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 fliesThat dart about the sheepfolds in the spring,When pails are wet with milk.Iliad 2, 469They swarmed about the body like the fliesThat 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.