Dung Beetle - in Literature

In Literature

In Aesop's fable "The Dung Beetle and the Eagle", the eagle kills a hare despite the beetle's appeals. The beetle takes revenge by twice destroying the eagle's eggs. The eagle, in despair, flies up to Olympus and places her latest eggs in Zeus's lap, beseeching the god to protect them. When the beetle finds out what the eagle has done, it stuffs itself with dung, goes straight up to Zeus and flies right into his face. Zeus is startled at the sight of the unpleasant creature and jumps to his feet. The eggs are broken. Zeus then learns of the beetle's plea which the eagle had ignored. He scolds the eagle and urges the beetle to stay away from the bird. But his efforts to persuade the beetle fail; so he changes the breeding season of the eagles to take place at a time when the beetles are not above ground.

Aristophanes alluded to Aesop's fable several times in his plays. In Peace, the hero rides up to Olympus to free the goddess Peace from her prison. His steed is an enormous dung beetle which has been fed so much dung that it has grown to monstrous size.

In Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, the transformed character of Gregor Samsa is called an "old dung beetle" (alter Mistkäfer) by the charwoman.

The inadvertent theft of a prized scarab forms the backdrop to Something Fresh, the first of P.G. Wodehouse's celebrated Blandings Castle novels.

In Richard Marsh's gothic novel The Beetle: A Mystery (1987), a beetle with supernatural powers comes to England to haunt politician Paul Lessingham.

See also Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold-Bug".