ANT-LION
Formicoleon · mirmicoleon
A text page, not a picture. The Physiologus chapter starts near the foot of f.180v and ends at the top of f.181r. No miniature. Not reproduced here.
VIEW THE FOLIO · BAYERISCHE STAATSBIBLIOTHEK ↗One name, two animals. Isidore’s ant-lion is a small hunter. The Physiologus ant-lion is a hybrid that cannot eat.
To other animals it is like an ant; to ants, like a lion.
A small animal that hides in the dust and kills ants carrying grain.
The child of a lion and an ant. It can eat neither meat nor grain, and it dies.
Isidore explains a name. The Physiologus tells a birth and a death. The starvation story is not in Isidore.
THE LAYERS · KEPT DISTINCT
ISIDOREETYMOLOGIAE XII.3.10
The last entry in Isidore’s chapter on small animals. He gives two readings of the name: the “lion of ants”, or ant and lion at once. It is a small animal, hostile to ants, that hides in the dust and kills the ants that carry grain. He says nothing about its parents, its food or its death.
PHYSIOLOGUS LINELATIN VERSION Y · CH. XXXIII
The chapter opens with Job: Eliphaz, king of the Temanites, says the ant-lion perished because it had no food. Its father has a lion’s face and eats meat. Its mother has an ant’s face and eats pulses. Their child has both natures, a lion in front and an ant behind, so it can eat neither and dies. The lesson is James 1:8: the double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.
EARLIER SOURCEGREEK BIBLE · JOB 4:11
The name comes from the Septuagint: myrmēkoleōn ōleto para to mē echein boran, “the ant-lion perished for lack of prey”. The Hebrew word there is usually read as “lion”. Whether the Greek translator made a mistake is still argued.
MANUSCRIPT WITNESSBSB CLM 14388 · ff.180v–181r
A ninth-century Bavarian miscellany that carries the Y version of the Physiologus without pictures. The chapter sits between the vulture (XXXII) and the weasel (XXXIIII), as in the modern edition. Its opening and closing words match the edited text.
The Aberdeen Bestiary has no ant-lion. Its mermecoleon on f.96r is a stone in the sea, hollow and round, read as an image of the Virgin. It is not this creature and is not used here.
HOW WE KNOW WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW
Isidore XII.3.10 checked in two editions. Physiologus Y ch. XXXIII read in Carmody’s edition (1944, p. 127). Job 4:11 checked in the Septuagint.
Clm 14388 ff.180v–181r inspected in the library’s viewer. The chapter’s place and its opening and closing words match the edition.
The witness is a text page. No ant-lion picture has been verified, and none is reproduced or implied.
Aberdeen MS 24: no ant-lion; f.96r is the stone. Getty MS 100: no ant-lion among the museum’s catalogued leaves; its ants leaf (fol. 23) shows ants only.
Record levels, status labels, the streams diagram and the interface framing are authored by Make It Believable. They are not historical testimony. Readers today often match Isidore’s dust-hider to the larva of the insect now called the antlion. That match is a modern reading, not Isidore’s claim.
WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW YET
- How the Greek Physiologus chapter reads, and which Greek recension first told the starvation story.
- Whether the B version, B-Isidore or any illustrated bestiary carries the chapter.
- Whether Isidore knew the Physiologus chapter.
- The folios of the same chapter in the other Y witnesses, Munich Clm 19417 and Bern 611.
- A medieval picture of the ant-lion with a verified folio and clear reuse rights.
SOURCES
- Isidore, Etymologiae XII · LacusCurtius (Lindsay text) ↗
- Isidore, Etymologiae XII · The Latin Library ↗
- F. J. Carmody (ed.), Physiologus Latinus Versio Y (1944), ch. XXXIII · PDF via The Medieval Bestiary ↗
- Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek · Clm 14388 · f.180v ↗
- Septuagint, Job 4 · Greek text ↗
- A. Chirilă, “They made ‘a mistake’ in Job, 4, 11…”, Diacronia 7 (2018) ↗
- Aberdeen Bestiary · MS 24 · f96r (the stone mermecoleon) ↗