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The Original Ant Men
The Birth of the Myrmidons
One of my favourite Marvel movies is Ant Man (don’t judge, it’s composed of an underrated blend of humour and action). But the concept of men becoming the size of ants (or indeed ants becoming the size of men) is an ancient one. Go back a couple thousand years and you will still find humanity marvelling (pardon the pun) at the way ant colonies work together as a collective in a way humans can only dream about.
Amongst many of the warriors in Homer’s Iliad, we have the army of Achilles, who are called the Myrmidons. The root of their name is the ancient Greek words myrmex, meaning ‘ant’. So, we have here an example of an ancient race of warriors known as ‘ant men’ — but why?
Well, there are a couple of reasons for this, one of which is that they work well together as a team and have a clear hierarchal structure. But the other is much more fantastical and can be found in Book VII of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Juno’s Plague (VII. 501–614)
In order to understand the birth of the Myrmidons, we have to go back a little further than their origin story. King Minos of Crete, intent of start a war with Athens to retaliate against Theseus’ murder of the minotaur, approaches Aeacus, king of the island of Aegina, for help. But Aeacus refuses, having already…
