. William W. Goodwin. Boston. 1874.
Funding provided by The National Endowment for the Humanities.