Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

—SEALS, EELS, PROTEUS 85greater beast she may anywhere take, whereof the deep-voicedAmphitrite feeds countless flocks."Seals 1 greedily devour a corpse in the sea {Od., XV.480). //., XXL 122, 203, extend the pleasant practice to fishand eels :gnawing the fat about his kidneys."" around him eels and fishes swarmed, tearing andIt is noteworthy that in Greek and Latin literature thefirst fish attaining to the dignity of a name is the Eel. 2The sea is called \xQv6tig, " fishy," or perhaps better" fishful," twelve times : the Hellespont only once. Plutarch{Symp., IV. 4) had this probably in mind, when he wrote," the heroes encamped by the Hellespont used themselves to aspare diet, banishing from their tables all superfluous delicaciesto such a degree that they abstained from fish." 'IxQvouqhappens but once in connection with a river, the Hyllus (//., XX.392).Homer seemingly applies it only where he is impressed,not by the number of fish obvious to the eye or still remainingin, but by the number already taken out of the water. Theproportion of salt water ' fishfuls ' to fresh water ' fishfuls '13 as against i—would, if not quite accidental, accord with thefact that the early Greeks, whatever be the time at which theybecame Ichthyophagists, set no high store on fresh-waterfish. 3^ In Victor Berard's Les Pheniciens el I'Odyssee (Paris, 1903), vol. ii. p. 64 ff.(a work, compact of knowledge and of both classical and modern research,which tracks characters and episodes in Homer to and compares them withEgyptian and Phoenician accounts), is found a very interesting dissertation onProteus, the guardian of the seals of Poseidon and foreteller of the future(Od., IV.). Berard holds that the name was simply a Greek form of theEgyptian word Prouiti, or Prouti, which was one of the ascriptions or titlesof the kings of Egypt, as to whose knowledge of or association with magicians(who, like Proteus, were capable of transforming themselves or other objects)he cites alike Maspero and the Old Testament. See, however, for otherpossibilities, P. Weizsacker in Roscher, Lex. Myth., iii. 3172-3178, who concludesthat for us, as for Menelaos or Aristaios, Proteus the shape-shifter is still avery slippery customer.* Otto Keller, Die Antike Tierwelt (Leipzig, 1913), ii.357.3 See infra, p. 201.