when he was captured by the enemy, and placed in the scales, he only weighed as much as an obolus. Comp. Athenæus, 12, 77, in Schweighäuser, 4. 551, 552. Aelian, Var. 9. 14; the Grecian Anthology also (2. 350. LXV. Jacob's Tempe, 2, 7) furnishes us with a contribution—
"Plötzlich erhoben vom leisesten Hauch des lispelnden Westwinds,[1]
stieg jüngst, leichter als Spreu, Markos zum Aether hinauf.
Und er hätte die Luft mit rauschender Eile durchsegelt,
hätte der Spione Geweb nicht ihm die Füsse verstrickt,
Als er nun hier fünf Tag und Nächte gehangen, ergriff er
eineu der Fäden und stieg langsani zur Erde herab."
The following, too, are also stories which belong to this group. A certain man was so thin of body that he could jump through the eye of a needle. Another crept nimbly on to the spider's web, which was hanging in the air, and danced skilfully upon it until a spider came, which spun a thread round his neck and throttled him with it. A third was able to pierce a sun-mote with his head, and pass his whole body through it. A fourth was in the habit of riding on an ant, but the ant threw him off and trampled him to death with one foot. A filth was on one occasion blowing up the fire, and, as in our story, flew up the chimney with the smoke. A sixth was lying by the side of a sleeping man, and as the latter breathed rather heavily, was blown out of the window. Finally a seventh was so small that he dared not go near anyone for fear of being drawn in to his nose with the air when he breathed.
In Eucharius Eyering's Sprichwörter, 1601, a spider relates,
"Einsmals fieng ich ein Schneider stolz,[2]
der war so schwer als Lautenholz,
der mit eim Schebhut in die Wett
vom Himmel rab her fallen thet.
- ↑ Suddenly raised by the softest breath of the murmuring west wind, Markos, lighter than chatff, mounted not long ago to aether. And he would have sailed through the air with intoxicating swiftness, if his feet had not caught in a spider's web. When he had hung in it for five days and nights, he seized one of the threads and slowly descended to earth.
- ↑ Once did I catch a tailor proud,
Heavy he was as elder-wood,
From Heaven above he'd run a race,
With an old straw hat to this place,
In Heaven he might have stayed no doubt,
For no one wished to turn him out.
He fell in my web, hung in a knot,
Could not get out. I liked it not
That e'en the straw hat, safe and sound
Nine days ere him came to the ground.
