Revelation 9:7

Arabian poets compare locusts in head to the horse, in breast to the lion, in feet to the camel, in body to the snake, in antennæ to a girl's long, waving hair. The resemblance of the head in locusts and in horses has been often noticed (Cavalleta, Italian), and their hard scales resemble plates of equine armour. The rest of the description is partly fanciful (“crowns gleaming like gold,” human faces; yet cf. Pl. H. N. vi. 28, Arabes mitrati degunt, aut intonsa crine), partly (Revelation 9:8-9) true to nature (woman's hair [i.e., abundant and flowing, a well-known trait of the Parthians and Persians], and lion-like teeth, scaly plates on the thorax, and rustling or whirring noises), partly (Revelation 9:10) recapitulatory (= Revelation 9:5; note ὁμοίας σκορπίοις, an abbreviated comparison like Homer's κόμαι Χαρίτεσσιν ὁμοῖαι), partly (Revelation 9:11) imaginative (cf. Proverbs 30:27). The leader of these demons is the angel of the inferno from which they issue. His name is Abaddon (cf. Exp. Times, xx. 234 f.), a Heb. equivalent for שׁאול personified like death and Hades. The final syllable of the name is taken to represent as in Greek, a personal ending. Hence the LXX rendering ἀπώλεια probably suggested the synonym Ἀπολλύων, containing a (sarcastic?) gibe at Apollo with whom the locust was associated (“uelut proprium nomen Caesaribus,” Suet. Oct. 29); cf. Schol. on Aesch. Agam. 1085 and Plato's Cratylus, 404, 405. Both Caligula and Nero aped the deity of Apollo, among their other follies of this kind, as Antiochus Epiphanes had already done.