Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

-See S. Reinach, Cultes, Mythes, et Religions (Paris 1908), iii. 43 fif.SACRED FISH 79Athenaeus ^ after trying to answer, " But what is the fishwhich is called Sacred " ? by citing instances where the Dolphin,Pompilus, Chrysophrys, etc., are so designated, adds a sentencewhich seems either to be the authority for, or to confirm theauthority of Faesi ;" but some understand by the term ' sacredfish 'one let go and dedicated to the God, just as people givethe same name to a consecrated ox."Seymour holds that "the epithet lephcas applied to a fishin //., XVI. 407, has not been satisfactorily explained fromordinary Greek usage : instead of sacred, it seems rather tomean active, vigorous, strong. Cf. the same epithet appHedto the picket guard of the Achaeans in //., X. 56." Curtiusconnects the word with the Sanskrit ishir4= vigorous. 'Uphgas active, agile, strong is appHed to horses, spies, mind, women,and cows.Leaf suggests that the word, when applied to night, etc.,would have developed the meaning of mighty, mysterious, andso later on sacred. If sacred, the epithet may have arisen outof some sort of tabu or religious feehng against eating fish,early times often regarded as either uncanny creatures livingunder water and possessed of superhuman powers, or as divineor semi-divine. 2Gradually the dread of fish as creatures tabu wore off,but survived for long in a hole-and-corner way, e.g. the venerationof TtTTL^ IvdXiog, ' the lobster,' at Seriphos,^ or thedeification of KapKivoi, ' crabs,' in Lemnos.^If hpoQ does mean a big, fine, vigorous fish, to most modernfishermen a Rod would seem impHed. This is strengthened bythe nature of the act to which the simile applies : wg 'IXk^ Sovpl(fiauvvo,as Patroclus dragged Thestor on the bright spear fromthe chariot, so the fishermen dragged the fish from the sea.In D. the case, if any, for the implied use of the Rod is veryweak. In this alone of all the references does lead as a weightoccur. Here we have no comparison to action such as draggingup a fine fish, but simply to swiftness ; the effect of it, thein^vii. 18-21.3^lian, N. H., xiii. 26.*Hesych, s.v. KdBeipoi.