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, (Iliad 17, 570, Menelaus), into whose heart Athena
"puts the boldness of the fly.” 
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:
 The distinction (unknown to Homer) is between thrasos
and tharsos. 
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; the many hordes of clustering flies That dart about the sheepfolds in the spring, When pails are wet with milk. Iliad 2, 469 They swarmed about the body like the flies That in the fold buzz round the milky pails. Iliad 16, 641 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. Iliad 4, 130. 
Moreover, he has adorned
them with fine epithets in calling them “clustering”
and their swarms “hordes.”

 Iliad 2, 469. 

 
So strong is the fly that when she bites she
wounds the skin of the ox and the horse as well as
that of man. She even torments the elephant by
entering his wrinkles and lancing him with her
proboscis as far as its length allows. In mating,
love, and marriage they are very free and easy.
The male is not on and off again in a moment,
like the cock; he covers the female a long time.
She carries her spouse, and they take wing together,
mating uninterruptedly in the air, as everyone
knows. A fly with her head cut off keeps alive a
long time with the rest of her body, and still retains
the breath of life.