[183] The Ἀγὼν is found in only a few of the editions of Hesiod. I have followed the text of C. Goettling, 1843. The author Herodotus, who wrote probably about 60 to 100 a.d., lived of course centuries after Hesiod, who is generally dated some 100 to 200 years subsequent to Homer. The account given by Suidas varies in several small details, for instance the riddle is rendered in prose as well as in metre. He definitely states that illness, not the riddle, was accountable for the poet’s death.
Since writing this Note, I have come across in the Oxford Homer, vol. v. (1912), edited by T. W. Allen, the Ἀγὼν, the Life of Homer by Plutarch, and by Suidas, all conveniently placed together. Mr. Allen, in the Jour. Hell. Studies, XXXV. (1915), 85-99, has an elaborate article on ‘the Date of Hesiod,’ which for astronomical and other reasons he now fixes as 846-777 b.c.
[184] “It is difficult to understand how the author could derive from Works and Days a reputation like that enjoyed by Hesiod, especially if we remember that at Thespiæ, to which the village of Ascra, the birthplace and early home of Hesiod, was subject, agriculture was held degrading to a freeman” (Smith, Dict. Gk.-Rom. Biog. and Myth., s. v. “Hesiod”).
[185] When Pausanias came to Thespiæ on his Bœotian round, the representatives of the Corporation who owned the land told him dogmatically that the Works and Days alone came from the Master’s hand, and showed him the ne varietur copy on lead, wanting the proœmium which we read at the head of the poem (Paus., 9. 31. 4).
[186] The passage, attributed by Euthydemus (in his Treatise on Pickled Fish) to Hesiod, which mentions seven fish, does not upset my statement, because the paternity of the work has long been deemed spurious. Even Athenæus brands the verses as “the work of some cook, rather than that of the great accomplished Hesiod,” and concludes from intrinsic evidence, such as the mention of Byzantium, etc., and the Campanians, etc., “when Hesiod was many years more ancient than any of these places or tribes,” that they were written by Euthydemus. See Athen., III. 84.
[187] Ἁλλὰ νέων παίδων αἴνιγμα φύλαξαι. For other epigrammata, see Anth. Pal. VII. 1 to 7, and Plutarch, de vita Homeri, 1. 4.
[188] From Anth. Pal., IX. 448.
which may perhaps be rendered in rhyme,
[189] It suggests itself to me that in the answer to the riddle there is just possibly a play within a play, or a double latent meaning, for the word φθεὶρ denotes not only a louse, but also a fish of the Remora kind. Perhaps this humour is too subtle even for a class so noted for “calliditas,” or shrewd wit, as Greek fishermen are reputed to have been.
[190] Anth. Pal., VII. 3. Κοσμήτορα I prefer to translate “marshal,” its first meaning, rather than “adorner” adopted by Coleridge, as being far stronger, and more fitting for a poet who had “marshalled” on his stage of the Iliad so many heroes. Herodotus states that the people of Ios (not Homer) wrote the epitaph at a subsequent date.
[191] It was on the advice of Socrates that Xenophon consulted the oracle at Delphi, before he set forth for the campaign in Asia, which forms the story of his Anabasis. Tablets discovered in Epirus in 1877 by C. Carapanos (see Dodone et ses Ruines, Paris, 1878) give examples of questions addressed to the oracle at Delphi. Agis asks if some mattresses and pillows are likely to be recovered. Another pilgrim enquires whether the god recommends sheep-farming as an investment.
[192] Il., vii. 451.
[193] Plutarch’s account (Sept. Sap. Conviv., ch. 19) varies in many details; notably, (1) it acquits Hesiod of seduction, (2) the brothers of flight, (3) the maiden of hanging herself.
[194] Translated by C. A. Elton. In the last two lines occurs the solitary mention by Hesiod of fishing.
[195] From the fish (in old English daulphin) came apparently the title of the eldest son of the kings of France from 1349 to 1830. According to Littré the name Dauphin, borne by the lords of the Viennois, was the proper name Delphinus (the same word as the name of the fish), whence the province subject to them was called Dauphiné. Humbert III., on ceding the province, made it a condition that the title should be perpetuated by being borne by the eldest son of the French king. A. Brachet, An Etymological Dict. of the French Language3 (Oxford, 1883), p. 113, states that the title—peculiar to S. France—first appears in 1140: “the origin is obscure, though it certainly represents the Delphinus.”
[196] Lucian (Dialogues of the Sea Gods, VIII.) offers an unexpected explanation of this trait. On Poseidon’s commending the fish for the rescue of Arion, the Dolphin makes answer: “You need not be surprised to find us doing a good turn to Man: we were men before we were fishes.”
[197] Pindar (frag. 235 Bergk4, 140b, 68 ff., Schroeder) likens himself to the dolphin,
Pliny (Delphin edition, 1826, which I use throughout), IX. 8. Suetonius, Nero 41.
[198] Herodotus, I. 24. Pausanias, III. 25. Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conviv., 18. Cf. Lucian’s characteristic account, op. cit., VIII.
[199] S. Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints (London, 1897), vol. x. 385.
[200] Keller, op. cit., 347, confirms this habit of the fish, which, I suggest, is dictated by reason of food.
[201] Oppian, hab. V. 425 ff.; Pliny, IX. 9; Ælian, de nat. an., II. 8.
[202] The Mugil, especially Mugil saltator, vies with if it do not surpass the salmon in its power of leaping. It often (according to Oppian) jumps right over the surrounding nets. Our Dolphin a double duty pays, in (1) driving the fish, and (2) killing the successful saltatores.
[203] In Arist., N. H., IX. 48, the Dolphin “seems to be the swiftest of all the creatures, marine or terrestrial,” but in N. H., IX. 37, he credits the grey mullet as being “the swiftest of fishes.”
[204] Pliny, IX. 9: “Sed enixioris operæ, quam in unius diei præmium conscii sibi opperiuntur in posterum: nec piscibus tantum sed et intrita panis e vino satiantur.”
[205] In Lapland the “sea-swallows” render great aid in the salmon season. For some cause these small marine birds elect to follow the inward and outward course of the fish, and are thus infallible guides to the fishermen, with whom they become so tame that they will light on their fingers, and take, if not “the choicest of the spoil,” scraps of fish. No wonder they are termed “The Luck-bringers.” See S. Wright, The Romance of the World’s Fisheries (London, 1908), p. 69.
[206] Oppian, hal., V. 447. In mediæval times instances of dolphins aiding fishermen are related by Albertus Magnus, De Animalibus, VI. p. 653, and by Rondolet, Libri de piscibus marinis, etc. (Lugduni, 1554-5), XVI. p. 471. At the present day in Lake Menzalah porpoises shepherd the fish: the Egyptian, however, spares to his helpers their lives, but naught else. The natives of Angola were much more recognisant of service, as an interesting description by an old traveller of a fish drive there evidences: “They use upon this coast to fish with harping irons, and waite upon a great fish which cometh once a day to feed along the shoare which is like a grampus. Hee runneth very near the shoare, and driveth great skuls of fish before him; the negroes runne along and strike their harping irons about him, and kill great store of fish, and leave them in the sand till the fish hath done feeding and then they come and gather up the fish. This fish will many times runne himself aground, but they will presently shore him off again, which is as much as four or five men can doe. They call him Emboa, which is in their speech a Dogge: and will by no means hurt or kill any of them.” The Strange Adventures of Andrew Battell of Leigh in Essex. (Haklutus Posthumus or Purchas his pilgrimes (ed. Glasgow, 1905-7), vol. VI. p. 404.)
[207] The evidence is collected and discussed by K. Klement, Arion (Wien, 1898), pp. 1-64, and by H. Usener, Die Sintfluthsagen (Bonn, 1899), pp. 138-180.
[208] Aegyptiaca, book v. frag. 6 (Frag. hist. Gr., III. 510 f. Müller).
[209] Pausanias, III. 25. 7, recalls that among the votive offerings at Tænarum “is a bronze statue of the minstrel Arion. Herodotus tells his story from hearsay, but I have actually seen the Dolphin at Poroselene that was mauled by fishermen and testified its gratitude to the boy who healed it. I saw that Dolphin answer to the boy’s call, and carry him on his back when he chose to ride.”
[210] Noctes Atticæ, 6. 8. 1-7.
[211] For instances in classical mythology of rescues from drowning, and of corpses brought ashore, see A. B. Cook, Zeus (Cambridge, 1914), i. p. 170, and for similar hagiographical instances, see S. Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints (London, 1873-82), passim. C. Cahier, Caractéristiques des Saints dans l’art populaire (Paris, 1867), ii. 691 ff., gives an account full of interest, which is increased by his illustrations of Saints accompanied by fish.
[212] Brit. Mus. Cat., pl. XXI. 7. B. V. Head, Historia Numorum, 620 f. (ed. 2, Oxford, 1911). In Plutarch’s (de Sol. Anim., 36) the lad was thrown from the fish’s back by a terrible shower of hail and was drowned.
[213] Oppian, hal., V. 521 ff.
[214] B. V. Head, op. cit. p. 266 ff. As an emblem of the sea the dolphin is very general, from the rude sculpturings of Etruscan sarcophagi, the later mural adornments at Pompeii, down to the paintings of the walls of the Vatican by Raphael. In all, the striking dissemblancy to the actual dolphin of natural history can be remarked at a glance. In the case of Raphael, however, it must be remembered that the designs are modelled on the classical decorations which were discovered in the Baths of Titus, where the Dolphin had been with propriety introduced as a marine symbol (Moule, Heraldry of Fish, p. 8).
[215] De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology (London, 1872), ii. 336.
[216] Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy (London, 1910), ii. 636. W. A. Cork, op. cit., p. 96, states that the Karayás of the Amazon Valley, although eating nearly every other fish, abstain from the Dolphin.
[217] V. 16, Rawlinson’s Translation.
[218] See also I. 200, where three Babylonian tribes exist only on fish which they dried in the sun, brayed in a mortar, and strained through a linen sieve.
[219] Indica, 26.
[220] Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, III. 48.
[221] Xenophon, Anab., I. 4; Cicero, de nat. Deorum, III. 39; Ovid, Fasti, II. 473-4.
[222] Very different was the behaviour of the first generation of Man (who according to Philo’s Translation of Sanchuniathon, quoted by Eusebius, præp. ev., I. 9, 5), “consecrated the plants shooting out of the earth, judged them gods, worshipped them, but yet lived upon them” (Cf. de Brosses, Culte des Dieux Fétiches). In Plutarch, Symp., VIII. 8. 4, Nestor states that “the priests of Poseidon never eat fish, for Poseidon is called the Generator; and the race of Hellen sacrificed to him as the first father, imagining, as likewise did the Syrians, that Man rose from a liquid substance, and therefore they worship a fish as of the same production and breeding as themselves, being in this matter more happy in their philosophy than Anaximander: for he says that fish and men were not produced in the same substance, but that men were first produced in fishes and, when they were grown up and able to fend for themselves, were thrown out and so lived on the land. Therefore, as fire devours its parents, that is the matter out of which it was first kindled, so Anaximander, asserting that fish were our common parents, condemneth our feeding upon them.” The belief in the descent of man from fish exists in the present day among the Ponapians of the Caroline Islands, and elsewhere (J. G. Frazer, Folk Lore in the Old Testament (London, 1918), i. 40). As regards the changes in our development which make the whole world kin, Empedocles, (Καθαρμοί, frag. 117, Diels) sings,
[223] Symposium, VIII. 8, 3: γέγονεν ἁγνείας μἐρος ἀποχὴ ἰχθύων. Elsewhere we read of more prosaic and practical reasons why the great majority of the Greeks abstained from certain kinds of fish, e.g. the fear in the case of the loach, of which the Syrian goddess was protectress, lest she gnaw their legs, cover their bodies with sores, and devour their livers.
[224] Herodotus, I. 62.
[225] Paulus Rhode, Thynnorum Captura (Lipsiæ, 1890). Had his exhaustive monograph come to hand earlier, this notice would have been worthier, and much time spent on Aristotle, Oppian, etc., have been saved.
[226] The real derivation of πηλαμύς, which was probably a pre-Hellenic word, seems unknown: see É. Boisacq, Dictionnaire Étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris, 1913), p. 779.
[227] Their method was to let down by a rope from the boats blocks of wood (heavily weighted with lead) to which were attached great spikes and hooks, which on reaching the bottom were drawn to and fro, with the result that “here gasping Heads confess the killing Smart, | There bleeds a Tail, which quivers round the Dart.” Cf. a fragment from Menander’s The Fisherman, frag. 12 in the Frag. comicor. Graec., IV. 77, Meineke, “The muddy sea which nourishes the great Tunny.” Sophron’s Tunnyfisher seems the earliest mime, where this fish figures.
[228] O. Keller, Die Antike Tierwelt, vol. ii. 388, fig. 122. This work (published at Leipzig a year before the War) unfortunately came into my hands only when I had practically finished my book, and thus I have been precluded from the more copious use of the Fische portion, which I should have desired and which it would certainly have demanded. The seventy pages dealing with fish form a compact treasure-house of ichthyic literature, but owing perhaps to their scope lack piscatorial interest.
[229] Faber, Fisheries in the Adriatic, London, 1883.
[230] According to Pollux, VI. 63.
[231] Justin, XVIII. 3, 2.
[232] Cf. Ezekiel, XXVI. 5, 14.
[233] Cf. the allusion of Cervantes: dos cursos en la academia de la pesca de los atunos.
[234] Arrian (Ind., XXX. 1) and Strabo (XV. 12, p. 726) tell the same story of whales in the Indian Ocean.
[235] Persæ, 424 ff.
[236] Plutarch, de Sol. Anim., ch. 29.
[237] Arist., N. H., VIII. 19.
[238] Ichthyol., II. p. 376.
[239] Pliny, N. H., IX. 20, on the say-so of Arist., N. H., VI. 16, “pinguescunt in tantum ut dehiscant.”
[240] Ælian, de nat. an., XIII. 16.
[241] Oppian, hal., III. 285.
[242] Byron’s view of fishing is not favourable—as his lines in Don Juan, Canto XIII. prove:
He bore, possibly from failure to catch his boyish Aberdeenshire trout, a grudge against Father Izaak,
Byron closes his note with “But Anglers! No Angler can be a good man.” Walton received many a shrewd blow, especially from his contemporary Richard Franck, whose Northern Memories, with its appreciation of the Fly and its depreciation of Izaak’s ground-bait, found less favour than the Compleat Angler. His worsting of Walton at Stafford runs, “he stop’d his argument and leaves Gesner to defend it: so huff’d a way.” Again, “he stuffs his book with morals from Dubravius—not giving us one precedent of his own experiments, except otherwise when he prefers the trencher to the troling-rod! There are drones that rob the hive, yet flatter the bees that bring them honey.”
[243] Deipn., VIII. 47. Rabelais would seemingly make Aristotle his own Proteus, for Pantagruel (IV. 31) discovers him with his lantern at the bottom of the sea spying about, examining, and writing. This lantern has long been coupled with that of the Sea-urchin, but as a few pages later on we find ourselves in the Pays des Lanternois, it is probably a reference to a philosopher’s lamp, like that of Diogenes.
[244] The Natural History (of which the text I use is Bekker’s) is practically the only work by Aristotle discussed here. For me, being no “Clerk” although “of Oxenford,” it is not, as—
[245] Aristotle’s Researches in Natural Science, by Thomas E. Lones (1912), from whose book I borrow and to whose kind advice I owe much. At last we have a really admirable translation of Hist. Anim., which is by Prof. D’Arcy Thompson, Oxford, 1910. The notes are those of an expert zoologist, thoroughly familiar with classical literature.
[246] Select Works, vol. i. p. 69. London, 1798-1801.
[247] “Die Altersbestimmung des Karpfen an seiner Schuppe,” in the R. Jahresber. des Schlesischen Fischerei-Vereins für 1899.
[248] “The periodic growth of Scales in Gadidæ and Pleuronectidæ as an Index of Age,” in the Journal of the Marine Biolog. Assoc. (1900-03), VI. 373-375.
[249] Reports of Scottish Fishery Board, 1904, 1906, 1907.
[250] Cf. Anim. Gen., V. 3.
[251] δῆλοι δ’ oἱ γέροντες αὐτῶν τῷ μεγέθει τῶν λεπἰδων καἰ τῇ σκληρότητι. Professor D’Arcy Thompson, in his translation, renders this sentence “the age of a scaly fish may be told by the size and hardness of the scales.” It is most probable, though not a certainty, from contextual reasons, from Aristotle’s habit of casually harking back, and from Pliny in his translation of it (N. H., IX. 33) applying it generally, that this sentence applies to all fish, and not solely to the Tunny.
[252] V. 15. ἡ γὰρ πορφύρα περὶ ἔτη ἕξ, καὶ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἐνιαυτὸν φανερά ἐστιν ἡ αὔξησις τοῖς διαστήμασι τοῖς ἐν τῷ ὀστράκῳ τῆς ἕλικος. The translation above is taken from Professor D’Arcy Thompson (ibid.), to whose kindness I owe the following reference and much else in this chapter. Pliny, IX. 60, makes the Murex live seven years.
[253] In Epistolæ physiologicæ (Delft, 1719), IV. p. 401, he describes how the squamulæ or scalelets of a herring (twelve years old) were found regularly superimposed, each year’s growth on that of the preceding year.
[254] Athenæus, referring, however, solely to the Murex, “their growth is shown by the rings on their scales,” is simply quoting from Aristotle (as Dindorf’s text makes plain), whose term of six years he adopts: φανερὰ δὲ τ’αὔξησις ἐκ τῆς ἐν τῷ ὀστράκωι ἕλικος (III. 37).
[255] Plin., Nat. Hist., VIII. 17; Athen., Deipn., IX. 58; Æl., Var. Hist., IV. 19.
[256] On the other hand, Abu-Shâker, an Arab writer of the thirteenth century, makes Aristotle the material benefactor of Alexander by his present of a box in which a number of wax figures were nailed down. These were intended to represent the various kinds of armed forces that Alexander was likely to encounter. Some held leaden swords curved backwards, some spears pointed head downwards, and some bows with cut strings. All the figures were laid face downwards in the box. Aristotle bade his pupil never to let the key out of his possession, and taught him to recite certain formulæ whenever he opened the box. This is only another use of magic, for the wax, the words of power, and the position of the figures all indicate that his foes would become prostrate and unable to withstand Alexander. See Budge, Life of Alexander the Great (one vol. ed.), p. xvi.
[257] See D’Arcy Thompson, Aristotle as a Biologist, Herbert Spencer Lecture, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1913, p. 13.
[258] Athen., VIII. 50.
[259] Cf. I. V. Carus, Prodomus Faunæ Mediterranæ, vol. II., Stuttgart, 1889-93.
[260] Of the closeness of his observation may be instanced (1) the development by the cuttle fish during the breeding season of one of his arms for transference to the mantle-cavity of the female—a function of which Cuvier himself was ignorant, and which was not rediscovered till the latter end of the last century, and (2) the method of bringing forth of the shark—γαλεὸς λεῖος—which was forgotten, till Johannes Müller brought it to light. See D’Arcy Thompson, op. cit., pp. 19-21.
[261] British Fish: Salmonidæ (London, 1887), p. 19.
[262] Memories of the Months, Fourth Series (London, 1914), pp. 232-3.
[263] The experiments conducted by Alfred Ronalds and recorded in his famous Fly-Fisher’s Entomology, London, 1862, had similar results.
[264] “The belief, common later, that the soul of the dead was not admitted immediately to the realm of Hades, but wandered in loneliness on its confines until the body was either burned or buried, is clearly expressed only in this (Patroclus) passage, while possibly in only one other can it be assumed, in all the Homeric poems. The wish for speedy rites sprang from a simpler cause; men did not want to have the bodies of their friends, or of themselves, torn by wild beasts or vultures: nor does this even begin to show that they had inherited old beliefs with regard to the connection between the soul of the dead and the body, which this soul had once inhabited, leading to a certain treatment of the body. That in earlier times, and perhaps by many Greeks of Homer’s age, the soul was thought to maintain a species of connection with the body, and to care for it, cannot be doubted. But caution is necessary that it may not be assumed that the Greeks, who maintained certain customs, inherited also the beliefs on which those customs were originally based” (Seymour, op. cit., p. 462).
[265] Professor G. H. Nuttall, in Parasitology (1913), V. 253.
[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:
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.
Cf. Etruscus Messenius, Anth. Pal., VII. 381, 5 f.
[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.