Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

3—CHAPTER XIVINFATUATION FOR FISH—EXTRAVAGANT PRICES—COSTLYENTERTAINMENTS — VITELLIUS — CLEOPATRA — API-CIUS—COOKS—SAUCESLeaving now the Lore of fishing among the Greeks and Romans,letus turn, before examining the nature and number of theirLures, to their estimation of Fish as a food.We found, it will be remembered, that the Homeric poemsmake no mention of fish being served at a banquet of theheroes, or even appearing on the tables of people of position.Only poor or starving folk ate fish. Although fish became lateran insensate luxury, the Greeks at first apparently abstainedfrom all fish caught in fresh water, except the eels of LakeCopais, then as now far-famed, iThis abstention from fresh-water fish originated (according toPlutarch) in the belief that every spring and every stream wassacred to some god or nymph, to catch whose property orprogeny—the fish in them—would be an act of impiety. ^This sounds like a laboured explanation of a fact really dueto other causes. One of these is brought out clearly in Geikie.When noticing the difference which existed between theGreek and the Roman interest in and feeling for the sea, he,or rather Professor Mackail, attributes itof food supply.880.largely to a question1 Cf. Chapter IV. Also Plutarch, Synip.. VIII. S, and Aristoph., Ach.,2 Akin to this we have the special prohibition—unique as far as I knowwhereby priests at the temple of Leptis abstained from eating sea fish, becausePoseidon was god of the sea, and owner and protector of its denizens.Plutarch, De soleri. an., 35, 11. At other of his temples, e.g. in Laconia, thefate awaiting a violator of the sacred fish was that common to poachers ofsimilar holy waters, death." I'he Love of Nature among the Romans (London, 1912), p. 300, n. i.