Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

MAN'S DESCENT FROM FISH—THE TUNNY 99fish diet.i Others, however, hold that the ultimate reasonof the tabu lay in the uncanny nature of creatures that can anddo live under water, while we can not.Fishermen rank higher in the time of Herodotus than inthe Homeric era. Even the oracles and soothsayers nowcondescend to avail themselves of their technique and parlancefor framing their answers. Thus Amphilytus the Acarnanianencourages Pisistratus before the battle of Pallene with" The casting net is thrown down, and the fishing net spread wide.And the tunnies shall dart to and fro (therein) in the moonlight." 2If Pisistratus squared the Acarnanian, as effectively asthe Alcmaeonid® (his hereditary foes and the ejectors ofhis descendants from Athens) absolutely bought the oracleat Delphi, words of greater light and leading than " TheTunnies shall dart to and fro in the moonlight " might havebeen vouchsafed, for Herodotus relates that Pisistratus fellon the enemy, when they were having their mid-day meal, orasleep after it, or playing dice. To suppose that these wordsforetold and were understood by Pisistratus to foretell the hourof the subsequent capture of Athens itself presumes a power ofmental suggestion, which even Charcot would have envied.The dehverance may possibly have been particular asregards time, but more probably was, oracle-like, entirelygeneral in terms and time. The words "And the tunniesshall dart up and down in the moonlight " merely continuethe fishing analogy of the first line, and refer to the well-knownmethod of catching Tunnies " at the full of the moon," when,allured by the silvery light, they glide and race through thewater, and are easily taken.The mention here of the Tunny makes appropriate somenotice of a fish, which looms large in nearly all our authors.Most of them dilate at length on its multitude, migrations,habits, and size. Its economic value as a food asset, then and^ Symposium, VIII. 8, 3 : yeyovfv ayvtias /xepos airoxh Ix^vop. Elsewherewe read of more prosaic and practical reasons why the great majority of theGreeks abstained from certain kinds of fish, e.g. the fear in the case of theloach, of which the Syrian goddess was protectress, lest she gnaw their legs,cover their bodies with sores, and devour their livers.* Herodotus, I. 62.