creature! It wallows in its food! It grips it between its claws like a

wrestler clutching his opponent, and with head and feet together rolls

up its paste like a rope-maker twisting a hawser. What an indecent,

stinking, gluttonous beast! I don't know what angry god let this

monster loose upon us, but of a certainty it was neither Aphrodite nor

No doubt Zeus, the God of the Thundercrap.

But perhaps some spectator, some beardless youth, who thinks

himself a sage, will say, "What is this? What does the beetle mean?"