Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

ii8TRAITS OF FISHERMEN—DEITIES OF FISHINGAntiphanes (inthe fragments of which, however, we are confrontedby no Sex problem, by no Suffragettism i) ; and (ofthe New Comedy authors) in Menander's The Fishermen(where we gather from Pollux that a fisher came on the stagefully equipped for fishing), in all these plays and many moreappear fisher folk. 2Archippus' drama deserves a moment's notice,because inimitation of Aristophanes' Birds the poet ventured on achorus composed exclusively of Fishes. Extant fragments ofthe play (performed probably in 413 B.C.) tell of war beingdeclared by the fish against their oppressors the Athenians,who were passionate opsophagists. The principal conditionof the Peace Points—whether Fourteen or more our data donot determine—secured the prompt delivery to the Fishes ofthe head of their chief foe, Melanthios,If the protocol of this Treaty had attracted the notice ofPresident Wilson, who as a constitutional historian attachesimportance to the " broadening down from precedent toprecedent," the demands of the Allies for the immediatesurrender of our arch-enemy, the Kaiser, might have beenmore insistent and scarcely less successful.And so from the first loci classici of fishing in Homer wejourney on through the succeeding centuries. In nearly allwe encounter fishing and fishermen in hterature or play. Inthe third B.C. we reach the next locus classicus— " The Fisherman'sDream," Idyll XXI. of Theocritus." Theocritus is the creator of the literary piscatory, as heis also of the literary bucolic." This dictum would, I think,be rendered more accurate by the substitution of modeller inplace of creator. Theocritus, even if we allow for Stesichorus,Epicharmus, and Sophron, stands out the first, not to createbut to gather, and by his genius reduce to regular literaryshape, the existent poems and songs [Volkslieder) which formed* 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 thefemale at last shall conquer the male in the battle, Conquer and drive him forth,and glory shall gain among Argives."^ 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, thetitle of The Eel, according to Keller, op. cit., 357.