FISH IN MYTHS, SYMBOLS, DIET, AND MEDICINE
Although the salutary warning—_Terminat hora diem: terminet auctor
opus_—forbids us prolonging the Greek-Roman section, already
disproportionate in space, yet the part played by fish (A) in myths,
(B) in symbols or emblems, Pagan or Christian, (C) in medicine, and (D)
in diet necessarily demands some notice.
And as our authorities are, in the main, writers in Greek and Latin,
this section seems the appropriate place for what must, although the
literature on the subject is superabundant, be summary and restricted
comment.
By the Solar Mythologists, the fish (no creature, however small,
escapes the mesh of their net) has been made to take a prominent
_rôle_. The fair-haired and silvery moon in the ocean of light is
simply the little gold-fish; the little silver-fish which announces
the rainy season is merely the deluge. The gold-fish and the luminous
pike, like the moon, seem to expand and contract, and in this form,
as expanding or contracting, the god Vishnu or Hari (perhaps meaning
“fair-haired” or “golden”) refers now to the sun, now to the moon,
Vishnu being held to have taken the form of the gold-fish.
“The epic exploits of fishes,” to borrow de Gubernatis’s term, would
include the myths of Adrikâ, the fish nymph who became the mother of
Matsyas, the king of fishes; of the Puranic fishes, symbolical and
natural; of the fishes of the Eddas, with the scaly transformations of
Loki, and hundreds of similar legends.[686]
The vagaries of Solar Mythology can be safely neglected. But the story,
derived perhaps from Semitic sources, of fish incarnation and of the
adventures of Manu, is deserving of fuller consideration.
According to one variant of the legend, Vishnu, in the form of a small
fish, approached Manu to beg protection against the larger fish;
whereupon he was placed securely in a water-jar, but in a single night
outgrew the jar. Manu then tried a pond, and next the Ganges, but
similar increases in size compelled him to remove the fish to the sea.
Upon this the god made himself known, warned the sage of the coming of
the Flood within seven days, and bade him build a ship and furnish it
more or less on the lines of the Jewish Ark, only among the passengers
were to be seven Sages!
In accordance with his promise, Vishnu, still in fish shape, reappeared
on the subsidence of the waters, and with a rope attached to his horn
towed the Ark to the Northern Mountain, where it grounded.[687]
Instances of impiscation (so to speak) appear not infrequently in my
pages. Oannes, with head and tail of fish, but also with human face and
feet; Dagon, “Sea-monster, upward man and downward fish”; Atargatis, or
Derceto, “with face of woman but body of fish”; Venus, turning herself
and Cupid—and also, as one account adds, her lover Mars—into fishes to
escape the pursuit of the Giants;—all these can be grouped with other
myths.
These tell us that Asia was saved by a fish and is supported by a
tortoise, that Polynesia was brought up, itself a fish, on a fish-hook
out of the primæval ocean, or that America was rescued from the depths
of diluvian chaos by a turtle. Well may Robinson conclude, “Since
in the beginning there were only Light and Water, the eldest of the
Zoological Myths is the Fish Myth.”[688]
According to de Gubernatis,[689] “the ancient systems of mythology have
not ceased to exist: they have been merely diffused and transformed.
The _nomen_ is changed; the _numen_ remains. Although from loss of
celestial reference and significance its splendour is minished, its
vitality is enormous.” We find, however, that the mythic motives or
original principles common to India and Hellas (as well as Scandinavia,
etc.) are most conspicuous among the Greeks. India, indeed, seems
absolutely wanting in some which in Europe manifest extraordinary
vitality and expansion.
But in any comparative enumeration, strict regard must be paid to the
fact that the fauna of a myth commonly varies with its geography; as an
instance of this, the epos, which in Europe recounts the cunning of the
fox, in India dilates on the craft of the serpent.
The fish myth proved no exception. It passed from nation to nation
gradually down the ages, till we find the Greeks, borrowers sometimes
unconsciously, sometimes of set purpose, perpetuating it widely in
connection with deities and sub-deities.
Thus came it about that to several of the greater gods of the Greek,
and afterwards of the Roman, Pantheon appertained a particular fish (or
fishes). These not only enjoyed their gods’ protection, but also the
double distinction of being at once an attribute represented with them
and a sacrifice offered to them.
The association of certain gods with certain fishes is not always
obvious. While the linking of Amphitrite with the Dolphin, or of
Poseidon with the Tunny is easily explained by legends of hoary
tradition, it needs all the ingenuity of Eustathius to decipher the
connection between Artemis and the _Mainé_.[690]
In time, as their coins indicate, fish became associated with various
coast towns, which owed their prosperity to fishing. Good examples
descend from Olbia, Carteia, and Cyzicus on the Propontis. The early
electrum coinage of the last shows the badge of this or that magistrate
invariably accompanied by a Tunny, the badge of the state.[691] Very
remarkable[692] is an electrum _stater_ with a Tunny upright between
two sacrificial fillets, which may signify that this tunny was closely
connected with some deity or was itself of a sacro-sanct character.
Even more remarkable is a coin of Abdera in Hispania Bætica. This
carries on its obverse a laureat head of Tiberius: on its reverse a
four-pillared temple, two of the columns of which are in the form of
fish. This unique representation has never been fully explained.[693]
It is surely a happy coincidence that on some mintages of Imperial date
the fish occurs together with the head of some self-styled deities,
such as that choice couple, Nero and Domitian. On sundry pieces struck
by Nero, the octopus-like and predatory Sepia not inappropriately finds
place; but monstrously incongruous seem the coins which associate
the man-serving and man-saving Dolphin with the self-serving and
man-slaying Domitian.[694]
[Illustration: LAUREAT HEAD OF TIBERIUS AND TEMPLE WITH TWO COLUMNS IN
SHAPE OF FISH, FROM A COIN OF ABDERA.
From A. Heiss, Pl. 45, 9.]
With the Jews, although its emblematic employment was scanty, the fish
occasionally figured, _e.g._ as a sign of Judah. In the Talmud it
appears more frequently, and as symbolic of some moral quality—_e.g._
of innocence.[695] In Japan the carp has been for centuries the emblem
of the Samurai, because of its accredited power to withstand opposition
and to swim against the current of the stream.
On the advent of Christianity, numerous become the allusions in
Patristic and other literature. From the repetition by Father after
Father of _Aquæ vivæ piscis Christus_, of _piscatio duplex, Ecclesia
præsens et futura_, and of similar sentences, the application
approaches perilously near the commonplace.
Nor was its scope morally limited. St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, and
others allegorise fish and fishing in both good and bad senses.
Thus, _piscis pia fides quæ vivit inter fluctus nec frangitur_; _piscis
fides invisibilium_; _rete Christus_; _sagæna Ecclesia_; _Christus est
piscis assus discipulis, serpens Judæis_, can be matched by _pisces
immundi, peccatores_; _piscis maris, dæmones_; _piscator Diabolus_;
_rete, deceptio Diaboli_; and _sagæna, cor mulieris_, which last,
from a technical point of view, hardly stamps Bishop Humbertus as a
proficient in our craft.
From the identification—_Christus est piscis_[696]—is no long step to
the symbolic use of the very letters which spell the Greek word for
fish: thus from ΙΧΘΥΣ = I-ch-th-u-s, is established Ἰησοῦσ Χριστὸς θεοῦ
υἱὸς σωτήρ, or “Jesus Christ, of God Son, Saviour.”
This symbolic adoption in connection with their God was far from
original. A fish, at first the symbol of Vishnu, was adopted by the
Buddhists, and from them by the Christians of Turkestan.[697] This
adoption and adaptation of a Pagan symbol was but one of the many
instances where Christian policy or Christian practice took over and
continued heathen customs, institutions, and vestments.[698]
Such seems to have been the trend, possibly from pursuing a policy of
compromise, more probably from following the line of least resistance,
of most religious changes or revivals. But while the attributes of
many of the Greek gods were, at least in certain of their attributes,
assimilated to Syrian and Eastern divinities, and while the Roman
pantheon made room for various Egyptian new-comers, the Jew’s
conception of his Deity remained practically unaffected and uninfected.
A fish frequently figures on the tombs of the early Christians in the
catacombs at Rome: sometimes it bears on its back a bowl with wine and
wafers of bread. Many tombs contain small fish of wood or ivory. Such
fish served, we are told, as emblems and acrostics, pointing out to his
co-religionists the burial place of a Christian without betraying the
fact to the persecutors.
This explanation lacks confirmation, and carries little conviction,
for two (among other) reasons. First: critical statistics show that
fish as symbols in Christian art figured frequently both before and
after Constantine. Second: fish as indicative of a burial place would
by their very presence quickly defeat the object aimed at. They would
indicate, as surely as pointers game, the secret grave, for the
persecutors of the Christians, as history shows, were not all exactly
fools.
Some authors trace back not a few of the signs[699] and usages
adopted and perpetuated by the Christians to the worship of Venus, of
which, when in conjunction with a fish, the underlying idea was the
adoration—nearly universal—of fecundity. Two instances, which I give
for what they are worth, must suffice.
As regards Lent, A. de Gubernatis contends that Aphrodite or Venus,
the goddess of Love[700], frequently represented the Spring. Hence it
is that in Lent, appointed by the Church to be observed in Spring, and
again on Friday (or the day of Freya) we are enjoined to eat fish, of
which, it must be remembered, Aphrodite was a patron goddess.
As regards Maunday Thursday, Robinson writes: “One of the annual Church
disbursements up to the end of the sixteenth century was for herrings,
‘_red and white_.’ Let us hope that those who in pious observation of
Christian ordinances thus charged themselves with phosphorus were not
aware that they were simply perpetuating the worship of Venus.[701]
Friday, again, is _dies Veneris_, and fish, her own symbol, is
therefore appropriate for the day.”
Of the making and explaining of symbols in early and mediæval times
there is no end. The monkish mind, perhaps owing to environment and
fasting, found this a congenial and pleasant pursuit.
Among the books on this subject, _Mundus Symbolicus_, although, or
perhaps because, published in 1681, attracts me most, not merely by its
fulness of information and of quotation from classical, Patristic, and
mediæval literature—it is a good competitor with Burton’s _Anatomy_ for
_Collectanea_—but also by the number and _naïveté_ of its _lemmata_,
or appropriate apophthegms, which appeal alike to one’s ignorance
and one’s humour. Of 737 pages of the volume before me 43 concern
themselves solely with fish, and provide delightful browsing.[702]
The object and practice of Picinelli, from whose _Il Mondo Simbolico_
Erath makes the Latin translation, is to examine into the habits,
real or alleged, of each fish, and deduce, as was the frequent
custom of books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from its
delinquencies or virtues a moral lesson or lessons.
Thus the _lemma_, “_Fallacis fructus amoris_,” not inaptly summarises
the amatory character of the _Sargus_, as indicated in my chapter
on Tackle. Nor, again, is the author far astray with his _lemma_
for the _Monachus_ or Monk fish (a name derived from the hood on its
head)—“_Habitum non virtutem_”—which recalls the mediæval jeer, “The
cowl makyth not the Monk,” and Oscar Wilde’s description—half-echoing
Browning—of the pike as “some mitred old bishop _in partibus_.” Of the
Monk fish—also Bishop fish—a well intended representation can be found
in the pages of the learned Gesner.
Under _Salmo_, when suffering from leeches or gill-maggots, the author
provides us not only with the _lemma_, “_Hæret ubique_” and the
appropriate, if not quite original, reflection of St. Bernard that
conscience is like the leech which ceaseth not night nor day from
making its presence felt, but also with a vivid description of a kelt
dying—“_donec toto corpore tabescat_.”
Any connection between a salmon and a swallow (_hirundo_) for a moment
seemed a new ichthyic revelation! The context, however, and not least
St. Bernard’s pointing of the moral, led to the discovery of the
misprint of _hirundibus_ for _hirundinibus_ (‘leeches’).
With one more passage I regretfully leave Picinelli, or rather Erath.
The collocation of the rose and fish held in the hand of Cupid, which
Alciatus “_non sine mysterio instruxisset_,” occasioned “the erudite”
and anonymous epigram (p. 671) showing that Love resembles the rose
and the fish. This apparent incongruity finds explanation thuswise:
while each has prickly points, the first fades in a day and the second
is incapable of being tamed—a comparison which, if unique, ignores the
Egyptian and Roman powers of domestication.[703]
“_Symbola adulantum cernis, Rosa, Piscis amorum,_[704]
_Non sane unius Symbola certa mali._
_Nam Rosa verna suis non est sine sentibus, idem_
_Piscis habet spinas intus et ipse suas._
_Pulchra Rosa est, verum illa brevi fit marcida, piscis_
_Est ferus, esse aliqua nec cicur arte potest._”
One lemma “_Pingit et delectat_” is not the author’s happiest effort.
That attached to the only illustration of a man fishing—_Tenet et
tenetur_—tersely depicts the happy angler.
Many instances illustrating the importance attached to fish, both in
diet and in medicine, are to be found scattered through my pages. I
would, however, wager that in addition to these multiplied even one
thousandfold, there would yet remain in the pages of medical[705] and
other writers (even if we stop as early as Aëtius) matter sufficient
for a large Monograph.[706]
In one book alone of Pliny’s (XXXII.) fish are recommended as remedies,
internal or external, no less than (according to my rough reckoning)
342 times!
If Hippocrates, “the father of Medicine,” in the fifth century B.C.
(_c._ 460-359) laid the foundation, Galen some six centuries later
(131-201 A.D.) crowned the edifice of that science. The cry and
the practice of the former, “Back to Nature,” was energetically
enjoined and brilliantly defended against the inevitable reactions
of the Alexandrian and other schools by the latter, who acclaims his
predecessor as “divine.”
In his insistent teaching “Ensue Health,” as the one and only thing
alike for patients and physicians, Galen[707] might well have adopted
the last line of Ariphron’s glorious pæan to Health:
μετὰ σεῖο, μάκαιρ’ Ὑγίεια,
τέθαλε πάντα καὶ λάμπει Χαρίτων ἔαρι
σέθεν δὲ χωρὶς οὔτις εὐδαίμων ἔφυ.
In his own case success crowned his efforts. He boldly boasts that he
did not desire to be esteemed a physician, if from his twenty-eighth
year to old age he had not lived in perfect health, except for some
slight fevers, of which he soon rid himself.[708] Perhaps a secondary
motive was not absent, viz. the desire to avoid the taunt so often
levelled at medical men:
ἄλλων ἰατρὸς αὐτὸς ἔλκεσιν βρύεις,
which Urquhart in his _Rabelais_ translates,
“He boasts of healing poor and rich,
Yet is himself all over itch!”
As regards fish as a diet in health and sickness, _quot medici, tot
sententiæ_ seems hardly exaggeration. Their wondrous unanimity as
regards the food-properties of the Eel amazes, for with fish it was
usually a case “where doctors disagree.”
The “Father of Medicine,” in denouncing its use (especially in
pulmonary cases) was followed by nearly all medical writers, some
of whom, however, were not slow, when otherwise differing from him,
to assert that he killed more folk than he saved by his practice of
leaving Nature to effect its cure. Paulus Jovius sums up historically
the medical attitude towards Eels: “abhorred in all places and at all
times, all physicians do detest them, especially about the solstice.”
As Galen’s dictum[709] that fish afford the most desirable food for
“the idle, the old, the sick, and the silly” embraces the majority—if
we allow Carlyle’s “mostly fools”—of mankind, it would be idle to
pursue the dietetic side, were it not for the _distinguos_ (to use the
old Schoolman’s term) as to which fishes fell within or without the
Mysian’s category.
Diphilus (with Philotimus and others) speaks disparagingly of some,
but highly recommends others. _Habitat_ alone, he urged, formed the
deciding line between the clean and unclean. His _Treatise on Food for
the Well and Ill_[710] divides sea-fish into (A) those which keep near
the rocks—these, in his words, “are easily digested, juicy, purgative,
light, but not very nutritious”—and (B) those which haunt deep
water—these are “much less digestible, very nutritious, but upsetting
to the internal economy.”
Alexander Aphrodisiensis attributes the superiority of Class A to the
fact that, as the water round the rocks is in perpetual motion, its
denizens continuously exercise themselves.[711] Galen, for a somewhat
similar reason, appraises as the lowest in nutriment the inhabitants
of marshes, lakes, and muddy waters, because of their lack of swimming
exercise and their impure food.
A further subdivision commends itself to Rhazes. All fishes rough of
scale, mucilaginous and white-coloured are best; those of a black and
red shade must be avoided.[712] A special _distinguo_ extends to the
part of fish, as Xenocrates plumps for the tails, on account of their
being most exercised! Bonsuetus, centuries after Galen, echoes him:
“All fish that standing pools and lakes frequent
Do ever yield bad juyce and nourishment.”[713]
But however divided the ancient practitioners were in their estimate
of the digestibility of a fish diet, or of particular fishes, in
their ichthyic remedies internal or external they credulously and
enthusiastically coincided. Hence rained piscine prescriptions in every
form, fresh, salt, cooked, calcined: every part and tissue, flesh,
bones, skin, trail, brains, gills, _viscera_, and teeth—each and all
were regarded as specifics against some human disease or infirmity.[714]
All ailments practically find a cure in the ichthyic panaceas or
nostrums which render old medical tomes boresome from repetition, and
yet at times diverting. In regular prescriptions and old wife recipes
alike, fish play a prominent part.
Have you been bitten by a mad dog, and need a theriac? Dioscorides’
recommendation,[715] as amplified by Pliny, is “pickled fish applied
topically, even where the wound has not been cauterised with hot iron;
this will be found sufficiently effectual as a remedy”!
Do you suffer from toothache? Then you must have omitted to rub your
teeth once a year in the brains of a dog-fish, boiled in oil and kept
for the purpose!
If, however, this and other remedies disappoint you, Dioscorides[716]
and Celsus[717] come to your aid with the sting of the _pastinaca_,
which, applied with hellebore or resin, extracts the teeth painlessly!
As a dead certainty, if the ichthyic kingdom fail to give relief,
“attach two frogs to the exterior of your jaw”!
Health, perfect health, should be the lot of every woman who follows
the Plinian precepts in Book XXXII. 46.
Is she helpless from hysteria? “Lint, greased with a dolphin’s fat, and
then ignited,” produces an anti-excitant; or, if the case yield not to
treatment instantly, “the flesh of the _strombus_, left to putrefy in
vinegar” is an excellent alternative!
If an easy delivery be desired, “first”—the prescription smacks of Mrs.
Glasse—“catch your torpedo-fish at the time that the moon is in Libra,
keep it in the open air for three days,” and then, as soon as it is
introduced into the patient’s room, the trick is done! Pregnancy, on
the other hand, proves often abortive, if the woman “happens to step
over _castoreum_ or over the beaver itself,” or misuses a _Remora_.
For dyeing the hair black calcined _echineis_ with lard, or
horse-leeches boiled in vinegar, are cheap and trustworthy recipes.
For depilatories your choice is wide. The blood, gall, and liver
of the Tunny, fresh or pickled; or merely the liver, pounded, but
preserved with cedar-resin in a leaden box[718]; the _Pulmo marinus_,
the Sea-hare, according to Dioscorides (_De mat. med._, ii. 20), the
_Scolopendra_ (_ibid._, ii. 16); or “the brains of the _Torpedo_
applied with alum on the sixteenth day of the moon!”
Two more panaceas—needful and desirable now, as then—and I move to
pastures new, or rather contiguous. The first: a mixture “of a live
frog in a dog’s food” will, on Salpe’s authority, for ever deliver us
from the yapping and barking which so often makes night hideous.
The second—naïvest and quaintest (if I may employ without cruelty these
over-driven adjectives): “Democritus assures us that if the tongue
be extracted from a live frog, with _no_ part of the body adhering
to it, and it is then applied—the frog must _first_ be placed in the
water(!)—to a woman while asleep, just at the spot where the heart is
felt to beat, she will of a certainty answer truthfully any question
put to her!”[719]
If Hippocrates blamed his predecessors for their scanty use of
drugs, he would scarcely, unless suddenly clothed with a shirt of
credulity, have approved of the plethora of prescriptions and panaceas
prevalent in later centuries. Truly applicable would then have been
the inscription suggested for a pharmacy; “Hic venditur galbanum,
elaterium, opium, et omne quod in _um_ desinit, nisi remedium.”[720]
But credulity clogged such great minds as Hippocrates and Galen.
Even they included astrology in the therapeutic art, and indict
practitioners who only used that “science” despitefully, or eschewed
it, as “men-killers.”
Quite apart, however, from the recognised prose treatises by iatric
writers such as Galen, Diphilus, and Xenocrates, there must have
existed a very ample literature in Greek verse. One collection alone,
_Poetæ Bucolici et Didactici_ (Didot, Paris, 1872), reveals under
the heading of _Carminum Medicorum Reliquiæ_ the names of some dozen
authors who deal chiefly—Marcellus Sidetes indeed exclusively—with the
medicinal properties of fish.
Cursory skipping of these fragments compels, even if one’s acquaintance
with ancient medical writers be slight, ready assent to the opinion
of the learned editor (p. 74) that originality was not the dominant
characteristic of their begetters. They are apparently, with two
exceptions, but metrical plagiarisms or excerpts—not quite as bad as
Tate and Brady’s _Translations of the Psalms_—from the works of Galen
and others.
The first exception, the medical oath (ὅρμος ἰατρικός) startles our
modern conceptions. The practitioner swears that he will administer
none of the poisons, some of the deadliest of which, as we have seen,
were piscine.[721]
The second is a fragment from a medical work by Marcellus Sidetes. In
the days of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, despite the stirring times
described by historians, Life (to alter the well-known verse) must
verily have been a watch and a vision—or rather a yawn—between a sleep
and a sleep to many a reader, for no less than forty-two volumes were
necessary to contain the hygienic hexameters of our author. But more
astonishing even than the leisure required for their perusal, the whole
forty-two (according to Suidas) were held in such high esteem that by
command of the Emperors they were placed in all the public libraries of
Rome.
In our fragment, _Remedies from Fish_, Marcellus, after prefacing that
by long study he has acquainted himself with their medicinal effects,
sets out a list of healing fish. He adds here and there some leading
specific. To one of these he prettily makes us privy, _e.g._ the
application of a burnt mullet, mixed with honey, in cases of carbuncle.
But our author must not be written down as a one-ideaed fish-quack; for
that Nature works cures (if not miracles) by the agencies of earth, and
of “broad-wayed air,” as well as of the sea, is a firm tenet of his
faith.[722]
Among the Greeks and Latins aphrodisiacs and antaphrodisiacs, _i.e._
incentives to, or prophylactics against love, were accounted of
potency, and meet with frequent mention. Each kingdom of Nature,
animal, mineral, vegetable, piscine, was impressed to compass these
purposes.
The list submitted by Pliny—a weighty natural historian, mark you!—of
those drawn from the first would be scouted by any modern Obeah or
Ju-ju man, however powerful, as taxing too severely the credulity of
his ignorant _clientèle_. Even Haitian superstition would reject its
obvious absurdities. “The ashes of a spotted lizard”—here even the
compiler is compelled to caution ‘si verum est’—“held in the left hand
stimulate, but in the right kill desire,” ranks far from being the most
incredible of the prescriptions.[723]
The Ancients specialised not only in gods, but also in fishes which
made, or made not, for passion. We, however, while enjoying a hundred
sects, have brutally boiled down our aphrodisiacs to one, stout and
oysters!
The salacious properties of many fishes—inherited or acquired,
according to ancient legends, from their mother or protectress,
Aphrodite—furnish the theme of classical authors, grave and gay;
_e.g._ of Epicharmus in _Hebe’s Wedding_—at wedding feasts fish were
an absolute essential; of Varro,[724] _tunc nuptiæ videbant ostream
Lucrinam_; of Plautus,[725] where at the marriage of Olympio the old
man in love orders the purchase of stimulating fish.
“Emito sepiolas, lopadas, loligunculas.”
Even Pythagoras, according to Lilius Giraldus, believed that cupidity
could be aroused, not by fish, which were apparently banned to his
disciples, but by _Urtica marina_.[726]
Pliny’s list of proved aphrodisiacs and antaphrodisiacs includes among
the former “the eye-tooth of a crocodile attached to the arm,” and
among the latter “the skin from the left side of the forehead of the
hippopotamus attached fast to the body in lambskin.”[727]
FOOTNOTES:
[686] A. de Gubernatis, _Zoological Mythology_ (London, 1872), II. 329
ff. The latest luminary among the Solar Mythologists is L. Frobenius,
_Sonnenkultus_, whose lengthy chapter in vol. I. on the world-wide
Fish-Myth and its solar significance may be consulted by the leisurely.
[687] Cf., however, “The Story of the Deluge,” in the _Catapatha
Brāhmana_.
[688] P. Robinson, _op. cit._ (p. 18), to which I owe much, here and
elsewhere.
[689] _Op. cit._, p. xi.
[690] On _Iliad_, I. 206, cp. on XX. 71: διὰ τὸ δοκεῖν μανιῶν αἰτίαν
εῑναι τισίν, ὡς οἶον εἰπεῖν τοῖς σεληνιαζομένοις.
[691] _Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins_, Mysia, p. 18 ff. Nos. 1 ff. pl. 3, 8 ff.
[692] _Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins_, Mysia, p. 18, No. 1, pl. 30.
[693] A. Heiss, _op. cit._, pl. 45, 9.
[694] See Cohen, _Monnaies Domitian_, Nos. 227, 229, 236, and
Pitra, _op. cit._, pp. 508-512. Although writing some sixty years
ago he enumerates no less than 156 illustrations from coins and
representations of fish association.
[695] For the fish-symbol in Judaism there is a good collection
of facts in I. Scheftelowitz, “Das Fisch-Symbol in Judentum und
Christentum,” in the _Archiv. für Religionswissenschaft_ (1911), XIV.
1-53, 321-392.
[696] Pitra, _op. cit._, has several plates bearing on this. Of the
coloured, pl. 1 shows an eucharistic table with a _fish_ and bread upon
it, and at each side seven baskets full of the latter, while in pl.
3 a fish swims bearing on his head a basket with sacred loaves, both
illustrative of the miracle. See also pp. 565-6.
[697] Keller, _op. cit._, p. 352. The latest and best monograph on the
fish-symbol in Christianity is that of F. J. Dölger, _Das Fisch-symbol
in frühchristlicher Zeit_ (Freiburg, 1910), whose conclusions are
summarised in the _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_ (1912), XV. 297 f.
[698] Cf. the many fascinating works of Dr. J. Rendel Harris, _e.g._
_The Cult of the Heavenly Twins_ and _Boanerges_. Also Lowrie, _Art and
Archæology_; and Miss M. Hamilton, _Greek Saints and their Festivals_.
[699] See C. Cahier, _Caractéristiques des Saints dans l’art populaire_
(Paris, 1867), Vol. II. 691 ff., for illustrations of Saints
accompanied by fishes.
[700] _Op. cit._, II. 340. “The _gemini pisces_, the two fishes joined
in one, were sacred to her, and the joke of the _poisson d’Avril_ ...
is a jest of phallical origin, and has a scandalous significance.”
[701] P. Robinson, _International Fisheries Exhibition_ (London,
1883), Part III. p. 43. “The representations of the Virgin in a
canopy or _vesica piscis_ are supposed to have a specially Christian
significance: if they have any at all, it is a very heathenish one.”
[702] _Mundus Symbolicus_, a rare folio, of which two editions, 1681
and 1694, exist, is a translation of _Il Mondo Simbolico_ (written
by Picinelli Filippi, and published at Milan 1653, 1669, and 1680),
made by Aug. Erath. Cf. _Trésor des livres rares et précieux_, tom. v.
(Dresde, 1859-69), p. 282. The Bodleian possesses only the 1694 edition
of _Mundus Symbolicus_, while apparently the British Museum lacks both.
[703] The bronze statuette found at Hartsbourg showing the Germanic god
Chrodo, standing on a fish, while holding in his uplifted left hand a
wheel, and in his lowered right a basket of fruit and vegetables, is
not at all on all fours. Cf. Montfaucon, _Antiquity Explained_, trans.
D. Humphreys (London, 1921), II. 261, pl. 56, 3.
[704] The construction of ‘Rosa, Piscis’ is not discernible. Perhaps
(‘Rosa Piscis’) would be less obscure.
[705] To Galen alone 149 works are attributed.
[706] For a list of practitioners, medical authors, and quacks before
Pliny, and the enormous fees sometimes paid them, see _N. H._, XXIX.
1, 7. Not inappropriate, and probably not infrequent, when we read
of their number and their disagreements, was the epitaph—_Turba se
medicorum perisse_. This attribution of death to too many doctors is
accredited to Hadrian, but is probably a Latin adaptation of Menander’s
πολλῶν ἰατρῶν εἴσοδος μ’ ἀπώλεσεν.
[707] It is with some surprise that we read of Galen being one of the
original _Deipnosophistæ_ (I. 2), and with more still that we find the
omnivorous and omniscient Athenæus quoting but once from this most
prolific author, and that a passage which lays down, let us trust from
the experience of his patients, that Falernian wine over twenty years
old causes headaches.
[708] Empedocles, albeit no doctor, is said to have delivered Selinus
in Sicily from malaria by drainage, etc., and so roughly anticipated
the triumphs of Ross and Gorgas over the mosquito by some 2400 years.
See Diog. Laert. VIII. 70, _s.v._ “Empedocles.”
[709] _De Alim. Fac._, 3, 28. Cf. _De Attenuante victus ratione_, vol.
vi. ed. Chartier, which confirms and amplifies the above.
[710] Athen., _op. cit._, VIII., chs. 51-56, which discuss various
fishes from a health point of view.
[711] _Quæstiones Medicæ et Problemata Physica._
[712] Blakey, _op. cit._, 73.
[713] Cf. Burton, _op. cit._, 1, 97, whose trs. is given above.
[714] The belief in fish as curatives of not only human but also animal
ailments still lingers. In this very year, 1920, we read in _The
Field_, Aug. 14, of a Ross-shire crofter begging for a live trout to
push down the throat of a cow, that had just calved but was suffering
from hæmorrhage. In consequence, or in spite of the trout, the cow
recovered.
[715] _De Materia Medica_, II. 33; I. 181, ed. (Kühn).
[716] _De Materia Medica_, II. 22, 1, 176 (Kühn). Cf. P. A. Matthiole,
_Commentarii in libros sex Pedanii Dioscordis Anazarbei_ (Venetiis,
1554), Bk. II. c. xix.
[717] VI. 9.
[718] Salpe the midwife recommends this prescription to disguise the
age of boys on sale for slaves (Pliny, XXXII. 47). At the end of the
chapter the author seems to awake from his trance of trustfulness, in
the words, “in the case of _every_ depilatory, the hairs should always
be removed before it is applied!”
[719] Pliny, XXXII. 18. Belief in the efficacy of fish-nostrums
continues unto this day: in the Middle Ages it permeated all classes,
and all Europe, _e.g._ Charles IX. of France would never, if he could
help it, drink unless a fragment of the tusk of the _narwhal_, or
so-called sea-unicorn, were in the cup to counteract a possible poison.
[720] Badham, _op. cit._, 83.
[721] The influence of fish, wherever important, in commerce is
noteworthy. They furnished, as we have seen, designs for a mint
or _cognomina_ for Roman Nobles. An interesting and probably very
ancient instance occurs in the oath taken this very year (1920) by the
Stipendiary Magistrate of Douglas, Isle of Man: “I swear to do justice
between party and party, as indifferently as the herring’s backbone
doth lie in the midst of the fish.”
[722]
τῶν πάντων ἰήματ’ ἒχει φύσις οὐδέ τι νούσων
ῥιγεδανῶν ἀλέγουσι βροτοὶ χραισμήι’ ἒχοντες
ἐξ ἁλός, ἐκ γαίης τε καὶ ἠέρος εὐρυπόροιο.
[723] _N. H._, XXX. 49. Cf. Ælian, _op. cit. passim_, for aphrodisiacs.
[724] Fragment, _Varro Sexagesis_, _ap._ Man. Marc., p. 319. 15 ff.,
Lindsay.
[725] _Cas._, II. 8, 57; cf. also _Aul._, at the wedding of Euclid’s
daughter.
[726] See _ibid._, _Rudens_, II. 1, 9.
[727] _N. H._, XXXII. 50.