Croatian Basketball Ants...Oh...and Brad Pitt

Today I received a very interesting ticket to a basketball game held recently in Zagreb, Croatia. It came from a good friend of mine, Glen Chilton (now living in Townsville, Australia), with whom I chased termites in New Orleans a few years back. Glen was in Croatia to chase a particular and peculiar small freshwater fish known as a Dace, previously described as extinct. The purpose of the chase was for a book he is working on. The basketball game was another matter entirely, and Glen thought that it mattered in a particular way to me.

At first glance, as Glen noticed in his letter, the team mascot looks like a bee. Yes, but look at what it is standing upon. In fact, it isn't a bee, but rather an ant. Why would a basketball team choose ants as their team mascot?

I'm thinking they know Greek mythology.

According to Ovid's Metamorphosis, the Island of Aegina was devastated by a plague (caused by Zeus's wife Hera in some accounts) that resulted in the death of all but the family of King Aeacus. The King pleaded to Zeus to help his kingdom. Zeus, in fickle Greek god fashion, answers the call by transforming the ants nesting in an oak tree, just outside the palace window, into an army of young soldiers. We don't learn where the women of the island might have come from but apparently whoever first created this story was unaware that the ants in question would have almost certainly all have been female. In any event, these became know as the Myrmidons, a self-sacrificing, aggressive and ruthless army that would come to be led by Achilles of Illiad fame.

And who played Achilles in the 2004 movie Troy? Brad Pitt! Brad was the leader of the ant army, and descendant of the ants himself.

So why would a basketball team have ants as their mascot? Well, who wouldn`t want to associate a team with the most competitive, aggressive team players on the planet, ants! It was common in England in the 1800s to call gangs of thugs Myrmidons, so it is nice to see ants rehabilitated into a more normative team activity.

Photo credits:

Scanned copy of ticket-Me

Movie Poster from Wikipedia (Troy (film))