Lucian of Samosata Muscae Encomium 5

[5] I can also mention her great intelligence in escaping her designing foe, the spider. She watches for him lurking in ambush, and is wary of him, turning aside from his attack, so as not to be captured by being ensnared and falling into the toils of the creature. Of her courage and bravery it is not for me to speak, but for Homer, the most mighty-mouthed of the poets; for when he , seeks to praise the foremost of the heroes, ¹ he does not compare his bravery to a lion’s or a leopard’s or a wild boar’s, but to the fearlessness of the fly and the daring and insistency of her attack. He does not say that she is reckless, but fearless: ² that even if she is kept away she does not desist but is eager to bite. So outspoken is he in his praise and fondness for the fly that he mentions her net merely once or twice but often; in consequence, references to her enhance the beauty of his poems. Now he describes her swarming flight after milk; ³ now, when Athena turns the arrow aside from Menelaus in order that it may not strike a vital spot, he likens her to a mother tending a sleeping child, and again introduces the fly into the comparison. ⁴ Moreover, he has adorned them with fine epithets in calling them “clustering” and their swarms “hordes.” ⁵