Station IX: Insect Music
From Homer onwards, ancient writers show a great fondness for the musical ability of insects, particularly the cicada and the grasshopper or locust. Following Plato’s tale of the cicadas as mediators between the Muses and humans, these animals seemed to be predestined for the representation of ars poetica, if not the poets themselves. Since the advent of Hellenistic poetry, the real anatomical differences between the cicada, the locust and the grasshopper have been ignored, so that these species were in effect all rolled into one, their sweet and continuous chirping indicative of a bucolic setting.
For ancient authors, their sound-producing mechanism affords the sole criterion to distinguish between locust, grasshopper or cricket. The former two species stridulate by scraping with the hind leg on the wing. A file on one wing of the cricket, on the other hand, is rubbed by a scraper on the other wing. Two silver medaillons in Munich (2nd century BC), that previously formed the inner part of a cup supposedly from Nihawand/Iran (ancient Persia), depict a locust/grasshopper (akris). The insect is sitting on a vine-branch eating the blossom of the grapevine. Beneath the harming character of the insect the image also reveals an arresting visual detail: the depiction of the stridulatio, as the hind leg with spines is raised to the wings. Further we see in these silver reliefs not only a very close representation of two qualities of the animal, but even a specific iconography for music: the very moment when the insect produces sound. – In contrast to the stridulatio of the grasshopper (orthoptera), the cicada produces sound by the vibration of the so-called tymbal in the anterior abdomen, using the largely hollow abdomen as a sound box.
The popularity of the sound-producing cicada in Hellenistic poetry makes it unsurprising that it outnumbers the grasshopper in ancient depictions. But how did artists represent the—invisible—sound production of cicadas? Beside a direct juxtaposition of cicada and instrument on some gems the ancient artists solved the problem with the anthropomorphisation of the cicadas. On several gems the cicadas play instruments of human musicians: auloi, cithara and trigonon. In two further cases, a cicada plays the Phrygian aulos next to a column with a sundial on top.
The anthropomorphisation of the cicada—and the akris—in fact provides enticing parallels with the comparison of ancient poets with these insects. The relevant gems are very illuminating, considering the ancient epigrams. Just as could be observed in the anthropomorphising iconography, their music is, in line with ancient literature, equal to that of the Muses and real human musicians.
