In the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, Carl Linnaeus classified the arthropods, including insects, arachnids and crustaceans, among his class "Insecta".
Linnaeus divided the group into three genera – Papilio, Sphinx and Phalaena.
The first two, together with the seven subdivisions of the third, are now used as the basis for nine superfamily names: Papilionoidea, Sphingoidea, Bombycoidea, Noctuoidea, Geometroidea, Tortricoidea, Pyraloidea, Tineoidea and Alucitoidea.
These were thematically arranged into six groups, and were drawn from classical sources including the Fabulae of Gaius Julius Hyginus and Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia.
[2] The second group was the Heliconii, comprising Apollo and Muses.