That the bees were born in the corpse of the injured animal.
That the bees came forth out of the corrupted flesh.

That a small room was chosen, made narrow just for this,
and the animal was led beneath the low roof and cramped walls

and that the four winds came through the four windows
and that the morning fell upon the small

and heavy head, its horns curving out
from the whorled medallion of the forehead.

That the hot nostrils and the breathing mouth were stopped
and the flesh was beaten, pounded to a pulp,
beneath the unbroken hide.

                                He lies on his side on the broken apple-boughs. He lies on a bed
                of fragrant thyme and the cassia is laid in sprays about him
and the sweetness of the fields surrounds him.

Do this when the west winds blow. Do this when the meadows
are alive with poppies. Do this when the swallow hangs her pendulous

nest and the dew is warm and the days grow long.
And all the living fluids will swirl within the hide, and the bones

will dissolve like bread in water.
And a being will be born, and another, and then a thousand

and a thousand thousand swarming without limbs or form.
And that the wings will grow from atoms. And that the stirring wings

will find their way into the air. And that a thousand stirring wings
will come forth into the day like a storm of arrows made of wind

and light. And the flesh will fall back into the earth, and the horror
into sweetness and the dark into the sun and the bees
thus born.

—Virgil, Georgics, Book IV.281-314