In Greek mythology, after a plague had wiped out his people, King Aeacus begged Zeus, the supreme god, to give him as many citizens as there were ants in a certain sacred tree. Zeus changed the ants in the tree into warriors. These were the Myrmidons, who later fought under Achilles.
Ants are a lot like warriors: They march in columns; they show unbounded courage. No matter how large their foe, they still attack. No matter how many of their number are killed, they will not surrender or retreat. An ant that is decapitated will continue to bite at its adversary. For their size, ants are the strongest creatures in the world, able to carry objects many times larger than themselves. According to another myth, Zeus changed himself into an ant to make love to the maiden Eurymedusa in Thessaly. She gave birth to a child named Myrmidon, ancestor of the martial race. The efficient Myrmidons not only prevailed in war but also prospered in peace. Like ants, they would diligently work the soil. Ants have regular access to the mysterious depths of the earth, where metals and jewels are found. Herodotus told of ants in India that were larger than foxes. As they burrowed in the ground, these ants threw up huge heaps of sand that contained gold. The Indians watched from a distance, then quickly packed the sand into bags and carried them away on camels. The treasure hunters had to rely on surprise in these raids, since the ants were extremely swift in pursuit.
“Why bother about the winter?” asked the grasshopper in a famous fable attributed to Aesop. The ant said little but went on storing grain. Snow began to fall, and the grasshopper begged for food. “You sang all summer, so now dance all winter,” replied the ant. This fable makes ants appear almost as ruthless in their diligence as they are in their wars. “Idler, go to the ant; ponder her ways and grow wise,” says the Bible in a passage traditionally attributed to Solomon (Prov. 6:6). Around the world, the proverbial ant has long been synonymous with industry. Tribal healers in Morocco fed ants to lethargic patients.
Creatures that live beneath the earth, the world of the dead, are frightening and mysterious. At festivals of the dead, Jains and certain Hindus feed the ants. West African tribes have traditionally believed that ants carry messages from the gods. In ancient Greece and Rome, ants sometimes appeared in prophetic dreams. When King Midas was a child, ants carried grains of corn to his lips as he slept, a sign that he would one day achieve enormous wealth.
According to Plutarch, when the Greek commander Cimon sacrificed a goat to the god Dionysus during a war with the Persians, ants swarmed around the animal's blood. They carried blood to Cimon and wiped it on his big toe, predicting his imminent death. Ants are still used in divination. To step on ants brings rain. Anest of ants near your door means you will grow rich.
For all their reputation for ruthlessness, ants in folklore often protect the weak and vulnerable. In the story “Cupid and Psyche,” told in the novel The Golden Ass by first-century Roman author Lucius Apuleius, the young maiden Psyche had fallen in love with Cupid. The goddess Venus, Cupid's mother, did not approve. She captured Psyche, locked her up with a huge stack of many kinds of grain, and demanded that all be sorted by nightfall. The ants pitied Psyche and carried the different grains, one by one, to separate piles. According to Cornish legend, ants are fairies, which over the centuries have grown ever smaller and are now about to disappear.
Other legends make them the souls of unbaptized children, who are admitted neither to Heaven nor to Hell. All such tales reveal a kinship that people feel with ants. Part of the reason for the feeling may be recognition of similarities between their bodies and ours, large heads and hips but slender waists. It may also be that their small size and consequent vulnerability elicit our sympathy. Ants appear in many European tales as grateful animals. In one fable by Jean de La Fontaine, a dove used a blade of grass to a rescue a drowning ant. Later, a hunter tried to shoot the dove. The ant bit the man on the heel and made his arrow go astray. In Aztec mythology the seed of maize was once kept in a mountain by red ants. The god Quetzalcoatl transformed himself into a black ant and stole the seed to bring food to humankind. As in so many European stories, grain formed a bond between ants and humanity. The Hopi Indians traditionally believed that the first human beings were ants. In Walden, Henry Thoreau reported going to a woodpile and finding a battle raging between two varieties of ants, with the ground already “strewn with the dead and dying.” In one camp were “red republicans”; in the other, “black imperialists.” “On every side,” Thoreau continued, “they are engaged in deadly combat . . . and human soldiers never fought so resolutely.” Avaliant Achilles among the red ants came to avenge a fallen comrade. He killed a black Hector, while the enemy cavalry swarmed over his limbs. The gentle hermit of Walden Pond wrote of this carnage with great excitement (pp. 206-207). Perhaps those who believe there are no more heroes today should spend more time around anthills. Ants live in a world a bit like that of old romances, filled with monsters (that is, termites, spiders, woodpeckers, or human beings). Kingdoms with mysterious powers surround the anthill. The ants must constantly battle in order to survive. Perhaps when kings and lords ruled most of the world, it was easier to identify with ants. The anthill could be seen to be a perfect authoritarian state, one in which everyone accepted his or her role. As governments became more democratic, however, it became harder to believe that such a society was possible or even desirable. Artists and writers have tried to individualize ants, and that certainly has not been easy.
