WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Fishing from the Earliest Times cover

Fishing from the Earliest Times

Chapter 29: CHAPTER XXII THE RING OF HELEN
By William Radcliffe
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

History - AncientHistory - Other

About This Book

The author compiles literary, archaeological, and practical evidence to chart fishing techniques and tackle from antiquity through various civilizations. He analyzes classical sources such as Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch to discuss methods, species identification, and controversies like the origin of the artificial fly and the use of jointed rods. Separate sections survey Egyptian, Assyrian, Jewish, and Chinese practices, including sacred fish, vivaria, legal regulations, prices, and culinary uses. The work balances technical descriptions with cultural, mythological, and economic contexts and contrasts ancient pisciculture with later developments.

CHAPTER XXII
THE RING OF HELEN

In the countries dealt with in this book I give instances where Fish and Fishing have, according to myth or tradition, played a prominent part in human affairs, and have been the cause, direct or indirect, of important events.

Thus in Greece and Rome, to fish is assigned the responsibility for—

(A) The death of Homer, from his inability to solve the riddle of the lads.[742]

(B) The death of Theodoric, who recognised in the head of a pike which he was eating the head of his murdered victim, Symmachus.[743]

(C) No less an event than the Trojan War, which, according to the windbag Ptolemy Hephæstion, happened on this wise.

In the belly of a huge fish named Pan (from its resemblance to that god) was found a gem (asterites), which when exposed to the sun shot forth flames and became a powerful love philtre. Helen, on acquiring this, had it engraved with a figure of the Pan fish, and when desirous of making a special impression wore it as a signet ring.

Thus, when Paris visited Sparta the charm blazed from her finger with the result of the immediate conquest of Paris, the flight from Menelaus, and the Ten Years’ War!

THE RETURN OF HELEN.

From a Fifth Century Scyphos, made by the potter Hieron and painted by the artist Makron, from Furtwängler and Reichhold, Griech. Vasenmalerei, Vol. II., Pl. 85.

But, despite Homer, it was discovered (!) afterwards that Helen was not in Ilium at any time during the siege, and that what the Trojans harboured was not her real self, but only her “living image,” εἴδωλον ἔμπνουν.[744] The discoverer of this interesting fact was (so ran the slander) Stesichorus. Struck with blindness after writing an attack on Helen, he recovered his sight by composing a Palinodia.[745] The ghost of Achilles, when raised by that most famous medium of antiquity, Apollonius of Tyana, denied positively that Helen was in Ilium.[746]

If Mr. J. A. Symonds be right, “We fought for fame and Priam’s wealth,” and for naught else, then she “with the star-like sorrows of immortal eyes” was neither causa causans nor any cause of the Fall of Troy. Perhaps “Priam’s wealth” is but an intelligent anticipation of Mr. Leaf’s theory that the War was fought for “The Freedom of the Sea” (Euxine), and, incidentally, the capture of another nation’s profits.