The classical mythology of ancient Greece is plentifully populated by all manner of famous legendary beasts – from centaurs, satyrs, gorgons, and Stymphalian birds to harpies, sirens, the minotaur, and much more. There are also some far less familiar but no less fascinating examples, including the diminutive but thought-provoking fusion of herpetology and entomology presented here now – namely, the pyrallis of ancient Cyprus.
Also known variously as the pyrausta, pyragones, or pyrotocon, the pyrallis derives all of its names from the Greek word 'pyr', which translates as 'fire', because it is intimately associated with this traditional fundamental element. According to traditional classical Greek legend, the pyrallis was a tiny incandescent beast resembling a winged, four-limbed, golden insect but in more recent times it is often represented with a scaly reptilian body and the head of a fire-breathing dragon too.
Moreover, not only was it born in but also spent its entire life flitting amongst the coruscating flames of copper-smelting furnaces in Cyprus, living amid these blazing domains in great swarms resembling gleaming showers of glowing sparks, borne upon the furnaces' billowing heat and smoke. Should any of these minute insectoids fly beyond the confines of their infernal abode for even a split-second, however, they would instantly turn to ash and die.
In that respect, the pyrallis, although entirely different in form and size, is reminiscent of another creature from Greek fable, the fire-inhabiting salamander, after which real-life salamanders are named (even though they certainly do not inhabit fire!).
Needless to say, it was long assumed that such a fanciful animal as the pyrallis was indeed entirely fabulous, with no basis in reality. However, as will now be revealed here, although attracting scant scientific attention even at the time of its original presentation in a published article, and nowadays, 75 years later, having been all but forgotten, there is one compelling line of speculation that seeks to identify this mythical mini-beast with a certain bona fide species, one whose own intimate association with fire may have genuinely inspired the pyrallis legend.
The earliest record relating unequivocally to the pyrallis as described by me above is a brief passage that can be found in Chapter 36 (not 42 as sometimes incorrectly claimed) of Book #11 from Naturalis Historia (The Natural History). This is the encyclopaedic magnum opus produced by the eminent 1st-Century Roman scholar/naturalist Pliny the Elder (23/24 AD to 79 AD), which consists of 37 books contained within ten volumes.
In the 1855 English translation of Naturalis Historia prepared by Dr John Bostock, the relevant passage reads as follows:
That element [fire], also, which is so destructive to matter, produces certain animals; for in the copper-smelting furnaces of Cyprus, in the very midst of the fire, there is to be seen flying about a four-footed animal with wings, the size of a large fly: this creature is called the "pyrallis," and by some the "pyrausta." So long as it remains in the fire it will live, but if it comes out and flies a little distance from it, it will instantly die.
True, it was not the first pyrallis mention. In his comprehensive work History of Animals, celebrated Greek scholar Aristotle (384-322 BC) stated that the turtle dove was at war with the pyrallis. However, he seemingly considered the latter creature to be merely some form of unspectacular bird, as this mention was contained within a paragraph devoted entirely to warfare between different types of familiar bird, such as the owl, crow, raven, kite, green woodpecker, gull, tern, and buzzard. Consequently, it would appear to have no relevance to the fire-sustaining insect-dragon under investigation by me here. (Indeed, various Aristotlean researchers have identified this avian pyrallis as a type of pigeon, the pygmy dove.)
Conversely, and also confusingly, elsewhere in his same work Aristotle described in some detail a creature that he did not name but which is evidently one and the same as the pyrallis that would be named and documented by Pliny three centuries later.
Here is Aristotle's account of his unnamed version:
Living animals are found in substances that are usually supposed to be incapable of putrefaction…In Cyprus, in places where copper-ore is smelted, with heaps of the ore piled on day after day, an animal is engendered in the fire, somewhat larger than a blue bottle fly, furnished with wings, which can hop or crawl through the fire. And…perish when you keep the one away from the fire…Now the salamander is a clear case in point, to show us that animals do actually exist that fire cannot destroy; for this creature, so the story goes, not only walks through the fire but puts it out in doing so…Such is the mode of generation of the insects above enumerated.
It is clear that this passage by Aristotle describing an unnamed blue bottle-sized fire-inhabiting creature was the primary source utilized by Pliny for his own version, in which said creature was referred to by him by name, as the pyrallis (or pyrocausta), and also that Aristotle deemed it to be some type of insect. Less clear, meanwhile, is why Aristotle applied that very same name, pyrallis, to an entirely different, wholly unrelated creature, a kind of bird. All very strange, and bewildering!
Anyway, one subsequent early work also documented the pyrallis, albeit not by that name. This work was Book 2 of De Natura Animalium, a 17-book collection of brief accounts and anecdotes concerning natural history, written by Roman author Aelian, aka Claudius Aelianus (c175-c235 AD), with a particular emphasis upon extraordinary or fabulous cases.
Here is the short passage that he wrote about creatures that he termed fire-flies but which obviously referred to the pyrallis:
That living creatures should be born upon the mountains, in the air, and in the sea, is no great marvel [I'd beg to differ regarding creatures being born in the air!], since matter, food, and nature are the cause. But that there should spring from fire winged creatures which men call 'Fire-flies,' and that these should live and flourish in it, flying to and fro about it, is a startling fact. And what is more extraordinary, when these creatures stray outside the range of the heat to which they are accustomed and take in cold air, they at once perish. And why they should be born in the fire and die in the air others must explain.
Notwithstanding Aelian's naming of them as fire-flies, these mythical entities' fire-generated, fire-inhabiting lifestyle sets them wholly apart from the real-life insects known to us today as fire-flies, which are bioluminescent lampyrid beetles, and also include the familiar glow-worms. For their only connection to fire is the fiery light that they emit. Perhaps, therefore, Alien had somehow conflated the legendary pyrallis with the genuine fire-flies and glow-worms.
Whatever the explanation for his nomenclatural confusion, however, Aelian certainly seemed to believe in the authenticity of the pyrallis, so might there be a real-life insect known to him that gave rise to this legendary mini-monster? Such a fascinating notion was put forward as a very plausible possibility in 1950 by Emile Janssens, via a fascinating yet little-known paper published in French by the scientific journal Latomus, in turn published by the Société d'Études Latines de Bruxelles, in Belgium.
As Janssens noted in his paper, pyrophilic or pyrophilous (fire-loving) insects are far from unknown. Take, for example, the aptly-dubbed smoke flies of the genus Microsania, belonging to the taxonomic family Platypezidae, the flat-footed flies. Just a few millimeters long at most, typically hump-backed in appearance, and of global distribution, these diminutive dipterans seem to appear from nowhere wherever there is a fire and smoke, and swarm amidst the fire like motes of black ash, then vanish as swiftly as they appeared once the fire dies and the smoke dissipates.
Their attraction to fire was first scientifically recorded by Belgian entomologist G. Severin via a 1921 paper, in which he revealed how, after having sought in vain for any Microsania specimens for 20 years within a particular area of Belgium, he unexpectedly observed numerous individuals dancing in swarms amidst the smoke generated by a heath fire in that very same locality, but that was not all. Not one specimen could be found more than a few feet (1 m) beyond the perimeter of the fire and its smoke; and once the fire had ceased and its embers had cooled, every last fly disappeared, not a single one remaining in the area.
This scenario bears much more than a passing resemblance to that of the pyrallis legend, as Janssens commented in his paper. Nevertheless, he dismissed these flies as the likely identity for the latter entity on account of how tiny they are, in stark contrast to the classical writers quoted by me earlier here all stating that the pyrallis was the size of a large blue bottle fly, i.e. Calliphora vomitoria, a very familiar species of blow fly, which measures 1-1.5 cm long and is therefore considerably bigger than a Microsania fly.
Although far from unknown as noted earlier, out of the more than 1 million insect species currently described by science (and with countless more still awaiting description) only around 50-60 of them are pyrophilic. Of these, moreover, the vast majority are beetles, plus ten dipterans (true flies), eight hemipteran bugs, one wasp, and one moth. Two of the best-known pyrophilic beetles are a pair of European carabid (ground beetle) species – Sericoda quadripunctata (attracted to severe burning outbreaks) and Pterostichus quadrifoleolatus (to weak burnings).
By far the most famous and best-studied pyrophilic beetle species, however, and which was favoured above all other real-life creatures by Janssens as the identity of (or at least the inspiration for) the pyrallis, is a certain European species of buprestid wood-boring beetle. Despite its sombre black colouration, Melanophila acuminata is colloquially known as the fire beetle or fire bug, due to its decidedly fiery lifestyle, in every sense.
For just like the smoke flies, this insect species is irresistibly drawn to fire (hence yet another name for it, the fire-chaser beetle) – so much so that whenever there is a forest fire and all other creatures are fleeing away from it, these beetles are seen fleeing towards it! Indeed, rural fire fighters are often greatly hindered by large swarms of them while trying to extinguish such blazes, to the extent that they often have to wear special beekeeper attire in order to prevent these beetles from penetrating their clothes and biting them!
Several studies of this bizarre beetle, which is approximately 1 cm long, the size of a blue bottle fly, have uncovered the reason for its obsession with fire and the various anatomical accessories that it has evolved to assist it in locating conflagrations. As is so often true in so many disparate walks of life, it all has its basis in sex!
The fire beetle has evolved to copulate specifically upon the still-burning wood of newly-scorched trees, especially conifers, and to lay its eggs beneath the charred bark of such trees, which then serves as food for this beetle's white maggot-like larvae once hatched. Even its feet have evolved an asbestos-like resistance to high temperatures that enables it to scuttle around unharmed on smoldering wood and sizzling embers too hot for a human hand to dare touch.
But how do fire beetles sense the presence of a fire? Examinations of their micro-anatomy have revealed that just like certain heat-sensing snakes such as pit vipers and rattlesnakes, these beetles possess a pair of thermal infra-red receptors, resembling tiny pits. These sensory organs are present on their thorax's undersurface, each containing a small water droplet that expands when heat is detected, triggering a nervous system response to follow the heat source.
They are extraordinarily sensitive to heat, enabling the beetles to home in on a fire from very considerable distances. In fact, one study whose results were published in 2012 estimated via the use of modeling that this particular species could detect a fire from as far away as 80 miles (roughly 130 km)!
In addition, there are olfactory organs on the antennae of this species that some researchers believe may detect smoke and thereby further assist it in its fire-sensing needs. No doubt such organs explain instances in which these insects have been known to swarm en masse at American football stadiums during a game, lured there by the thick haze of tobacco smoke resulting from the game's numerous smoking spectators.
Bearing in mind, however, as I've revealed earlier here, that the fire beetle is not the only known European species of pyrophilic beetle, why did Janssens favour it above all of the others as a possible explanation for the pyrallis legend?
After referring briefly to one of those others, here is what he stated in his paper:
But there is better. We know, thanks to the English entomologist W[illiam]. E. Sharp, the extraordinary habits of a Buprestid beetle which flies with the vivacity of a fly and which has the size required by the indications of ancient authors. It is Melanophila acuminata.
He then quoted a very pertinent excerpt concerning Sharp that had appeared in a 1934 scientific account written by fellow entomologist A. Collart and published in the Société Entomologiquede Belgique's Bulletin. Knowing that this species could be found on charred pine tree trunks, Sharp had set about seeking specimens of it in a Berkshire pine forest where a fire had recently broken out. As documented by Collart:
It was only after a long search that a single specimen of Melanophila was caught on a charred stump of Pine; this was a meagre harvest, when, guided by a distant smoke, Mr. Sharp and the friend who accompanied him arrived at a place where the fire was still active. Immediately several specimens of Melanophila were captured; some were running on ground too hot for the hand to be able to rest on it. Others were installed, often in copula on burning pine stumps or, under a bright August sun, flew through puffs of acrid smoke released by the burning peat; and, grilled by the peaty materials on fire, blinded by a suffocating smoke, the two researchers made a painful but very fruitful hunt for the Melanophila!
As Janssens judiciously pointed out, the above description certainly parallels that of Aelian (as well as Pliny's and Aristotle's) for the pyrallis. Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that the fuel used in the copper ore furnaces of Cyprus long ago consisted mainly of resinous pine wood.
And whereas fire beetles do not actually die when they eventually depart from the fire and smoke that initially attracted them, they do disappear back into their rural surroundings with extraordinary rapidity, plus their dark colouration makes them difficult to observe when no longer illuminated by the bright glow of a fire. So again it is not unreasonable to assume that ancient Cypriot observers assumed that they had simply turned to ash and died.
Consequently, I certainly feel that Janssens's proposal that the pyrallis myth was inspired by sightings of fire beetles swarming and flying amidst the burning, smoking pine wood fuel in copper ore furnaces to be a tenable one, and it is a great shame that it did not receive the scientific attention and further investigation that it so richly deserved.
NB – All pyrallis illustrations included here were created by me using Magic Studio, and represent this legendary beast in a variety of different forms, including insect-headed, dragon-headed, four-limbed, and six-limbed, all of which are descriptions that have been attributed to it by various authors down through the ages.
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