CHARACTERISTICS OF FISHERMEN IN GREECE AND ROME—POVERTY
“THE BADGE OF ALL OUR TRIBE”—DEITIES OF FISHING
“_Laud to the Lord, who gives to this, to that denies his wishes,
And dooms one toil and catch the prey, another eat the fishes._”[266]
This seems the most convenient, if not quite the chronological, place
for examining the position and attributes of fishermen in the poems,
epigrams, and eclogues of Greek literature.
Of the two oldest of fisherfolk epigrams or epitaphs, the first is
attributed to Sappho, the second to Alcæus of Mitylene. In these rings
insistent the same note of hard toil and poverty, which permeates the
piscatory eclogues of Theocritus and his followers.
From Sappho “the sole woman of any age or any country who gained and
still holds an unchallenged place in the first rank of the world’s
poets”[267] comes down
“Meniscus, mourning for his only son,
The toil-experienced fisher Pelagon,
Has placed upon his tomb a net and oar,
The badges of a painful life and poor.”[268]
I cherished high hope of finding in the recently discovered Fragments
of Sappho in Part X. of the _Oxyrhynchus Papyri_, or in the articles
on them by Mr. J. M. Edmonds in the _Classical Review_ of May 1914
and June 1916, a second fisher epigram, or at any rate an allusion to
fishing. Alas! the Papyri yield some amatory, but no piscatory verses.
Apparently neither Sappho nor Alcæus make any other reference to
fishing.
The verses of Alcæus stress poverty even more strongly:
“The fisher Diotimus had at sea
And shore the same abode of poverty—
His trusty boat—and when his days were spent,
Therein self-rowed, to ruthless Dis he went:
For that which did through life his woes beguile,
Supplied the old man with a funeral pile.”[269]
“From fragments of Greek Comedy it is evident that fishers were
among the familiar characters on the stage, and were sometimes the
protagonists.” Examination of the Old, Middle and New Comedians confirm
Dr. Hall.[270]
In Epicharmus (B.C. 540-450) the reputed founder of Comedy in Sicily;
in Sophron’s _The Fisherman and the Clown_, where the former naturally
outwits the country boor; in Plato the comedian’s _Phaon_, where he
may have ridiculed the legend of Sappho’s vain love for the Lesbian
fisherman; in _The Fishes_ by Archippus, where people were satirised
under the names of fishes spelled in the same way as their own; or (to
pass from Old to Middle Comedy) in _The Fisher-Woman_ by Antiphanes
(in the fragments of which, however, we are confronted by no Sex
problem, by no Suffragettism[271]); and (of the New Comedy authors) in
Menander’s _The Fishermen_ (where we gather from Pollux that a fisher
came on the stage fully equipped for fishing), in all these plays and
many more appear fisher folk.[272]
Archippus’ drama deserves a moment’s notice, because in imitation
of Aristophanes’ _Birds_ the poet ventured on a chorus composed
exclusively of _Fishes_. Extant fragments of the play (performed
probably in 413 B.C.) tell of war being declared by the fish against
their oppressors the Athenians, who were passionate opsophagists. The
principal condition of the Peace Points—whether _Fourteen_ or more our
data do not determine—secured the prompt delivery to the Fishes of the
head of their chief foe, Melanthios.
If the protocol of this Treaty had attracted the notice of President
Wilson, who as a constitutional historian attaches importance to the
“broadening down from precedent to precedent,” the demands of the
Allies for the immediate surrender of our arch-enemy, the Kaiser, might
have been more insistent and scarcely less successful.
And so from the first _loci classici_ of fishing in Homer we journey on
through the succeeding centuries. In nearly all we encounter fishing
and fishermen in literature or play. In the third B.C. we reach
the next _locus classicus_—“The Fisherman’s Dream,” Idyll XXI. of
Theocritus.
“Theocritus is the creator of the literary piscatory, as he is also
of the literary bucolic.” This dictum would, I think, be rendered
more accurate by the substitution of modeller in place of creator.
Theocritus, even if we allow for Stesichorus, Epicharmus, and Sophron,
stands out the first, not to create but to gather, and by his genius
reduce to regular literary shape, the existent poems and songs
(_Volkslieder_) which formed the stock in trade of the Bucoliastæ in
Cos, Sicily, and Magna Græcia.[273]
The influence of Theocritus on fishing literature in mime, epigram,
or romance is writ large in the pages not only of Moschus, Leonidas
of Tarentum, Alciphron, Plautus, Ovid, but also of Sannazaro in the
fifteenth, of our Spenser[274] and his followers in the sixteenth and
subsequent centuries, and even of Keats.[275]
This influence shows most widely in the more abundant literary bucolic.
Virgil, for instance, admits his model in the opening lines of
_Eclogue_ IV.:
_Sicelides Musæ, paulo maiora canamus ..._
A recent writer straightly asserts that “without Theocritus the
Bucolics (save the mark!) of Virgil could never have been conceived,
or, if conceived, would have miscarried.”[276]
Whether or not the offspring of this parentage is not too savagely
depreciated, we note with surprise that Virgil,
“Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and
horse and herd;
All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word,”
a professed imitator of Theocritus, to whom fishermen were as
familiar as the waters by which they lived and figured in many of his
_Idylls_,[277] never mentions fishermen in his _Bucolics_.
His only (I believe) allusions to them—and the first is merely
incidental to an account of the primitive Arts of Man, and how fishing
as an Art came in only as the Golden Age went out—are in _Georgic_, I.
141-2, _Atque alius latum funda iam verberat amnem_ | _Alta petens,
pelagoque alius trahit humida lina_, and in the _Æneid_ (XII. 517 ff.):
Et iuvenem exosum nequiquam bella Menœten,
Arcada, piscosæ cui circum flumina Lernæ
Ars fuerat, pauperque domus, nec nota potentum
Munera, conductaque pater tellure serebat.[278]
Even in these four lines observe how insistently rings out the note of
_poverty_!—the constant characteristic, the almost invariable badge,
as we shall soon see, of every professional fisherman in Greek poems,
plays, or writers from Homer down to the later Greek Romanticists,[279]
or (as far as I know) in the epigrams from 700 B.C. to 500 A.D., of the
_Anthologia Palatina_.[280]
“The figure of the weather-beaten fisher is a favourite one in the old
poets, and we meet it constantly in Art; in Greek, and in Roman Art
especially, it was a very favourite subject.”[281]
M. Campaux, Mr. Hall, and Herr Bunsmann confirm and amplify this
sentence of Blümner’s. The thesis of Bunsmann—not easy to obtain,
although published in 1910 at Münster in Westphalia—seems within its
limited scope (he scarcely touches on the methods or craft of fishing)
perhaps the best little treatise _De Piscatorum in Græcorum atque
Romanorum litteris usu_.
He sets out to discover and formulate a list of the characteristics
most frequently attributed to fishermen. He proceeds to establish each
of the dozen selected by buttressing questions from Homer down to
Sidonius.
Hospitality, Piety to the Gods and Dead, Shrewd (almost Pawky) Humour,
Old Age, Toil and Poverty figure most prominently. I can only notice
one or two of the passages cited in support of each characteristic, but
the evidence adduced generally carries conviction.
On the Hospitality of fishermen, poor though it were, stress is laid by
Greek and Roman writers.
Bunsmann’s citation of Petronius (_Sat._, 114) and Plutarch (_Vita
Pompeii_, 73) as witnesses to credit is, however, far from happy,
especially in the case of the former, who recounts that when the boat
had been so battered as to be a-wash “procurrere piscatores parvulis
expediti navigiis _ad prædam rapiendam_.” The lightning-like change of
the fishermen, on realising that their intended victims were ready to
defend themselves, from plunderers to helpers, and the non-denial to
the shipwrecked folk of the use of their hut for eating some sea-sodden
food, scarcely shine as exemplars of high Hospitality. No wonder the
guests dragged out a “most miserable night.”
Tyrrhenus, the old deaf fisherman in _The Ethiopian History_ (omitted
by Bunsmann), embodies a far better instance of the characteristic
Hospitality. His glad welcome and the surrender to his guests of “the
cosier part of his dwelling” betoken Nature’s gentleman.[282]
A still better instance meets us in the Greek romance of _Apollonius of
Tyre_[283] possibly an imitation of the Heliodorus idyll. The prince,
sole survivor of a shipwreck, is found, fed, clad, and afterwards
directed by an old fisherman to Pentapolis, where he wins a competition
before the king. This romance, which survives in a Latin version of the
sixth century, became in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries widely
popular and translated into most European languages. To it, as the
scenes and the characters prove, Shakespeare, or possibly Wilkins, must
have owed much of his _Pericles_.
On the question whence originated their Piety to the Gods, whether it
sprang from or was only influenced by the fact that their lives were
passed amid the unknown but ever-present and awful forces of Nature
identified with certain gods, or sprang rather from a gratitude
proportioned to future benefits, Bunsmann is discreetly non-committal.
But of outward and visible signs of such Piety the _Anthologia
Palatina_ is eloquent. Their Piety towards the dead is strikingly
attested by Hegesippus, the simplicity of whose style in his eight
epigrams in _Anth. Pal._ betokens an early date. “The fishermen brought
up from the sea in their net a half-eaten man, a most mournful relic of
some voyage. They sought not for unholy gain, but him and the fishes
too they buried under this light coat of sand.”[284]
Bunsmann furnishes two records of impiety among fishermen. The first
occurs in the well-known _Baiano procul a lacu recede_ of Martial
(_Epigr._, IV. 30), where an impious poacher in the very act of
landing his fish from the Emperor’s lake is stricken with blindness.
The second, in Athen., VII. 18, and Ælian, XV. 23, where Epopeus, a
fisherman of the island of Icarus, enraged by taking nothing but sacred
or _tabu Pompili_, turned to with his son and devoured them, only
themselves in turn to be devoured by a whale.[285]
But the _impietas_ charged from _Anth. Pal._, VI. 24, is fantastic. The
indictment has been drawn owing either to mistranslation of the passage
or inability to appreciate the rather heavy-handed humour (frequent in
the Greek and Roman writers of the time) of Lucilius, a conjectured
author of the Epigram.
Heliodorus lays down at the portals of the temple of “the Syrian
goddess” a votive offering of his fishing net worn out, not by catches
of fish, but of seaweed “from the beaches of goodly havens.” This
dedication, as fish were sacred to the goddess and in Syria were
forbidden as a food, has been imputed as an affront to the deity,
but quite incorrectly. Heliodorus in offering his net intended no
disrespect, nor offended any law of the temple. Since its sole catch
had been seaweed, his net could plead “pure from the prey of fishery.”
The point of the pleasantry is akin to the caustic defence offered
on behalf of a Jewish portrait painter, “as none of the pictures are
_likenesses_, he is guiltless of breaking the Second Commandment!”
Ovid’s pretty fancy to account for the Syrian abstention doubtless
hangs together with the Greek conception of Atargatis and Aphrodite
being one and the same. When the Giants revolted against the Gods,
Venus fleeing with Cupid reaches, but is stayed by, the Euphrates:
thither, _Palæstinæ margine aquæ_, in answer to her piteous plaints to
heaven above and earth below, two fish approach and convey mother and
child safely across the flood.[286]
“Inde nefas ducunt genus hoc imponere mensis
Nec violant timidi piscibus ora Syri.”
_Fasti_, II. 473-4.
But other books, other legends! for the same author (in _Met._, V. 331)
tells us that in the battle Venus changes herself into a fish.
Ktesias gives another account.[287] Derceto by the wiles of Aphrodite
“fell in love with a beautiful young man and was brought to bed of a
daughter: being ashamed of what she had done, she slew the young man,
exposed in the desert the child (who, fed with milk and then with
cheese by pilfering pigeons, grew up to become the famous Semiramis)
and then cast herself into the lake at Ascalon and was transformed into
a fish—whence it came to pass that at this very day the Syrians eat no
fishes, but adore them as gods” (Booth’s Trans.).
Of the instances of _calliditas_ or shrewd wit of fishermen, the story
(_supra_) of the fisher lads’ answer to Homer and the following from
Alciphron (I. 16) must suffice, although from Æsop, etc., many others
can be gleaned. The whole passage is far too long for quotation, but
the final retort of the fisher, whose request for a battered disused
boat has been selfishly refused by its owner, furnishes, according to
a German critic, “a perfect gem of the Art of the Sophist, and sounds
itself like an insoluble riddle.”
To enable the reader to form his own judgment on this particular
instance of _calliditas_, I subjoin the retort: οὐκ ᾔτησά σε ἃ ἕχεις
ἀλλ’ ἃ μὴ ἓχεις ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐ βούλει ἃ μὴ ἓχεις ἕτερον ἕχειν, ἕχε ἃ μὴ
ἓχεις, “I didn’t ask you for what you have, but for what you haven’t.
Since, however, you don’t wish another to have what you haven’t, what
you haven’t you can have!”
But apart from this and similar instances of _calliditas_, the mood of
piscatory poetry is generally serious or melancholy, and in keeping
with the surroundings; we look in vain for the sunny warmth of Sicilian
meadows, where youths pipe and sing gaily.
Like their modern brethren fishermen offered, before setting sail
or after returning safe from dangers encountered, gifts to the gods
of their craft, of whom first came Poseidon or Neptune, usually
represented with a trident[288]; second, Hermes or Mercury, the most
venerated, because of his wily cunning and ready ruses[289]; third,
Pan, a son of Mercury, who taught him all his craft,[290] and fourth,
Priapus.[291]
It is with a start of surprise that one finds Priapus, far more
notorious as the god of propagation and fecundity, among the gods of
fisherfolk. Can this be accounted for by some subtle, but inverse
connection between the belief in India that the Fish was the symbol of
Fecundation, and the God of Fecundation in Greece? Some support for
this may lie in the statement of de Gubernatis, that as in the East the
fish was a phallic symbol, so now _pesce_ in the Neapolitan dialect
means the _phallus_ itself.
His lineage, either the son of Hermes, or his grandson, for among the
many putative fathers of Priapus was Pan, may account for the inclusion
of Priapus. To Priapus, arriving how he may at goddom, offerings were
more freely made than to any other except Hermes.[292]
In addition to these four flourished minor gods. Goddesses too of
Fishing (such as Artemis[293]), of rivers, of springs, and of the fish
therein found devotees. First and foremost, ranked Aphrodite or Venus:
“But she
Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on
the sea,
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds, and the viewless ways,
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the
bays.”
To her, seemingly, as many offerings, as many prayers were made as to
any god.
Whether she can be identified or not with Atargatis, through Derceto
or Astarte, matters little here.[294] But the image of the goddess, as
described by Lucian,[295] “In Phœnicia, I saw the image of Derceto,
a strange sight truly! For she had the half of a woman, and from the
thighs downwards a fish’s tail,” corresponds closely with an image of
Ascalon,[296] “having the face of a woman, but all the rest of the body
a fish.”
[Illustration: ARTEMIS WITH A LARGE FISH IN FRONT OF HER DRESS.
From _Ephemeris Archélogique_, Pl. 10.]
When in addition we find this same image at Ascalon stated by Herodotus
(II. 115) to be that “of the heavenly Aphrodite,” the identification
of the Greek-Roman goddess appears, at any rate, to have gained wide
acceptance. Doubtless Horace had this,[297] or perhaps some fish-tailed
Egyptian goddess, in mind when he penned his famous comparison for an
incoherent simile: “Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne.”
Coins of Hierapolis in Cyrrhestica often show Atargatis riding on a
lion or enthroned between two lions,[298] sometimes with the legend
ΘΕΑΣ ΣΥΡΙΑΣ, ‘of the Syrian goddess.’ Strabo (XVI. 27, p. 748) tells us
that this city worshipped the Syrian goddess Atargatis, who (_Ibid._,
p. 785) according to Ktesias the historian was called also Derceto.[299]
Another reason for abstention from fish, apart from their sacredness
to the goddess, we owe to Antipater of Tarsus.[300] Gatis, queen of
Syria, developed such a passion for fish that she issued a proclamation
forbidding their being eaten without her being invited (ἄτερ Γάτιδος).
Hence the common people thought her name was Atargatis and abstained
wholly from fish.
Mnaseas[301] assigns to her the deserved and not inappropriate fate
of being thrown into her own lake near Ascalon and devoured by
fishes.[302] But against this legend must be placed the fact that
Atargatis, in common with many Asian deities and cults translated
westward, found sanctuary and high veneration, in her case at
Delos.[303]
Theocritus in the fragment on Berenice recommends the sacrifice of a
certain fish to a goddess. “And if any man that hath his livelihood
from the salt sea, and whose nets serve him for ploughs, prays for
wealth and luck in fishing, let him sacrifice, at midnight, to this
goddess, the sacred fish that men call ‘silver white,’ for that it is
brightest of sheen of all; then let the fisher set his nets, and he
shall draw them full from the sea.”[304]
If Apollonius of Tyana had been compelled to commend a beauteous fish
for sacrifice—an act which his Pythagorean tenets forbade—he must have
plumped for the Peacock fish.
Whether he were, _teste_ Hieroclas, as great a sage, as remarkable a
worker of miracles, as potent an exorcist as JESUS of Nazareth, or
merely, in the words of Eusebius, a rank charlatan, whose magic, “if
he possessed any,” was the gift of the powers of evil with whom he
lived in league is no question to be considered here. Apollonius, at
any rate, stands out, not only as one of the most interesting and most
discussed personalities of the third century, but also as one of the
most travelled.
During his fifty odd _Wanderjahre_ many men had he known, and many
cities had he seen of Asia and Africa. In the Hyphasis river of India
there exist (we learn from his _Life by Philostratus_, III. 1) Peacock
fish (sacred to Aphrodite) to which, if colour or “silver sheen” insure
full creels, the Theocritean certainly must yield place, for “their
fins are blue, their scales beautifully dappled, their tails, which
fold or spread at will, of golden hue!”
But dominant over all other characteristics stands the inevitable and
insistent connection of fishermen with Old Age, Toil, and Poverty.
Everywhere, in every author, does this note strike loudest; nowhere,
have I come across a _young_ fisherman, except Virgil’s Menœtes.
These characteristics find their place not only in Greek and Latin
literature from and before the “sleepless chase” of Sophocles (_Ajax_,
880) to the last Romanticist,[305] but also in the statuary, pictures,
frescoes, mosaics of Greek and Roman Art. Numerous examples can be
cited from the museums of Naples, Rome, Paris, and London sustaining
the contention that all real fishermen were ever depicted old and
careworn.[306]
The fishing boys and women of the _Amorini_ at Pompeii and elsewhere
may be adduced as vitiating this statement: but these, it must be
borne in mind, are merely artistic representations of Anglers and
of dalliance, not of real fishermen toiling for their livelihood.
So, too, in the Greek representations where boys, not _Putti_ or
_Amorini_, figure as fishing, it will be found that they are helpers or
“fish-boys” of the working fisherman.[307]
The explanations why fishermen are so rendered vary. Perhaps the
truest, certainly the concisest, is Alciphron’s, τρέφει γὰρ οὐδέν’ ἡ
θάλαττα—the sea feeds no one. According to Bunsmann, fishermen are
always represented as old and poor and worn, because their delineators
desired by painting the career as blackly as possible to excite
sympathy. For this purpose old age and poverty and heavy toil, which
appeal unto all, stood ready as their most effective strokes.
According to Hall, the fisher, a common character in all Greek
literature, was in early times described with simple truth. Only later,
when imitation took the place of originality, did conventionalism
render him always as aged, pathetic, superstitious, wretchedly poor,
yet patient and content.[308]
Whatever be the reason, Greek fishermen, whether we read of them in
the Epigrams or in the fragments of lost works, all come down as old,
patient, half-starved through dint of toil by day and night, sea-worn.
Their horny hands grasp better a trident than hold the delicate
pastoral reeds. They play no tunes, they dance no dances, they sing no
songs save some rowing chant, as they tug at the oars when homeward
bound.
[Illustration: THE HAPPY FISHERMAN, ATTRIBUTED TO THE ARTIST
CHACHRYLION.
From P. Hartwig’s _Die griechischen Meisterschalen_, p. 57, pl. 5.]
Meniscus and Diotimus (in Sappho and Alcæus) are aged, lonely, and
miserably poor. They are not “white-limbed” like Daphnis in _The
Herdsman’s Offering_. They play no flute, nor carry the apples of Love.
So too the circumstances, the life, the recreations of the Shepherd
of the Pastoral Idyll of Theocritus are as far removed as can be from
those of the Fisherman of the Piscatory Idyll by the same author. The
_locus_ is the same. The characters dwell near each other, but how
dissimilar their lots!
FOOTNOTES:
[266] Burton, _Arabian Nights_.
[267] Mackail, _op. cit._, p. 92. Cf. Strabo’s naïve but curiously true
phrase about her, “a marvellous creature” (θαυμαστόν τι χρῇμα).
[268] _Anth. Pal._, VII. 505:
τῷ γριπεῖ Πελάγωνι πατὴρ ἐπέθηκε Μενίσκος
κύρτον καὶ κώπαν, μνᾶμα κακοξοΐας.
Translated by T. Fawkes.
[269] In _Anth. Pal._, VII. 305, this epigram is headed in the MS.
Ἀδδαίου Μιτυληναίου, which is obviously wrong, for either Μιτυληναίου
should be Μακεδόνος, or Ἀδδαίου is a mistake. Bergk assigns it
to Alcæus of Messine—probably with reason, as it is not unlike
his style, and his name is more than once confused with Alcæus of
Mitylene, the famous lyric poet. (For Alcæus of Messene, see Mackail’s
_Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology_ (London, 1890), p. 297
f.) Stadtmüller the latest editor of _Anth. Pal._ conjectures as
author Alpheus of Mitylene, but unconvincingly to Mackail and other
authorities. Translated by E. W. Peter—_The Poets and Poetry of the
Ancients_, London, 1858.
ὁ γριπεὺς Διότιμος ὁ κύμασιν ὁλκάδα πιστὴν
κἠν χθονὶ τὴν αὐτὴν οἶκον ἕχων πενίης, κ.τ.λ.
Cf. Etruscus Messenius, _Anth. Pal._, VII. 381, 5 f.
ὄλβιος ὁ γριπεὺς ἰδίη καὶ πόντον ἐπέπλει
νηΐι, καὶ ἐξ ἰδίης ἕδραμεν εἰς Ἀΐδην.
[270] For this and other passages quoted or incorporated, I am greatly
in debt to Dr. Henry Marion Hall’s _Idylls of Fishermen_, New York,
1912 and 1914, and to A. F. Campaux’s preface to his _De Ecloga
Piscatoris qualem: veteribus adumbratam absolvere sibi proposuit
Sannazarius_, Paris, 1859.
[271] And yet “the eternal feminine” question was to the fore very
early, as we see from the old oracle quoted by Herodotus, VI. 77: “But
when the female at last shall conquer the male in the battle, Conquer
and drive him forth, and glory shall gain among Argives.”
[272] Poll., _Onomasticon_, 10, 52, and 10, 45. In later literature
references, etc., to fish are countless: one of the lost plays of
Aristophanes bore, indeed, the title of _The Eel_, according to Keller,
_op. cit._, 357.
[273] This name was applied, according to Athenæus, XIV. 10, from the
peculiar poetry made by those who kept cattle.
[274] _The Faerie Queen_, especially Books I., II., III. Of the
other writers, I simply cite (A) _Piscatorie Eclogs_, 1633, and in
a lesser degree _Sicelides_, 1631, of Phineas Fletcher, perhaps the
most conspicuous writer of fisher Idylls in English, whom Izaak Walton
terms “an excellent divine, and an excellent angler, and author of
excellent Piscatory Eclogues”; (B) _Nereides or Sea Eclogues_ (of which
only one is strictly a fisher eclogue) published anonymously in 1712,
but to be followed the next year by _Dryades_, by Diaper (translator
with his fellow Fellow of Balliol of Oppian’s _Halieutica_), which
Swift commends to Stella as the earliest book of its kind in English,
a statement which has been amplified into “the only book of its kind
in any literature,” for his Muse dives to a new Arcadia set in the
coral groves of the deep sea, and thence evokes the characters of his
Eclogues—“mermen and nereids who behave exactly like the personages in
Virgil and in Sannazaro”; (C) William Browne, _Britannia’s Pastorals_
(1613-1616), in which fishing, although but incidentally introduced, is
well and truly described, notably the passage in Book I., Song 5, about
the capture of the pike; (D) Moses Browne (who endeavoured to show that
Angling comes fairly within the range of the Pastoral), the author of
the most popular of all English fishing idylls, _Angling Sports in
Nine Piscatory Eclogues_, 1729; (E) William Thompson’s _Hymn to May_
(1758); (F) John Gay, whose _Rural Sports_ (1713) is, however, more of
an angling georgic than a piscatory eclogue.
The eclogue, piscatory or other, was severely criticised by Dryden,
who complaining of its affectation that shepherds had always to be in
love, roundly stated, “This Phylissing comes from Italy”; by Pope, who
found fault with Theocritus because of his introduction of “fishers and
harvesters”; by Dr. Johnson, whose denunciation (in his essay, _The
Reason why Pastorals Delight_) of Sannazaro for his introduction into
the eclogue of the sea, which by presenting much less variety than
the land must soon exhaust the possibilities of marine imagery, and
known only to a few must always remain to the inlanders—the majority
of mankind—as unintelligible as a chart, dealt possibly the _coup de
grâce_ to the English piscatory. See Hall, _op. cit._, 183.
[275] It is indeed a far cry from Idyll XXI. to Endymion; still here,
even though it be no piscatory eclogue, the fisher Glaucus recalls his
Sicilian prototype. In Book II. 337 ff., for instance,
“I touched no lute, I sang not, trod no measures;
I was a lonely youth on desert shores”;
and again,
“For I would watch all night to see unfold
Heaven’s Gate, and Æthon snort his morning gold
Wide o’er the swelling streams, and constantly
My nets would be spread out.”
[276] Moses Browne in the introductory essay to his _Angling Sports in
Nine Piscatory Eclogues_ asserts that Servius allowed only seven of
Virgil’s _Bucolics_ to be pure pastorals, while Heinsius for similar
reasons rejects all but ten of Theocritus’s _Idylls_.
[277] I. 39 ff.; III. 25 f.; IX. 25 ff.; and especially in XXI.
[278] With the execrable taste of his age Sannazaro considered himself
bound to produce still paler shades of those pale shadows, the
_Eclogues_ of Virgil, just as their author, the most precedent-loving
of poets, rarely ventured to introduce an image or an incident without
the authority of some Greek original (W. M. Adams, _op. cit._, p.
45). Moses Browne (_ibid._) declares that it would have been far
better if Sannazaro had never written his “sea eclogues, for the
exercise of fishing appears so contemptible in him, that any that
writes on a subject, that seems to be of a similar aspect, must suffer
disadvantage.”
[279] They must, however, now according to the evidence of the Papyri
be dated back some three centuries, _i.e._ from the usually accepted
date of the sixth to about the third century A.D.
As regards some of the Romance writers, the Papyri are a revelation
and compel apparently much revision of dates. Thus Chariton (whom “the
critics place variously between the fifth and the ninth centuries
A.D.”) is fixed by Pap., _Fayum Towns_, as _before_ 150 A.D. Achilles
Tatius, whose allotted span, owing to his imitation of Heliodorus (who
hitherto has been dated about the end of the fourth century), was run
“about the latter half of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century,”
is now placed by Pap., _Oxyrh._, 1250, as living before 300, and thus
Heliodorus is removed up to (_c._) 250 A.D.
[280] In the _Anthologia Palatina_ there are some 3700 epigrams, etc.,
dating from 700 B.C. and ending about 1300 A.D.; none of these, as far
as I can recall, contradict the poverty note. I have chosen 500 A.D. as
being a convenient date, because it includes all Greek and Græco-Roman
writers as distinct from the Byzantine, and includes also the earlier
and better prose writers, like Heliodorus and Longus. Epigrams, it is
true, continued to be written until the fourteenth century, but there
is little, and that of no poetical account, after the tenth, when the
popular or “political” verse began, with a few exceptions, to supplant
the classical forms.
[281] H. Blümner, _Römische Privataltertümer_, p. 329. “It is
noteworthy that as Virgil omitted all mention of fishermen in his
Bucolics, his imitators have followed his example, and in consequence
in classical Latin the fisherman has no place as a pastoral character.
The hut and tackle in the Theocritean story of Asphalion was foreign to
Virgil’s conception of the province of pastoralism” (Hall, _op. cit._,
1914, p. 28).
[282] Heliod, _Æthiop._, V. 18.
[283] _De Apollonio Tyrio_, 12.
[284] VII. 276, W. R. Paton’s Translation.
[285] Cf. Pausanias, III. 21, 5: “Men fear to fish in the Lake of
Poseidon, for they think he who catches fish in it is turned into a
fish called _The Fisher_.” In I. 38, 1, we find that only the priests
were allowed to fish, because the rivers were sacred to Demeter, and
in VII. 22, 4, that the fish at Pharae were sacred to Hermes, and so
inviolate.
[286] In gratitude for the part played by certain fish in bringing to
the banks of the Euphrates the egg, from which came Aphrodite, Zeus
placed fishes among the stars—hence the Pisces. Diognetos of Erythrai
_ap._ Hyg., _poet. astr._, 2. 30, make these “certain fish” Venus and
Cupid. Cf. Myth. Vat., I. 86.
[287] Cf. Diod. Sic., II. 20.
[288] Some recent scholars hold that Poseidon was an early
differentiation of Zeus, and that his fish-spear was developed from
the three-pronged lightning symbol of that deity as soon as the
former became himself specialised into first a river god, and second
a sea god. From my friend Mr. A. B. Cook’s forthcoming work, _Zeus_,
vol. ii. c. 6, s. 4, I learn that the commonly supposed Trident (in
Æschylus, _Septem._, I. 31), “the fish-striking tool of the sea-god,”
is more likely in pre-classical times to have been the three-pronged
lightning symbol of the highest Deity of all, and observable not only
in Greece, but also in Asia. Against this view lies the fact that only
once in all the Greek art is Poseidon represented with an unmistakable
thunder-bolt, and this is on a silver tetradrachm of Messana about 450
B.C. The name Poseidon merely equals, it is held, ποτεί-Δας, or ‘Lord
Zeus,’ the correlative of πότνια Ἥρη, ‘Lady Hera.’
[289] See Oppian’s invocation of him in III. 9-28.
[290] _Ibid._ As Pan was worshipped as the god of animals, especially
of herds, on land, so did the fisherfolk venerate him, Πὰν ἅκτιος
(Theocr., _Id._, V. 14) or ἁλίπλαγκτος (Soph., _Aj._, 695: cf. _Anth.
Pal._, X. 10), as the god of the animals of the sea, and in especial
for his service to them in netting Typhon, whose “winds wrought havoc
to their boats, and when Auster with Sirocco breath prevailed, caused
their catches to go bad.” At Athens the god was regarded with gratitude
as a powerful benefactor, because of the aid vouchsafed in securing
naval victories (Hdt., 6. 105. Simonides _frag._ 133, Bergk).
[291] To Janus, however, the credit of being the first to teach the
art of Fishing to the Latins is assigned by Alexander Sardus, _De
Rerum Inventoribus_, II. 16. This in common with the belief that Janus
invented boats is probably a mistaken inference from the fact that the
early _as libralis_ had a head of Janus on one side and the prow of a
ship on the other (Roscher, _Lex. Myth._, II. p. 23).
[292] The description in _Anth. Pal._, X. 10, “Me, Pan, the fishermen
have placed on this holy cliff, the watcher here over the fair
anchorage of the harbour; and I take care now of the baskets and again
of the trawlers off this shore,” and in Archias (_Anth. Pal._, X. 7,
and 8) of the fishermen making an image of Priapus to be set up, just
where the sea leaves the shore, are only three of very many similar
passages. Among the Eleans Apollo was honoured as a God under the title
of _The Fish-eater_ (Athen., VIII. 36). In addition to Gods we read of
Tritons who were half-men, half-fish, and of a still more wonderful
being, an Ichthyocentaurus, whose upper body was of human form, and
lower that of a fish, while in place of the hands were horses’ hooves!
[293] The Phigaleans (in Arkadia) worshipped an old wooden image,
called Eurynome, which represented a woman to the hips, a fish below.
This curious effigy was kept bound in golden chains and was regarded by
the inhabitants as a form of Artemis: see Paus., 8. 41, 4-6. A large
Bœotian vase at Athens shows Artemis with a great fish painted on the
front of her dress, a clear indication that she was held locally to be
a goddess of fishing (M. Collignon and L. Couve, _Catalogue des Vases
Peints du Musée National d’Athènes_ (Paris, 1902), p. 108 f., No. 462;
cp. _Ib._, No. 463).
[294] It is probably the wisest course to admit that the unity of an
ancient god or goddess was a matter of _name_, rather than of _nature_.
[295] _De Dea Syr._, ii. c. 14. The authorship is a matter of doubt.
The author adds, “but the image in the holy city is all woman.”
[296] Diod. Sic., II. 1.
[297] On Greek and Italian vases, etc., women with fish bodies are
occasionally represented. Cf. Keller, _op. cit._, ii. 349.
[298] See _Brit. Mus. Cat. of Coins_, Galatia, pl. 18, 14, or B. V.
Head, _Historia Numorum^2_ (Oxford, 1911), p. 777.
[299] For Derketo, standing on a Triton, on coins of Ascalon, see G.
F. Hill, _Catalogue of The Greek Coins of Palestine_ (London, 1914),
pp. lviii. f., 130 f., Pl. XIII. 21. The dove in the right hand of the
goddess is her very usual attribute. The Triton on which she stands
expresses her marine nature. Ovid, _Met._ IV. 44:
“De te, Babylonia, narret,
Derceti, quam versa squamis velantibus artus
Stagna Palæstini credunt celebrasse figura.”
Although Roscher’s _Dict. of Myth._ does not in the long article
devoted to Isis specify her as fish-tailed, Isis is distinctly
identified with Atargatis of Bambyke in _Papyrus Oxyr._, 1380, line 100
f., ἐν βανβύκη Ἀταργάτει. Cf. also Pliny, V. 19: Ibi (Syria) prodigiosa
Atargatis, Græcis autem Derceto dicta, colitur.
[300] _De Superstitione_, Bk. IV., quoted by Athen., VIII. 37.
[301] _History of Asia_, Bk. I., quoted _ibid._ VIII. 37.
[302] According to an inscription at Smyrna, H. Dittenberger, _Sylloge
inscriptionum Græcarum_, (Lipsiæ, 1900), ii. 284 f., No. 584, a
violator of the sacred fish was forthwith punished by all sorts of
misfortunes and finally was eaten up by fish. If one of these fish
died, an offering must on the self-same day be burnt on the altar. Cf.
Newton, _Gk. Inscript._, 85.
[303] Keller, _op. cit._, 345.
[304] For discussion as to which was _the_ “sacred fish,” see Plutarch,
_de Sol. Anim._, 32, and Athen., VII. 20.
[305] To cite but one of the scores of intermediate authors as regards
poverty, Ovid, _Met._, III. 586-91,
Pauper et ipse fuit, linoque solebat et hamis
Decipere, et calamo salientis ducere pisces.
Ars illi sua census erat. Cum traderet artem,
“Accipe quas habeo, studii successor et heres,”
Dixit, “opes.” Moriensque mihi nihil ille reliquit
Præter aquas: unum hoc possum appellare paternum.
[306] The νέοι παῖδες in the oracles’ warning to Homer, which seem at
first sight antagonistic to the above, become in Homer’s own words of
greeting, ἅνδρες. Perhaps the employment of νέων παίδων by the Delphic
priestess may be due (1) to the fact that they were “fish-boys” proper,
(2) to an early and intelligent anticipation of the “juvenescent”
tendency, or (3) to the exigency, not unknown to sixth form
Hexameter-makers of the present, but (alas! if Oxford and Cambridge be
obeyed) not of the future day, of scansion!
[307] Cf. _Mus. Borbon._, IV. 54, or Baumeister, _Denkmäler Klass.
Altert._ (Munich, 1885), i. 552, f. 588.
[308] The happiest, perhaps _the_ only happy, fishermen are those
shown at the bottom of drinking cups, etc.! In P. Hartwig’s (_Die
griechischen Meisterschalen_ (Stuttgart-Berlin, 1893), p. 37 ff.)
collection of red-figured Greek vases representing fishermen at work,
there is an Attic _kylix_ (fifth cent. B.C.) with such a fisherman,
who (the idea ran) was only in his element, when the cup was filled
with wine. Cf. Theocritus, I. 39 ff., for another old fisherman in the
bottom of a herdsman’s cup.