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Delahoyde & Hughes
Orpheus
MYRMIDONS
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We hear about these ant-men in Metamorphoses and in Homer's
Iliad, where they are Achilles' warriors. Ovid gives the origin:
Aeacus, father of Peleus and Telamon and grandfather of Ajax, comes to an
uninhabited island and prays to Jove for a populace. He dreams that ants,
"grain-bearers," he saw on a tree magically transform into men. He
awakens to his son Telamon bringing word that masses of people have
inexplicably shown up, as Aeacus says, "greeting me as a ruler" (Ovid
172). He specifies "their customary talents" as "Industry, thrift,
endurance; they are eager / For gain, and never easily relinquish / What
they have won" (172). "Although Achilles comes from Thessaly, the ethnic
title Myrmidons descends to his followers through his father,
Peleus" (Powell 518); so we hear in passing about the Myrmidons as
Achilles' men in the Iliad. Unfortunately, they never appear
sufficiently to characterize themselves as ant-like or not.
But the mythological impulse to connect ants with warriors may be based
on key ant features and behavior. From the outside in, ants first have
armor in the form of exoskeletons, as do all arthropods (insects and
crustaceans). You can see the derivation: "arthro-pod" = jointed foot (or
limbs), needed because of the external armor. So, in contrast to us,
insects have their skeletons on outside, muscles attached internally.
Entomologist Carol Anelli (Washington State University), citing Edward
O. Wilson ("the Harvard entomologist we all love to love because he is so
famous and makes others of our ilk appear quasi-normal") and his sidekick
of many years, Bert Hölldobler, informs Orpheus that ants "make war,
and use propaganda and surveillance." The noted myrmecologists devote
chapters to army ants as well as to "War and Foreign Policy" and
"Conflict and Dominance." So "army" consciousness is a valid, if perhaps
anthropomorphic, phenomenon regarding ants.
What do ants best represent in the cosmos? Anelli reports Wilson
insisting that they "do it all" and dominate on a number of fronts. They
are exceedingly diverse -- predators, farmers, architects -- and are
highly social. "In our view, the competitive edge that led to the rise of
the ants as a world-dominant group is their highly developed,
self-sacrificial colonial existence. It would appear that socialism
really works under some circumstances. Karl Marx just had the wrong
species" (Hölldobler and Wilson 9). In terms of mass, all ants in
the world weigh as much as all human beings, so Aeacus is vindicated for
his prayer.
More pertinent to the arts, Australian Aborigines do beautiful art
decorated with honey pot ant motifs and
Africans use soldier ants' mandibles to suture wounds.
The ultimate sacrifice in public service is to destroy enemies by
committing suicide in defense of the colony. Many kinds of ants are
prepared to assume this kamikaze role in one way or another, but none
more dramatically than workers of a species of Camponotus of the
saundersi group living in the rains forests of Malaysia. Discovered in
the 1970s by the German entomologists Eleanore and Ulrich Maschwitz,
these ants are anatomically and behaviorally programmed to be walking
bombs. Two huge glands, filled with toxic secretions, run from the bases
of the mandibles all the way to the posterior tip of the body. When the
ants are pressed hard during combat, either by enemy ants or by an
attacking predator, they contract their abdominal muscles violently,
bursting open the body wall and spraying the secretions into the foe.
(Hölldobler and Wilson 67).
Regarding their recent book, Journey to the Ants, Hölldobler
and Wilson announce that it
condenses the best myrmecology to a more manageable length, with less
technical language [referring to fact that their earlier tome, The
Ants, published in 1990, literally weighed in at 3.4 kg and contained
732 pages of tables, figures, and double-columned text, printed on pages
26 x 31 cm]. ...Our approach is thematic at the beginning, then opens out
increasingly into natural history. We start with an explanation of why
the ants have been so amazingly successful. The reason, we argue, is the
swiftly applied and overwhelming power arising from the cooperation of
colony members. Combined action at this level of efficiency is made
possible by the advanced development of chemical communication: the
release of a medley of substances from different parts of the body that
are tested and smelled by nestmates and evoke in them, according to the
substances released and the circumstance of the moment, respectively
alarm, attraction, nursing, food offering, and a diversity of other
activities. Ants, like humans, to put it in a nutshell, succeed because
they talk so well.
Berenbaum includes chapters titled, "Insects as Symbols" and "Insects in
Art," and she notes:
Salvador Dali ... wrote on several occasions about his own insect
experiences and frequently incorporated insects into his works. Ants
appear in Accommodations of Desire (1929), Great
Masturbator (1929), and
Portrait of Gala (1931). (Berenbaum 323)
Not that it illuminates mythology, but it is gross and interesting to
note the phenomenon of trophobiosis: certain insects (homopterans)
release sugary excretions from their anuses in exchange for protection by
the ants.
Antz. Computer animated film with voices of Woody Allen, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone. Dreamworks Pictures, 1998. A neurotic worker named Z hopes to prove his individuality and win true love.
Berenbaum, M.R. Bugs in the System. Addison Wesley, 1995.
Empire of the Ants. Starring Joan Collins. 1977. Giant mutant ants round up real estate speculators at a sugar refinery and brainwash them to do their evil ant bidding. Based on an H.G. Wells story.
Gordon, Deborah. Ants at Work: How an Insect Society Is Organized. Gordon is a biologist who has been called "the Jane Goodall of entomology."
Hölldobler, Bert, and Edward O. Wilson. A Journey to the Ants. Cambridge, MA: Belknap (Harvard) Press, 1994.
Marabunta. 1998. Entomologist and others battle deadly ants.
Powell, Barry B. Classical Myth. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 2001.
Them! Starring James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, James Arness. Warner Brothers, 1954. http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/sf/them.html.
