[194]The queen has a sting, like the working bees, but uses it less frequently.
[195]The true version is, that after killing the insect they bury it with their eggs as food for their future young.
[196]Cuvier says that some have been known nearly a foot long, but not more.
[197]Julius Obsequens speaks of a pestilence there, created by the dead bodies of the locusts, which caused the death of 8000 persons.
[198]It is in reality their larvæ that they thus bring out to dry. The working ants, or neutrals, are the ones on which these labors devolve; the males and females are winged, the working ants are without wings.
[199]By this is probably meant the Canis corsac, the small fox of India, by some mistake represented by travellers as an ant.
[200]This vase of Semiramis was her drinking bowl, in much the same sense that the great cannon at Dover was Queen Elizabeth’s “pocket pistol.”
[201]The specific gravity of lead is 11.352, and of silver only 10.474.
[202]From the words µετ’ αλλα[**diacrit?], “one after another.”
[203]By public enactment probably; samples of the false denarius being sold for the purpose of showing the difference between it and the genuine coin.
[204]The first person mentioned in Roman history as having the cognomen “Dives,” is Publius Licinius Crassus. As he attained the highest honors of the state, and died universally respected, he cannot be the person so opprobriously spoken of by Pliny.
[205]Who cut off his head after his death, and poured molten gold down his throat.
[206]According to some authorities, he was a Lydian. He derived his wealth from his gold mines in the neighborhood of Celænæ in Phrygia, and would appear, in spite of Pliny’s reservation, to have been little less than a king. His five sons accompanied Xerxes; but Pythius, alarmed by an eclipse of the sun, begged that the eldest might be left behind. Upon this, Xerxes had the youth put to death, and his body cut in two, the army being ordered to march between the portions, which were placed on either side of the road. His other sons were all slain in battle, and Pythius passed the rest of his life in solitude.
[207]So called from the silversmiths who respectively introduced them.
[208]“Æris Metalla.” The word “Æs” does not correspond to our word “brass;” the brass of the moderns being a compound of copper and zinc, while the “Æs” of the ancients was mostly composed of copper and tin, and therefore is more correctly designated by the word “bronze.” Mr. Westmacott says that the ancient “Æs” has been found, upon analysis, to contain no zinc, but in nearly every instance to be a mixture of copper and tin, like our bronze. Beckmann says, on the other hand, that the mixture of zinc and copper now called “brass,” first discovered by ores, abundant in zinc, _was certainly known to the ancients_.