Those from Africa are the ones which chiefly devastate Italy; and more than once the Roman people have been obliged to have recourse to the Sibylline Books, to learn what remedies to employ under their existing apprehensions of impending famine. In the territory of Cyrenaica[197] there is a law, which even compels the people to make war, three times a year, against the locusts, first, by crushing their eggs, next by killing the young, and last of all by killing those of full growth; and he who fails to do so, incurs the penalty of being treated as a deserter. In the island of Lemnos also, there is a certain measure fixed by law, which each individual is bound to fill with locusts which he has killed, and then bring it to the magistrates. They pay great respect to the jack-daw, which flies to meet the locusts, and kills them in great numbers. In Syria, the people are placed under martial law, and compelled to kill them: in so many countries does this dreadful pest prevail. The Parthians look upon them as a choice food, and the grasshopper as well. The voice of the locust appears to proceed from the back part of the head. It is generally believed that in this place, where the shoulders join on to the body, they have, as it were, a kind of teeth, and by grinding these against each other they produce the harsh noise which they make. About the two equinoxes they are to be heard in the same way that we hear the chirrup of the grasshopper about the summer solstice. In all these kinds of insects the male is of smaller size than the female.
Ants work in common, like bees; but while the latter make their food, the former only store it away. If a person compares the burdens which the ants carry with the size of their bodies, he must confess that there is no animal which, in proportion, is possessed of a greater degree of strength. They carry these burdens with the mouth, or, when it is too large to admit of that, they turn their backs to it, and push it onwards with their feet, while they use their utmost energies with their shoulders. These insects have a political community among themselves, and are possessed of both memory and foresight. They gnaw each grain before they lay it by, for fear lest it should shoot while under ground; they divide those grains which are too large for admission, at the entrance of their holes; and those which have become soaked by the rain, they bring out and dry.[198] They work, too, by night, during the full moon. What ardor they display in their labors, what wondrous carefulness! Because they collect their stores from different quarters, in ignorance of the proceedings of one another, they have certain days set apart for holding a kind of market, on which they meet together and take stock. What vast throngs are then to be seen hurrying together, what anxious enquiries appear to be made, and what earnest parleys are going on among them as they meet! We see even the very stones worn away by their footsteps, and roads beaten down by being the scene of their labors. Let no one fail to see how much can be effected by assiduity and application, even in the very humblest of objects! Ants are the only living beings, besides man, that bestow burial on the dead.