The Fly (1-5)

The fly is not the smallest of winged creatures, at least in comparison with gnats and midges and things still tinier. On the contrary, she is as much larger than they as she is smaller than the bee. She is not provided with feathers like the birds, [*] so as to have some for plumage all over her body, and others to fly with, but like grasshoppers, locusts and bees, she has membranous wings, as much thinner’ than theirs as Indian stuffs are more delicate and softer than Greek. Moreover, they have the colours of a peacock in them, if you look at her sharply when she spreads them and flies in the sun.

She does not fly like bats with a steady, oar-like movement of the wings, or like grasshoppers with a spring, or as wasps do, with a whizzing rush, but easily directs her course to any quarter of the air she will. She has also this characteristic, that her flight is not silent but musical: the sound is not shrill like that of gnats and midges, nor deep-toned like that of bees, nor fierce and

As for her body, the head is very delicately attached to the neck and so is easily moved, not fixed like the head of a grasshopper. The eyes are prominent, and have much the quality of horn, The breast is solid, and the legs grow right out of the waist, which is not at all pinched* up, as in wasps. As in them, the abdomen is armoured and resembles a corselet in having flat zones and scales. She differs, however, from the wasp and the bee, in that her weapon is not the hinder-part, but the mouth, or rather the proboscis; for, like the elephant, she has a trunk with which she forages, seizing things and holding them tenaciously, since it is like a tentacle at the end. A tooth protrudes from it with which the fly inflicts bites in order to drink the blood, for although she drinks milk, she likes blood also. The bite causes no great pain. Though she has six feet, she walks with only four and uses the two in fwont for all the purposes of hands. You can see her standing on four legs, holding up something to eat in her hands just as we human beings do.

The fly is not born in the form which I have described, but as a maggot from the dead bodies of men or animals. Then, little by little, she puts out legs, grows her wings, changes from a creeping to a flying thing, is impregnated and becomes mother to a little maggot which is to-morrow’s fly. Living

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, [*] 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: [*] 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;[*] now, when