De sollertia animalium

It is impossible to relate in full detail all the methods of production and storage practised by ants, but it would be careless to omit them entirely. Nature has, in fact, nowhere else so small a mirror of greater and nobler enterprises. Just as you may see greater things reflected in a drop of clear water, so among ants there exists the delineation of every virtue.

Love and affection are found,[*](Homer, Iliad, xiv. 216.)

namely their social life. You may see, too, the reflection of courage in their persistence in hard labour.[*](Cf. Plato, Laches, 192 b ff.; we have here the four Platonic virtues, with Love added.) There are many seeds of temperance and many of prudence and justice. Now Cleanthes,[*](Von Arnim, S.V.F. i, p. 116, frag. 515; cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 50.) even though he declared that animals are not endowed with reason, says that he witnessed the following spectacle: some ants came to a strange anthill carrying a dead ant. Other ants then emerged from the hill and seemed, as it were, to hold converse with the first party and then went back again. This happened two or three times until at last they brought up a grub to serve as the dead ant’s ransom, whereupon the first party picked up the grub, handed over the corpse, and departed.

A matter obvious to everyone is the consideration ants show when they meet: those that bear no load always give way to those who have one and let them pass.[*](Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. ii. 25.) Obvious also is the manner in which they gnaw through and dismember things that are difficult to carry or to convey past an obstacle, in order that they may make easy loads for several. And Aratus[*](Phaenomena, 956; Cf. Vergil, Georgics, i. 379 f.; Theophrastus, De Signis, 22.) takes it to be a sign of rainy weather when they spread out their eggs and cool them in the open:

1. When from their hollow nest the ants in haste
2. Bring up their eggs;

and some do not write eggs here, but provisions, [*](Not oia, but eia: What the ants really carry out in Aratus and Vergil is their pupas, but these are commonly called eggs to this day (Platt, Class. Quart. v. p. 255). The two readings in this passage seem to show that Plutarch had at hand an edition with a commentary; Cf. also 976 f infra, on the interpretation of Archilochus, and Mor. 22 b.) in the sense of stored grain which, when they notice that it is growing mildewed and fear that it may decay and spoil, they bring up to the surface. But what goes beyond any other conception of their intelligence is their anticipation of the germination of wheat. You know, of course, that wheat does not remain permanently dry and stable, but expands and lactifies in the process of germination. In order, then, to keep it from running to seed and losing its value as food, and to keep it permanently edible, the ants eat out the germ from which springs the new shoot of wheat.[*](Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xi. 109, and Ernout ad loc. )

I do not approve of those who, to make a complete study of anthills, inspect them, as it were, anatomically. But, be that as it may, they report that the passage leading downward from the opening is not at all straight or easy for any other creature to traverse; it passes through turns and twists[*](The intricate galleries of anthills were used for purposes of literary comparisons by the ancients: see the fragment of Pherecrates in Mor. 1142 a and Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae, 100 (on Timotheüs and Agathon respectively).) with branching tunnels and connecting galleries and terminates in three hollow cavities. One of these is their common dwelling-place, another serves as storeroom for provisions, while in the third they deposit the dying.[*](Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 43 divides into men’s apartments, women’s apartments, and storerooms; see also Philo, 42 (p. 120), and Boulenger, Animal Mysteries, pp. 128 ff. for a modern account. On the social life of ants (and animals) as contrasted with that of humans see Dio Chrysostom, xl. 32, 40 f.; xlviii. 16.)