No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.
She made his arms and legs more powerful,
and set in him the courage of a fly,
who works so hard and so persistently,
yearning to bite a human being’s flesh
because she loves the taste of human blood.
This was the boldness that the goddess put
inside the inmost heart of Menelaus,
(Homer, "The Iliad")
a monograph on the ant, as treated by Solomon, showing the harmony of the book of Proverbs with the results of modern research.
(George Eliot, "Middlemarch")
