FLIES. Flying insects very well known every where, and in the Law of Moses declared Levit. xi. 42.to be unclean. Whatsoever goeth upon the belly, and whatsoever hath more feet among all creeping things, ye shall not make yourselves unclean with them. The Philistins adored the God of Flies under the name of Belzebub. The Egyptians likewise paid a superstitious worship to the beetle; and we see a Fly upon some Phœnician medals, as also upon the statue of the Goddess Diana of Ephesus1. The author of the book of Wisdom having said, that God sent Flies and Wisd. xii. 8.Wasps against the Amorites and Ca- Canaanites to drive them by degrees out of their country, adds, that God made those very creatures the instruments of their punishment, to which they paid divine honours. They therefore adored the Fly as well as the Philistins. See above BEELZEBUB. The Exod. xxiii. 28. Deut. vii. 20. Josh. xxiv. 12. Wisd. xii. 8.Lord promised his people, that when they came into the land of Canaan, he would send an army of Flies and Wasps against the Canaanites, to force them out of their country. This he accordingly effected, as we see by Joshua and the book of Wisdom; and we cannot doubt but that many of the Canaanites did really abandon their country to secure themselves from these troublesome insects2. See the Article HONEY, wherein we shall speak of Bees.
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Footnotes
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Vide Claud. Menit. Symbolic. Dianæ Ephesiæ Statuam. l. 7. p. 391. Gronov. ↩
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Translators’ note. The Κυνόμυια, or Canina Musca, is a particular Fly called a Dog-Fly from its biting: and many other sorts there are uneasy both to man and beast. Virgil takes notice particularly of the Oestrum (the Gad-Fly) which is vexatious to cattle. ——Oestrum Græci vertêre vocantes, Asper, acerba sonans, quo tota exterrita silvis Diffugiunt armenta. ↩