In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Rob and Joe explore the world of the periodical cicada, from their curious lifecycle to their mythological and culinary roles in human cultures.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb.
And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with the fourth and final part in our series on cicadas. Now, if you haven't heard the first three parts yet, you might want to go check those out first. That's where we talk a good bit more about the biology of cicadas. We've sort of had a special focus on the periodical cicadas of North America because of a big exciting co emergence we had this year in the eastern United States, but we've been talking generally about the biology of the cicadas. In the last episode, we had a really exciting digression about a fungal parasite that sort of fills up the abdomens of the cicadas and turns them into turns them into a parmesan cheese dispenser. But today we are back to talk about some more ideas of cicadas in culture and in literature.
That's right. Yeah, As is often the case with our part fours or even Part fives, this is kind of like what's left. What did we not get to or what new and weird ideas came up in our research. So I guess before we get going too much here, I do want to just touch based on two things that I thought I was going to talk about more but ended up largely ignoring. Or we're looking into a little bit and deciding, well, there's maybe not as much that I wanted to get into there. But I do want to point out that there are some interesting accounts of North American periodical cicadas from the sixteen hundreds at Plymouth. This is something that was brought up in the latest book from cicada expert Gen Kritzky, the twenty twenty four Emergence of the Periodical Cicada, And I just found this fun quotes, so I'm going to read it. This is from William Bradford, the second governor of Plymouth Colony. This in his History of Plymouth Plantation, so something like sixteen twenty through sixteen forty seven quote and the spring before, especially all the month of May, there was such a quantity of a great sort of flies, like for bigness to wasps or bumblebees, which came out of holes in the ground and replenished all the woods and ate the green things and made such a constant yelling noise as made all the woods ring of them and ready to death the hearers. They have not, by the English, been heard or seen before or since. Okay, so I don't know. I just kind of like the idea of these these guys trying to make sense of these wasp or bumble bee like creatures that made this racket, and you know, it just seemed to sort of come out of nowhere without previous or latter records regarding them.
Now, this came up actually in the most recent Listener Male episode, or actually maybe in two Listener Male episodes ago. But I do want to clarify that there are in fact cicadas in Europe. It's not that there are no cicadas in Europe, but they are all annual species. I do not believe there are any periodical cicadas in Europe.
Yeah, periodical cicadas are a North American phenomena, but we do have these rich tradition traditions regarding annual cicadas elsewhere in the world.
I believe there are. Actually I was looking at research there might be a couple of other possible periodical cicadas elsewhere in the world, but they have different periods than the thirteen or seventeen.
Yeah, I think there's one that Kritsky brings up in this latest book that's being looked at. I go back to that episode, but I mentioned it in passing at least. Yeah, but again, there are annuals all over the place, and therefore there are traditions of eating annual cicadas in cultures around the world. This was another area I thought I was going to dive into more. But suffice to say, yeah, they've long been considered by humans, and you'll find them on menus traditionally around the world. But also it looks like a lot of the more adventurous restaurants in the world have been capitalizing on cicicada fever. I was reading an article that came out on the website for Smithsonian last month by Aaron Borstein titled from Dinner Parties to Restaurants, Cicadas are landing in the kitchen. He points out that, yeah, they can be prepared numerous ways, often fried, and they're generally held to have a shrimpy, nutty taste. I've read elsewhere that fresh cicadas have kind of a buttery flavor. I can't really speak to this myself, as I've never consumed circadas. I have not had the opportunity to do. But if the opportunity came up and with somebody who knew what they were doing, yeah, I guess I would try it. Why not.
I'm not surprised that that fried is a common option for people who don't already have cicadas as a major part of their diet, because it just seems like, you know, you deep fry anything, and it makes it more more acceptable, you know, like that's like the easy way to introduce a new food stuff, and then maybe later you could try try different preparation methods.
Now deep frying. Aside, they are apparently not only a safe food but also pretty healthy. They're supposedly full of any oxidants, full of protein essential amino acids. So yeah, I mean these this article in the Smithsonian, you know, makes it sound like, yeah, if cicadas are on the menu, give them a try, why not? And then you know, around the world there are going to be these different traditions for exactly how you cook them up and or what exact seasoning, dipping, exhausces, et cetera might be utilized alongside the cicadas. So again, if anyone out there has personal experience with this, either you know, some sort of like a modern culinary experience, or some sort of like you know, traditional cicada preparation, write in. We would love to hear from you. All right now, we've already spoken a bit about cicadas and mythologies, cicadas and philosophy, and I have another fun example here of cicadas as a as a teacher or a model for human and behavior. I looked at several sources on this, but one of the first ones I came across was an article this posted on the website of Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art by Jan Stuart back in twenty sixteen. And Stuart points out that you'll often find the symbol of the golden cicada on the headgear of rulers and nobles in Chinese antiquity, and here they would signify modesty, refinement, and awareness. And I think that awareness is in part due to, of course, the prominent eyes on the cicada, which are featured in the artifact Joe. I've included an image of one of these cicada plaques and numerous examples of these have been found from this time period in China. This is like golden bronze, I believe. But you can see the cicada motif there in the center.
Absolutely. Yeah. So we see a big emphasis on the eyes. They're rendered as huge. You see a kind of a shortened version of the body with these kind of round oval wings. And then are these bent lines up above the head? Are those supposed to be legs?
I believe?
So yeah, yeah, it's a very elegant design. It's also ornate, like it's busy. There's a lot going on.
Yeah. Now this would be from I believe the third to fourth century, and Stuart points out that this is a lot of this is based on the idea that the cicada was understood to live high in the trees, privy to great views and a lofty existence where it was thought to subsist entirely upon the dew. So it's a it's a creature of vision, a creature of pure diet. You know, it's it's not eating a bunch of junk, it's just eating the dew itself, right, or that's the belief. And again lofty, and it has this great view of everything around it. It's very aware of its surroundings. And to a certain extent this is true, not that the dow part per se, but the part about cicadas having excellent vision.
So having a liquid diet. I mean it might not be do but the you know, the ones under the ground they feed off of the rude xylum, and then the ones above ground they still just feed off of the plant juices from inside the stems.
Yeah, so there's a certain amount of I think accurate observation wrapped up in this idea. And you see this referenced in various forms, but one that I that I ran across that I thought was really needed is this poem Owed to a Cicada. This is by Kauji, who lived one two through two thirty two. This was a poet and calligrapher. And there's an extended part of this poem there about the cicadas. I'm just going to read a part of it. The cicada's nobility is hidden in the darkest shadows, under the dazzling sunlight of midsummer. It roams the fragrant forest, not seeking prestige and having few desires, humming with contentment alone. Its calls, ring out, piercing, lingering, like the unwavering hearts of virtuous men, benevolent and kind. It does not eat, asking nothing of other creatures. It purchases high above all and looks down, only drinking the freshest dew. Hidden among dense mulberry leaves and sheltered from the heat, it sings with joy.
Now there are some differences, but it's interesting what this has in common with the vision of cicadas propounded by Socrates and the Platonic dialogue that we talked about in the last episode, the idea that they do not eat, they only sing, and portraying them as kind of an ally of the heavens or as like a holy creature in a way.
Yeah, yeah, I think it does. But I also have to note that this poem ends up taking kind of a I don't know if it's a darker turn, but it ends up going in an interesting direction because in full it stresses that, first of all, rulers of the world should strive to be like the cicada. Again, these are noble virtues, but the poem also stresses that the cicada is a creature with many enemies, and it has a very fixed time upon the summer Earth, with lines like to escape all these dangers and avoid capture, it flees to the Grand Palace, and that as it perceives its many threats and tries to escape them, quote, it succeeds only in tightening its bonds and thus foresees its end.
So it's that kind of nobility that you see in some characters in art. That's a kind of a nobility in its fragility. It's a doomed nobility.
Yeah, and it's worth noting that kylege Hear himself was apparently something of a political prisoner. He was ostracized from political power, so you know, perhaps he's he's channeling. It's my understanding, he's channeling a certain amount of that understanding of power and politics and life here now. Stuart also outlines that the Cicada was heavily associated with resurrection as well. And these ideas go back pretty long ways, and I think it makes sense given the life cycle. As we've discussed, these are creatures that emerge from the earth, you know, shed in their dark earth and skins, and then they climb out, they re emerge, They're reborn from their own kind of dead flesh and then take to the skies. And in Chinese traditions, this was interpreted as a symbolic for the transference of the soul after death into a more transcendent realm. As such, during the Han dynasty, jade amulets in the shape of cicadas were apparently placed on the tongues of the deceased, and I included an example of one of these for you here, Joe.
Yeah, it's interesting how it sort of looks like depictions of a tongue, like the wings come together and create the folds that is often represented going down the middle of a tongue.
Yeah, the jade is key here as well. Of course, it was the most valued of stones through much of Chinese history, representing purity and indestructibility, and so it was widely used in both decorative and ritual objects. And of course I think from like a modern tie in, you know, we can't help but think about the moths and the silence of the lambs and the death said moths placed in the mouth or throat. And then there was also a tradition in ancient Egypt for some time where you would have a golden tongue amulet placed in the mouth of the deceased, supposedly so they could speak when summoned before the court of Osiris in the afterlife. But anyway, back to Chinese tradition. Stewart also shares a fourth century BCE Dallas scholar Jong Za covered this in his writing, wrote about the Cicada. And I read his writing on this in full and translation elsewhere, and I'm going to summarize it here. Basically plays out as follows. So Jongsa is walking in the forest when he spots a strange bird in the sky. It has large wings, it's kind of awkward flying around, it has big eyes. He hasn't really seen this kind of bird before, so curious, he stalks up to where the bird is perched in a tree, and hey, he has his sling shot on him, so why not take a shot at the bird? Right? So he draws in, you know, I mean, it's like, I don't know if he's necessarily, you know, looking to eat the bird, or it's about studying the specimen more, but you know, at any rate, it's what he does. He gets off the sling all right, and the bird doesn't seem to notice him, so all the better. This is going to be an easy bird to pick off. But as he creeps closer, he notices something there in the tree. There's a mantis stalking an oblivious cicada about to strike. And equally oblivious, the mantis is being stalked by this strange bird. And oh yeah, and so he and here, of course is our Dalis scholar stalking that bird. And so he stops at this point and he lowers his sling. He feels that the dow is revealed in this scenario, and he leaves the bird alone.
Oh, I wondered if it was going to end with him like looking over his own shoulder, like, what's stalking me?
Essentially, I mean, that's essentially the thought. And Stuart points out that there is a common Chinese saying based on this quote. As the mantis catches the cicada, the jay is just behind, so you know, it's kind of there's always a bigger fish right right, And indeed, look over your shoulder before you you take advantage of the oblivious nature of the birth. Now cicadas are invoked elsewhere in Chinese culture, is pointed out by Hayan Lee, a professor of East Asian languages and cultures and of Comparative Literature at Stanford University, cited in a twenty twenty one m PR article brewed ten is back or brood x is back if you'd rather buy Anita Ollaby, and in this one point out that in the sixth century military text thirty six Stratagems, one of the strategies outlined is shed your skin like the Golden Cicada, which entails creating a decoy by which to escape from an overwhelming or more powerful enemy. So I looked up the translation of the text here, and in translation, it says, when you are in danger of being defeated and your only chance is to escape and regroup, then create an illusion. While the enemy's attention is focused on this artifice, secretly remove your men, leaving behind only the facade of your presence.
Ah okay, So maybe if you're hiding down in a bunch of earthworks or something, you simulate activity still going on there, put up some flags and stuff while you're evacuating.
Yeah, which you know, this is not really part of what's going on with the cicada per se. It's not doing this to distract predators. But on the other hand, it does kind of match up with I think with our experience of cicadas, often is the case where we venture outside and we see something, hope, there's something there that wasn't there before. It is the cicada's shell. It is, but where's the cicada that emerged? It is nowhere to be seen. It has moved on. Though you do get the rare occurrence too of finding both shell and emergent cicada, and that is also magical. But sometimes I can see where it might seem as if, oh, I'm looking at the wrong thing. I'm looking at the empty shell. The tasty cicada has flown off.
Yeah, it got away from me now.
I was also looking at traditions of the cicada in Japan and this was I found this pretty interesting. There are a couple of different ways to refer to cicadas in Japanese. There's a there's semi, which I think is the main word for cicada. But then there's also this name that is like kana kana, and this is on a monopa. This is a This is a name that is supposed to sound more or less like the sound that the the howling, the screeching of the cicadas in their tree. And more to the point, I was reading about this in several different sources that this sound, the sound of the cicadas, is in Japanese traditions often associated with melancholy summer vibes, so essentially that summertime sadness, if you will, and it's it's referenced, you know, throughout various examples of Japanese poetry, but also in contemporary pop culture works. They're also associated with this concept of mujo, the passing nature of things. And so you see like these overlapping ideas referenced in a lot of different Japanese works and in a lot of different poems.
It's so interesting that you get such different associations with these creatures. Some are melancholy versus sort of doomed nobility versus the kind of care free, summer playful.
Uh.
There's there's like such such different feelings about the same phenomenon.
Yeah, yeah, I I do feel like I get this idea of cicadas as the soundtrack of summertime sadness, though, you know, because I do associate it with like oppressive heat and like a really bright sun. You know, it's like everything outside the house is trying to push you into the house and maybe make you feel a little isolated or you're outside and you have no choice in the matter, and it can be just a little bit overwhelming. Uh. And then you again compound that with the id like the knowledge of what the cicada is doing, that it has emerged for this very brief time, and that they're all gonna die, but you know they're not gonna they're they're not going to be around for the for the next summer.
I guess I don't. It would depend also on like what types of activities you do culturally in the summertime. I associate summertime sadness with like having to say bye to your friends from camp who you're not going to see again for a long time.
Yeah, I mean it's kind of like that was is. You're not going to see thea again. You'll see different ones, but you're gonna have to wait a bit. Anyway, I wanted to read a couple of examples of Japanese poetry concerning cicadas in translation, of course. This first one is by Japanese edo poet Matsuo Basho, and it just goes as follows, the cry of the cicada gives us no sign that presently they will die straight into the point. I like it, you know, And again it is one of the interesting things about like there, and in a way it's inspiring. Right they are living life to the absolute fullest.
They are.
They are going about it, but they do not have lung in which to do it.
Yolo, as they say.
Yeah, here's another one. This one is apparently by eighteenth century samurai poet Yo Koi Yayu. And this one I got off of the website Tofu Gou dot com in an article titled the Cicada's Song Japan's Summer Soundtrack from twenty fourteen. It contains multiple examples of this sort of thing. But I always say, and by this particular example that goes as follows. Again, the Japanese word semi is is what this means. Cicada methinks that SIMI sits and sings by his former body, chanting the funeral service over his own dead self. WHOA yeah, which is great because it brings to mind, you know, the of course, the emergence, the shedding of the old skin, the nearness of its demise, but also like the richness of its sound, that you could associate with various emotions and in this case, like think of it as kind of a funeral dirge. Yeah, I like this one. And there are other examples too, particularly in this article, you know, where it's like there's it's not so much a contemplation of the cicada's sorrow or you know, it's forthcoming demise, but using it as a metaphor using it alongside considerations of more you know, human centric feelings of say, heart break and so forth.
Oh well, that connects to something I'm going to get into in a few minutes here, because there are more tragic use of the cicada as an image of tragedy to come.
All right, Well, I'd love to hear other examples of Japanese literature and you know, in cinnamon and pop culture that invoked the cicada. I think I'm going to be extra alert for it now, engaging with Japanese cinema and so forth. Another idea I ran across. And first of all, I should point out that that Japanese traditions also inherit some various Chinese ideas about cicadas. You know, some of these various virtues that we already talked about including the idea that not only is the cicada virtuous because you know it can see far, and it's up in the trees and it drinks dew, but also it emerges at fixed and regular times, so it is faithful. You know, it is sincere. You know, other people in your life are the things in your life. There may be uncertainty to them, but you can count on the cicadas. They always come.
Well said, well, are you ready to get into some other cicada stuff?
Let's do it.
So in the previous episode, I mentioned an ancient Greek story about the mythological origins of cicadas, which is told by Socrates in the Platonic dialogue known as the fe Dress. And according to that story, cicadas were once humans like us, but they lived at a time before the muses had introduced song and music to the world. And the story goes once these people encountered music, they were so enraptured by it that they spent every moment of their lives singing and listening to music, and not even stopping to eat or drink until they finally sang themselves to death. But the muses took pity on them and allowed them to be reincarnated as cicadas, who would still, according to the understanding of some ancient Greeks, go on singing their entire lives and never stop to eat or drink. And Socrates also says in the story that cicadas are the earthly informers for the muses, so they kind of spy on us and report back whether we're doing things that honor the muses or not. So that was an interesting view. But this, it turns out, is not the only famous story about cicadas tracing back to ancient Greek and other classical sources. So I collected a couple of examples in a reference text called the Book of Greek and Roman Folk Tales, Legends and Myths. This is edited by the classicist William Hansen from Princeton University Press, twenty seventeen. And this led me to a couple of great examples. The first one I want to mention is the story of the great singer UniMas and the Cicada, as told by the ancient Greek author Strebo, who lived from about sixty four BCE to twenty four CE in the Roman Empire. And this was in Strebo's book geography, as you might guess from its inclusion in a book about geography. This story comes in the context of Strabo talking about some natural features of the land and landmarks. Specifically, he's talking about a river called Halix, which he says separates two lands called Region and Locris, and he says it exits through a deep ravine, and then Strebo says, there is an odd thing about the cicadas here on the two sides of the river Halix. The ones on one bank of the river make a song. They sing like any other cicadas, but the cicadas on the opposite bank are silent. And he says that people have guessed that the reason for this is that the Locrian bank, where the cicadas are loud, is dry and sun baked, so the cicadas there have dry membranes that they can rattle with ease, whereas on the other bank, the other bank is in the shade. And I'm not sure if he means the shade of the ravine or if it's more shaded by foliage, but the other side is shady, and he says because it's in the shade, people believe that quote. The cicadas are moist with dew and cannot expand their membranes hated when that happens, And so I got really curious, is what Strabo's talking about here? Based on reality? I looked around to see if I could find any entomologists in the present day offering informed commentary on this observation, but I couldn't really find anything solid. The closest I found to a direct reference was a twentieth century Strabo translator talking about how he could attest personally that the cicadas of southern Italy, where I believe this is supposed to take place, are unusual. But that's not all that helpful, So I went to see what I could piece together on my own. So my big question, a big way to check the plausibility of this claim, is to ask, are there actually today any known examples of a specie or a population within a species of totally silent cicadas like the ones from the region side of the river. Now, if you ask the question, are there any like actually truly completely silent cicadas? I could not find any examples of that. But while most cicadas have males that emit these loud, obvious mating signals, there are in fact a few species that are sometimes referred to as mute cicadas, which, while not actually mute, to make a sound that is not at all similar to the songs produced by the timbal organs in most male cicadas. So here I'm going to refer to a paper by chanching Low, Songwei and Christian Nonsen, and it's called how do Mute Cicadas Produce their calling Songs? This was published in Plus one in twenty fifteen, and again the researchers here were Christian Nonsen and entomologist affiliate with UC Davis, and Chuan ching Low and Songwei from the Northwest anf University in China. And this paper focuses on a genus of cicadas known as Corenia, containing five species found in China, Vietnam and Burma. And it turns out that species within this genus are not able to make sounds with a timble mechanism. Remember from part one of our series here we talked about the timble organ. The timble is an organ that is used by most male cicadas to make sounds, and the timbles are rigid corrugated membranes on the sides of the abdomen that are connected to an internal muscle, and the internal muscle flexes and relaxes rapidly to collapse the membrane and then allow it to kind of snap back into place. And this rapid collapsing and snapping back sort of the buckling and snapping, produces the whirr and the drone that we associate with cicadas. But Krenia cicadas do not have functional timbal organs, which is why they are called mute cicadas. However, they are not completely mute. They do make sounds, and this paper investigates how Now in the introduction to this paper, there's a really interesting fact that the authors discuss as to the backstory of this investigation. I just want to read from their introduction quote. Recently, Way at All reported sound production in Corenia chauma and discovered that this species exhibited an atypical behavior, i e. The male adults can be easily attracted to sounds produced by clapping of hands, knocking of bamboo sticks, breaking of twigs, and chopping of wood. Weird. Okay, so you might be chopping on a log, you might be clapping, you might be knocking some bamboo together and suddenly the cicadas come running. They like this. It attracts them very odd So anyway, they say that sound production in this genus had not been deeply investigated until this paper. So the authors here studied the species Carrenia keela tata to discover that they do make a to my ears rather inconspicuous sound. It's a clicking sound that they make by knocking two parts of their outer bodies together. So this is not an example of stridulation, which a lot of insects use. Stridulation again, is rubbing parts of the body together, often one part that's kind of ridged like a comb, and another part that's just sort of a flat scraper thing that scrapes the teeth of the comb. This is called a file and scraper system. They do not use stridulation like that. Instead, what they produce is an impact sound, more like a drum beat, which they make by banging the leading edge of the fore wing, which is known as the costa, against a hard plate on the outside of the body, known as as an operculum. So they're drumming on their own outer shells with their wings, and this sound is indeed audible to human ears. But Robi, I let you listen to a sample of it before we recorded here, and I was listening to it myself, and I think if I were walking through a forest and I heard this sound, I might well not even attribute it to an insect. And if I did attribute it to an insect, I might not likely think of it as a cicada sound. It's sort of a clicking or a snapping that could be anything in the environment. Breaking of a twig, could be wood creaking in the wind. It could be a pebble falling. It just doesn't seem to me like it would really stand out in a riverside grove.
Yeah. I agree, it doesn't quite register to me as it instantly as being an insect noise or even another animal sound. So yeah, it's interesting. I could see where you might even have sort of maybe supernatural interpretations of the noise at first, like, well, you know, what is that? What is that? Are Is there some sort of drumming going on amid the invisible folk? I don't know?
Yeah? Yeah, anyway, So given this, I was wondering, is it possible that Strabo's story here has a basis in fact that the cicadas on the two sides of the river are different. Maybe on the Lockers side they're loud, they sound like cicada's normally sound. But what if there were cicadas on the region side of the river Helix that were known to be silent, not because they were actually silent, but because they didn't make the sounds we associate with cicadas. What if they were clicking or something like that. Now, I want to be clear, this is pure speculation on my part because I look to see again if entomologists had commented to this effect about this historical passage, and I didn't come across anything. So I don't know, But I at least do know that there are some species of cicadas that don't make the worrying sound we think of. They make some other kind of sound, like a sort of incanspicuous click. And the Krenia cicadas are not the only ones. Now, remember, if there were so called mute cicadas in this region in the ancient Mediterranean, that seems unlikely they would have been the Karnia genus because that genus is native to East and Southeast Asia. But there are other so called mute cicadas. I was looking for examples of them. The plus one paper mentions four other genera of cicadas that contain species without timbal organs. It mentions Platypedia, neo, Platypedia maroboduus, and Lemmo tialna. And so I was looking these genera up, it seems like most of the ones where I could get information about where they were located, more of them were centered around North America, but some more more global species. So nothing solid. But there are a number of cicada species known to be, if not mute, at least incapable of typical cicada timbal sounds, and this could be mistaken for muteness. So I wonder if if such a species were found on the region side of the river, and if they were mistaken by the ancients for silent insects.
Yeah, this sounds entirely plausible to me that you could have had some species like this that is not mute, but it's either making a sound that we don't associate with cicadas or one that is, you know, maybe out of register of human hearing. So yeah, absolutely plausible.
Listeners, if you have anything to add to this, please write in. But anyway, I wanted to continue with Strabo's account here because so it just starts off with the two different kinds of cicadas on the two banks of the river, but this leads into Strabo's account of UniMas and the cicada. So I'm going to read from Strabo's geography, but a couple of things to know for context. In this passage, it makes reference to an object called a kithara, which was a stringed instrument that people played in ancient Greece. The etymological root of the word guitar actually the cathara. And it also makes reference to the Pythian Games, which were sort of like the Olympics, except they included both athletic and artistic competitions. And while the ancient Olympic Games were held at Olympia in honor of Zeus, the Pythian Games were held at Delphi in honor of Apollo. And remember which of the regions had which cicadas. It was the cicadas of Locris that would sing and the cicadas of region that were silent. So Strebo writes a statue of UniMas, the singer and kathara player, with a cicada sitting on his cathara used to be displayed in Locris. Timaios says that this man, UniMas, and Ariston of Region were once competing at the Pythian Games and got into a dispute about their respective lots. Ariston beseeched the Delphians to support him, seeing as his ancestors had belonged to the god and their colony had been dis patched from Delphi, but UniMas declared that persons in whose land the cicadas, most sweet voiced of animals were mute, had no business even participating in a voice competition. Ariston was nonetheless held in high regard and hoped for victory, but it was UniMas who won and dedicated in his own homeland the statue I mentioned. For during the contest, when one of his strings broke, a cicada perched on his cathara and supplied the missing note.
Wow again, it is so surprising how we can have such totally different cultural interpretations of the cicada. You know, is it screeching madness that that maddens the ear? Or is it the sweet songs? Is it sent from the gods? You know, Yeah, it's wonderful.
Yeah, and I will say that this story, I think it's open to multiple interpretations, and it has been interpreted in different ways over the years. So sort of like the origin story told by Socrates, it portrays cicadas as fundamentally musical animals, musical beings, but also in this case they're kind of they're kind of belligerent, like they intervene to take sides in a battle of the bands. And it's I think a little hard to discern the intended meaning or moral here, assuming there is supposed to be one, because on one hand, I would think the snapping of a string during a performance would indicate a kind of punishment by the fates for UniMas, I would think is sort of a payback for his haughtiness and hubris he's insulting Ariston, you know. But then the insect intervenes to supply the missing note, which seems like another divine intervention, but in this case in the opposite direction in favor of UniMas.
The infighting of the gods via insects.
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't supply that gloss in Strabo's telling here, but it does kind of remind me of like in the Iliad, we have the gods intervening on both sides of an issue, like in opposite directions.
You know, normally I take a very logical approach to this sort of thing. But I'm just gonna go ahe and say it. I think this absolutely happened. Has written this is one accurate and that we shouldn't question it.
I mean, it's not actually all that implausible that a cicada lands on a lands on somebody's instrument makes a sound. Everybody would remember that.
Not just any sound, the exact right sound. So I think that's the really fun part of the story. And again I don't question it at all. This absolutely happened. Every every other story out there, every other myth in religion, it's open to interpretation, and you're right to question it, but not this one's good to go.
I came across an interesting passage in another book that was about Christian theologians reinterpreting this Greek tale to have a different understanding of it. Specifically, I was looking at a work called Music and Philosophy in the Roman Empire by Pelosi and Petrucci, and the author of a passage of this book is talking about a work where the early Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria is taking a bunch of pagan myths and pagan stories and reinterpreting them to have Christian morals. And so it's sort of in the context of talking about these Christian church fathers and theologians taking pagan myths and saying, yeah, this is actually good and still instructive, but here's what it actually means to emphasize something about their view of the world. And in Clement's retelling of the story, there's a difference that is subtle but important, And Clement's version is that it is not that the Cicada is so enchanted by Unimas's beautiful song and thus comes to help him in a time of need. This version of the story that serves to emphasize Eunomas's virtue as a singer. It's like, you know, a story about a great virtuous person. Instead, Clement's retelling emphasizes that it is UniMas who attunes himself to the perfect natural song of the cicada. So in Clement's telling, it's not that the Cicada humbles itself to UniMas sort of in awe of his greatness, but that UniMas humbles himself to the cicada, as we must humble ourselves into tune to the music of God's word.
All right, yeah, I mean, all in all, that's kind of a that's a nice interpretation, right, It's like your music's not about you, it's about like getting in harmony with at the very least existence, right.
Mm hmmm. I mean for Clement, I think that had a specific sectarian meaning, but yeah, more broadly, you could think about it as as singing together with nature. Who's the person who needs to get in key? Is it nature that needs to get in key with you? Or do you need to get in key with nature?
Right? Right? Right? Instead of warping nature to your your own tastes and purposes, you're you're the one that's getting in tune with everything else. Se.
So there's another famous reference to cicadas in classical Greek literature, and it is in the Esopic fable, more widely known as the Ant and the grasshopper. But as with the example from Plato that we talked about last time, the word that used to be translated as grasshopper or sometimes cricket is now generally understood as a reference to cicadas. It seems this is the case in a bunch of ancient Greek and Roman literature. There are a lot of things that, for the longest time in English said cricket, locust, grasshopper, whatever, it often meant cicadas. So this famous ancient story is more accurately the ant and the cicada. Now, as with many esopic tales, it is thought to originate in oral traditions, and it appears in different forms in different texts traditions. There's not like one original text form of it. You different ancient authors who put down versions of this tale. And the book edited by William Hanson that I mentioned earlier, it presents it as follows. Cold and wintry weather came down from Olympus. The ant had collected a lot of food during harvest time, storing it in its house, But the cicada went into its hole and was panting from hunger. Gripped by starvation in the considerable cold. The cicada asked the ant to share its food in order that the cicada too might eat some wheat and be saved from starvation. But the ant asked, where were you in summer? Why didn't you collect food during harvest time? The cicada answered, I was singing and giving pleasure to the wayfarers. The ant showered it with laughter, saying, then in winter dance. The tale teaches us that nothing is more important than to give thought to necessary provisions, and not to devote one's leisure time to pleasure and revelry.
Oh wow, so this time the cicada is the dummy, right.
Yes, this time the cicada is the fool. Well, actually, so it's interesting. This is most often taken as a tale illustrating the value of hard work and denouncing the cicada for its frivolity, for its failure to prepare for the future. So yes, the most common interpretation is that the cicada is the fool. But not just recently, even going back to ancient times, there have been counter interpretations and sort of inverted variants of the story, in some cases castigating the ant for its greed or in some cases for its lack of charity, or pointing out good things about the cicada. After all, even the classic version of the story I just mentioned has the cicada not merely seeking its own enjoyment in the summer. It spends the summer singing to wayfarers and giving them pleasure in its song. And this emphasizes something that came up in our discussion of the feedress. Socrates talks about this, but it's also mentioned in an editor's note here. In the Handsome book. Ancient Greek sources regularly indicate that the Greeks were delighted by the singing of cicadas. They they thought it was just great. They loved to sit and listen to them. It was wonderful entertainment. So the cicada was giving two others of itself what it could give all summer long, and then the ant would not later share what it had gathered. And then some other tellings still emphasized that, hey, whatever the ant has gathered, it the ant did not create, by the way, it simply raided from its surroundings. So it's interesting. This is a more complex tale than I remember from when I was a kid. I mean, I encountered some version of it that was just kind of like, yeah, basically like do your homework instead of playing outside. It's like, you know, think ahead. But but there I think there are actually more layers to it.
Yeah, yeah, now that you pointed out, I think this, yeah, totally the case. I think I also grew up just consuming the very sort of like capitalist version of it, where it's like, don't don't be a grasshopper, be an ant. But yeah, you look at it this way, it's like, well, that ant sounds miserable, Like he's not dancing, he's not singing, he's not enriching the world in any way. I guess, you know he'll be fine through the winner, but come on, what kind of life is he living? Also, he's a weird aunt in that he's such an individualist and male, I guess. And this, yeah, we're setting aside a lot of biological realities to consider the moral here.
Maybe it should be that the cicada speaks to the ant colony as a whole, and the queen communicates back for it or something.
I don't know, there's a whole Pixar movie right here.
Yeah, but I do think the traditional understanding of the esopic tale does match with like the origin story given by Socrates and the Feederist dialogue, where in both cases it's just like that the the cicada is a being that is so enraptured with sort of the performance of the moment, like it gets caught up in song and dance, or well, in both cases, it gets caught up in song and dance to the point that it is it dies later or it cannot feed itself when winter comes.
It has a very short term view of life because it's it's life is very short term at this stage. Yea, and yeah, there are different ways to interpret that. Does it bring on feelings of, you know, vast summer melancholy or is there a little bit of you know, a little bit of live live life to the fullest while you got it sort of a vibe going on here. I mean, there's so many ways to interpret.
It, though, if you want to keep pumping the metaphors there. Actually, it's interesting that cicadas may have quite long lives in our underground stage before the part you even ever see es. But with the periodical cicada some of the longest development periods of any insect on Earth.
Yeah, it would be more like saying, hey, Grandpa, why don't you act your age instead of you know, writing jet skis and going to Burning Man or whatever the case may be, and Grandpa can rightly respond. It's like I've done all the other stuff before, I've lived the ant life before. Uh, this is this is my time to shine one last time.
Right, this is my short window of reproductive phase. Doesn't really map onto human life.
But darn it, we will. We will make everything fit one way or another. That's that's how that's how we use animals as ideas. Uh but uh, yeah, I mean that's I think it's the remarkable thing about the cicada. It's like it's it's life cycle and biology is so unique and fascinating, and then it's it's uniqueness, you know, begs for some sort of metaphoric usage, you know, like we we we have to see ourselves. We try to see ourselves in any animal just to see what we can get out of it. Right, And there's a lot to play with there with the life cycle of the cicada.
No doubt. All Right, is it time? Is it time to go underground? And hope we don't pick up any massive sporaes on the way. Is that when you're coming up.
That's when you're coming up. Yeah, the coming up is when you hit those spores. But you know there's other stuff that can go wrong down there as well. But Yeah, it's time for us to go underground, but we'll be we'll we'll be back with new non cicada episodes, and who knows, in time, we might return to the world of cicadas. Because, as we've been discussing, this is all going to happen again. We're gonna get excited. People are going to get excited about cicadas in the future, be it just your your normal annual cicadas or those periodical emergencies that can just be so amazing and overwhelming and yeah, some a little like frightening and icky, but I think you should embrace the cicada. Don't look away, look closer, because there's a there's a lot to there's a lot of wonder there if you look at it. All right, we'll go and close it out here then, But again, we'd love to hear from everyone out there. If you have any thoughts or observations about cicadas. We'll continue to talk about it in listener mail. Yes, send in your photos. You find a good cicada, take a photo of it and send it to us. If no one else in your life is interested in it, we are interested. Show us those bugs.
We'll remind us your favorite thing you've done with Cicada exoskeletons with the.
Molts, Yeah yeah. Or if you're doing stuff with sound, are you doing, like you know, field samples of a Circada song and doing something with it. Send us an example of that. We'd love to hear it. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but we also put out other stuff during the week. We got that listener mail on Mondays, We've got a short form episode that comes out on Wednesdays, and then on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns, so just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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