Pyraustra

 


The pyraustra, also known as the pyrallis was a fiery dragon like insect from Greek and Roman mythology. It is tiny, somewhere between the size of a gnat and a house fly. It had fiery colours, and a glowing bulb on the end of its tail. It also only had four legs in spite of being insect like, but believing insects had only four legs was a pretty common thing in ancient times.


Pyraustras are born directly from fire. They must stay within the heat of the fire or die. Within the fire’s range pyraustraus fly about chaotically, mostly moving upward until they are out of range of the fire and then puff out of existence. The pyraustra were primarily found in the copper smelting furnaces of Cyprus. It’s wildly believed today that the legend of the pyraustra was misinterpretations of sparks or embers flying away from the fire.


How dragony the pyraustra was has been called into question, as the only reference to it being dragon like comes from a modern source, Inventorum Naturum by Una Woodruff. In this book she references a non-existent journal by Pliny The Elder for her information on the pyraustra. Actual ancient sources on the pyraustra started with Aristotle. He describes the pyraustra as ‘little beasts’ that are phoenix like. So it’s questionable how insect like the pyraustra was too. It’s likely ancient people didn’t have a consistent idea of what pyraustras looked like, and it was just a myth explaining embers.


Even in the time of Aristotle people already knew that embers were just offshoots of flames and not little animals. However, pyraustras being associated with copper furnaces probably means they originated much earlier in the archaic Greek period during the bronze age. By the time the Hellenic period came about the myth had already been removed from its original context, and was remembered as a weird thing that happened in a distant place.


Today the pyraustra myth has largely been forgotten. However it has lent its name to multiple insects, such as the Pyraustra genus of moths, and the Pyralis genus of moths, and a species of firefly called Photinus pyralis.



Sources


https://creatures-of-myth.fandom.com/wiki/Pyrausta


https://offbeat.fandom.com/wiki/Pyrausta


https://abookofcreatures.com/2015/05/15/pyrallis/


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