it been Neptune or Mars, they would have given him the courage of a bull,
or a lion; but Athena gives him the courage of the most fearless in
attack of all creatures, small or great, and very small it is, but wholly
incapable of terror,--she gives him the courage of a fly.

35. Now this simile of Homer's is one of the best instances I can give
you of the way in which great writers seize truths unconsciously which
are for all time. It is only recent science which has completely shown
the perfectness of this minute symbol of the power of Athena; proving
that the insect's flight and breath are co-ordinated; that its wings are
actually forcing-pumps, of which the stroke compels the thoracic
respiration; and that it thus breathes and flies simultaneously by the
action of the same muscles, so that respiration is carried on most
vigorously during flight, "while the air-vessels, supplied by many pairs
of lungs instead of one, traverse the organs of flight in far greater
numbers than the capillary blood-vessels of our own system, and give
enormous and untiring muscular power, a rapidity of action measured by
thousands of strokes in the minute, and an endurance, by miles and hours
of flight."*


* Ormerod: "Natural History of Wasps."


Homer could not have known this; neither that the buzzing of the fly
was produced, as in a wind instrument, by a constant current of air
through the trachea. But he had seen, and, doubtless, meant us to
remember, the marvellous strength and swiftness of the insect's flight
(the glance of the swallow itself is clumsy and slow compared to the
darting of common house-flies at play); he probably attributed its