Her story survives in the works of fifth-century AD Latin grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus.
[2] Myrmex was an Attican girl famed for her cleverness and her chastity, and for this reason she was loved by Athena, the virgin goddess of wisdom and patron-goddess of Attica.
[4] Athena, heartbroken by the girl's betrayal, hated Myrmex as she had once loved her, and turned her into an ant, doomed to only be able to steal crops.
[7][8] The story of the transformation of the Myrmidons is older than that of the girl, and it was probably what prompted the invention of Myrmex's myth in the first place.
[9] Due to the language used about Athena loving Myrmex, some have taken it to mean that the myth has homosexual undertones.