Seventeen-year cicada nymph of Brood X (dead); an orange insect with large, red eyes and small, immature wings
17 May 2021
Cicadas are insects of the order Hemiptera (i.e., true bugs) and the superfamily Cicadoidea. They are found throughout the world. But those of the North American genus Magicicada have the unusual property of living underground for periods of thirteen or seventeen years. This behavior is believed to have evolved as a survival strategy. When they emerge, they do so in such great numbers that there are simply too many for predators to eat, and the long periods between their emergences keeps predator populations low. A large brood of seventeen-year cicadas is emerging in the Middle-Atlantic and Midwest states in 2021.
The name cicada is from Latin and echoic, an imitation of the insect’s sound.
Pliny the Elder has a passage on cicadas in his Natural History. Written by 77 C.E., the passage reads, in part:
Similis cicadis vita, quarum duo genera: minores quae primae proveniunt et novissimae pereunt—sunt autem mutae; sequens est volatura earum3 quae canunt: vocantur achetae et, quae minores ex his sunt, tettigonia, sed illae magis canorae. mares canunt in utroque genere, feminae silent.
(The life-history of the cicada is similar. Of this there are two kinds: the smaller ones that come out first and perish latest—these however are mute; subsequent is the flight of those that sing: they are called Singers, and the smaller ones among them grass-hoppers, but the former are more vocal. The males in either class sing, but the females are silent.)
Virgil makes a more poetic reference to cicadas in his Eclogue 5, composed c.40 B.C.E.:
Haec tibi semper erunt, et cum sollemnia vota
reddemus Nymphis, et cum lustrabimus agros.
dum iuga montis aper, fluvios dum piscis amabit,
dumque thymo pascentur apes, dum rore cicadae,
semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt.
ut Baccho Cererique, tibi sic vota quotannis
agricolae facient; damnabis tu quoque votis(These rites shall be yours for ever, both when we pay our yearly vows to the Nymphs, and when we purify our fields. So long as the boar loves the mountaintops, and the fish the streams; so long as the bees feed on thyme and the cicadas on dew—so long shall your honour, name, and glory abide. As to Bacchus and Ceres, so to you, year after year, shall the husbandmen pay their vows; you, too, shall hold them to their vows.)
The word cicada appears in English in the fourteenth century. John Trevisa’s c.1387 translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum has this:
There is a maner grashoppere þat hatte cicada and haþ þat name of canendo “syngynge,” for wiþ a ful litil throte he[o] schapiþ a wondirful song, as hit is isaide in Exameron. This cicada in þe myddel hete at mydday whanne treen brekep wiþ hete, þanne þe more clere eyre sche draweþ, þe more clereliche sche syngep. Also ȝif a man hielde oyle vpon þis cicadas he dieþ anone for þe poores þep istoppid þat þey may nouȝt drawe breeþ. But ȝif me hielde vppon hem vynegre anon, þanne þay beeþ onlyue anon, for þe strengpe of þe vynegre openeþ hooles and pores þat weren istoppid by byndynge of oyle, as Ambrose seiþ.
(There is a manner of grasshopper that is called cicada and has the name of canendo “singing,” for with a very small throat she shapes a wonderful song, as it is said in the Hexameron. This cicada in the middle heat at midday when trees break with heat, then the more clear air she draws, the more clearly she sings. Also, if a man pours oil upon these cicadas they soon die for the pores are stopped so that they may not draw breath. But if I quickly pour vinegar upon them, then they are soon alive, for the strength of the vinegar opens holes and pores that were stopped by the binding of oil, as Ambrose says.)
Cicadas are ugly critters, and, when they emerge in great numbers, they can be annoying, but they are, in the words of Douglas Adams, mostly harmless.
Sources:
Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1879.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. cicada, -e, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. cicada, n.
Pliny. Natural History, Books 8–11, second edition. H. Rackham, trans. Loeb Classical Library 353. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983, 11.32, 488–89.
Trevisa, John. On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus De proprietatibus rerum, vol. 1 of 3. M.C. Seymour, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, 12.14, 625. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Virgil. “Eclogue 5” Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI, revised edition.. H. Rushton Fairclough, trans. G.P. Goold, revisions. Loeb Classical Library 63. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999, lines 74–80, 58–59.
Image credit: David Wilton, 2021.