Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

126 TRAITS OF FISHERMEN—DEITIES OF FISHINGIt is with a start of surprise that one finds Priapus, farmore notorious as the god of propagation and fecundity,among the gods of fisherfolk. Can this be accounted for bysome subtle, but inverse connection between the behef in Indiathat the Fish was the symbol of Fecundation, and the God ofFecundation in Greece ? Some support for this may lie inthe statement of de Gubernatis, that as in the East the fishwas a phallic symbol, so now pesce in the Neapolitan dialectmeans the phallus itself.His lineage, either the son of Hermes, or his grandson, foramong the many putative fathers of Priapus was Pan, mayaccount for the inclusion of Priapus. To Priapus, arrivinghow he may at goddom, offerings were more freely made thanto any other except Hermes, iIn addition to these four flourished minor gods. Goddessestoo of Fishing (such as Artemis 2), of rivers, of springs,and of the fish therein found devotees. First and foremost,ranked Aphrodite or Venus :" But sheCame flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot onthe sea.And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds, and the viewlessways.And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays."probably a mis-This in common with the behef that Janus invented boats istaken inference from the fact that the early as libralis had a head of Janus onone side and the prow of a ship on the other (Roscher, Lex. Myth., II. p. 23).^ The description in Anth. Pal., X. 10, " Me, Pan, the fishermen haveplaced on this holy cliff, the watcher here over the fair anchorage of theharbour ; and I take care now of the baskets and again of the trawlers offthis shore," and in Archias [Anth. Pal., X. 7, and 8) of the fishermen makingan image of Priapus to be set up, just where the sea leaves the shore, areonly three of very many similar passages. Among the Eleans Apollo washonoured as a God under the title of The Fish-eater (Athen., VIII. 36). Inaddition to Gods we read of Tritons who were half-men, half-fish, and of astill more wonderful being, an Ichthyocentaurus, whose upper body was ofhuman form, and lower that of a fish, while in place of the hands were horses'hooves^ The Phigaleans (in Arkadia) worshipped an old wooden image, calledEurynome, which represented a woman to the hips, a fish below. Thiscurious eifigy was kept bound in golden chains and was regarded by theinhabitants as a form of Artemis: see Pans., 8. 41, 4-6. A large Boeotianvase at Athens shows Artemis with a great fish painted on the front of herdress, a clear indication that she was held locally to be a goddess of fishing(M. CoUignon and L. Couve, Catalogue des Vases Peints du Mus^e Nationald'Aihenes (Paris, 1902), p. 108 f., No. 462 ; cp. lb.. No. 463).