Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

FISHERS' HOSPITALITY, PIETY 123or sprang rather from a gratitude proportioned to futurebenefits, Bunsmann is discreetly non-committal.But of outward and visible signs of such Piety the AnthologiaPalatina is eloquent.Their Piety towards the dead is strikinglyattested by Hegesippus, the simplicity of whose style in hiseight epigrams in Anth. Pal. betokens an early date. " Thefishermen brought up from the sea in their net a half-eatenman, a most mournful relic of some voyage. They soughtnot for unholy gain, but him and the fishes too they buriedunder this light coat of sand." ^Bunsmann furnishes two records of impiety among fishermen.The first occurs in the well-known Baiano procul a lacurecede of Martial {Epigr., IV. 30), where an impious poacherin the very act of landing his fish from the Emperor's lake isstricken with blindness. The second, in Athen., VII. 18, and^han, XV. 23, where Epopeus, a fisherman of the island ofIcarus, enraged by taking nothing but sacred or tahu Pompili,turned to with his son and devoured them, only themselvesin turn to be devoured by a whale. ^But the impietas charged from Anth. Pal., VI. 24, is fantastic.The indictment has been drawn owing either to mistranslationof the passage or inability to appreciate the rather heavyhandedhumour (frequent in the Greek and Roman writers ofthe time) of Lucilius, a conjectured author of the Epigram.Heliodorus lays down at the portals of the temple of " theSyrian goddess " a votive offering of his fishing net worn out,not by catches of fish, but of seaweed " from the beaches ofgoodly havens." This dedication, as fish were sacred to thegoddess and in Syria were forbidden as a food, has beenimputed as an affront to the deity, but quite incorrectly.HeUodorus in offering his net intended no disrespect, noroffended any law of the temple. Since its sole catch had beenseaweed, his net could plead " pure from the prey of fishery."1 VII. 276, W. R. Paton's Translation.2 Cf. Pausanias, III. 21, 5: " Men fear to fish in the Lake of Poseidon,for they think he who catches fish in it is turned into a fish called The Fisher."In I. 38, I, we find that only the priests were allowed to fish, because therivers were sacred to Demeter, and in VII. 22, 4, that the fish at Pharae weresacred to Hermes, and so inviolate.K