They have often healed the lungs of the gouty when applied with rose salve, and falcon cooked up with lily perfume cures weakness of sight. Dung beetle cures ear ache when boiled up with oil and dripped into the ear. Eating roast lark has often wonderfully helped those suffering from colic. And so that you may wonder more at the power in the bodies of living creatures I will explain something even more remarkable. Many creatures exhibit their power just by being looked at. The gecko fixes scorpions to the spot when they see it and so kills them. The amphisbaena is a two-headed animal like double-ended ships, since nature has done her the unusual favour of giving her two heads, and they say that if a pregnant woman encounters this creature she miscarries, and no wonder if the bodies of these snakes, cut up, still have power to help. For I have diligently shown I think that both the whole bodies sometimes help men, and sometimes just parts of them, and sometimes small parts of the parts themselves.

THE GNAT

Culex

Anon.

Translated by Lucius M. Sargent, 1807

Believed by some to be an early work of Virgil (see Stories 48, 49 and 63), the Culex or ‘Gnat’ is a lively tale about a shepherd and the adventures which take him away from his fields. Although Virgil had a keen interest in rural living, setting both his Eclogues and Georgics in the countryside, this sprawling story, written in Latin hexameters, was probably written by someone else to replace a poem of his that was lost.

But to my song: now fled the shades of night,

And rosy morning open’d on the sight;

From out their folds his flock, as morning gay,

A shepherd drove; and bent his wonted way

Along the vale with various flow’rets spread,

To where the mountain lifts it’s grassy head.

Pleas’d at release, in various tracks they rove,

Some wander o’er the vale, some seek the grove;

Some snuff the wanton breeze, some strive amain

To mount the dang’rous steep, and gaze along the plain:

Those crop the lowly grass, while eager these

Roam thro’ the wood for shrubs and flow’ring trees;

While this the bud or grateful blossom nips,

Or from the branch the pendent dewdrop sips,

That seeks afar some height, whence fountains flow,

And views its semblance in the stream below.—

Blest is the shepherd’s life! ah, happy swain,

Who seeks no joys beyond his native plain;

Nor pants for wealth, nor heaves a wishful sigh

For all the charms of pageant luxury.

For him no joy can Syrian dies impart,

Nor costly bowls, the boast of Alcon’s art;

Nor splendid halls, nor stones of fairest hue,

Nor pearls that toil from India’s ocean drew.

But oft, when spring and all her charms appear,

And Flora’s pencil paints the blooming year,

Full light of heart, from some green bank he views