Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

noARISTOTLE THE FIRST SCALE-READERof " The Philosopher of the many Rings " better earned thanby his foppish affection for jewellery.In general opinion, the person most closely approachingthe required Proteus or Nereus was his pupil and sometimefriend, Alexander the Great. By placing at his disposalseveral thousand men to collect all kinds of animals and fishesfrom all parts of the then known world, he enabled him withthe aid of the materials thus provided to produce his famousNatural History.For this identification we have not a scrap of internalevidence, but merely the assertions of much later writers,such as Pliny, Athenaeus (who adds that Philip gave him 8gotalents to finish the History), and iEUan.iApart from want of intrinsic evidence, the fact that thegeographical references and the fish mentioned in his NaturalHistory nearly all cluster round Lesbos effectually precludes theidea of Alexander " Hagenbecking " for Aristotle. 2Internal evidence and reasons advanced by ProfessorD'Arcy Thompson ^ indicate that nearly all the animals andfishes with which Aristotle was practically acquainted belongedto Greece, Western Asia, and Sappho's Lesbos (especially ofthe lagoon of Pyrrha), where he lived some four years justprevious to his Macedonian trip, 343 B.C.The fishes in his Natural History, mostly given without anyattempt at classification or really adequate description, numberat least one hundred and ten. He discusses in some instancesthe anatomical characteristics, food, breeding habits, migrations,1 Plin., NflL Hist., VIII. 17 ;Athen.. Deipn., IX. 58 ; ^I., Var. Hist., IV. 19.2 On the other hand, Abu-Shaker, an Arab writer of the thirteeth century,makes Aristotle the material benefactor of Alexander by his present of a boxin which a number of wax figures were nailed down. These were intended torepresent the various kinds of armed forces that Alexander was likely toencounter. Some held leaden swords curved backwards, some spears pointedhead downwards, and some bows with cut strings. All the figures were laidface downwards in the box. Aristotle bade his pupil never to let the key outof his possession, and taught him to recite certain formulae whenever he openedthe 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 prostrateand unable to withstand Alexander. See Budge, Life of Alexander theGreat (one vol. ed.), p. xvi.3 See D'Arcy Thompson, Aristotle as a Biologist, Herbert Spencer Lecture,Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1913, p. 13.