Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

^202 FISH MANIA—VITELLIUS-APICIUS—COOKSGreece proper, from its comparative sterility and povertyof water, was very limited in its capacity to grow crops orrear herds. It compulsorily fell back largely on fish. Andprincipally sea-fish, because of their superior palatability,and because of the inadequacy, owing to scarcity of lakes andperennial rivers, of fresh-water fish.Whatever be the cause of the early abstention, three pointsarouse our interest. (A) The passages in Greek writers(previous to ^lian) that describe angling in Greek freshwaters, reach but a scant half-dozen, while those that depictfishing in such waters—sacred lakes, temple stewponds, andeeling in Lake Copais excepted—can probably be reckoned onboth hands. 1(B) The Palatine Anthology (at least in the period from700 B.C. to 500 A.D.) contains no reference (as far as I know)to aught but sea-fishing.(C) The Greek comedians, Athenaeus, the Greek opsophagicauthors allalmost always reserve their appreciations for foodfrom IxOvoeig TTovTog.The statement that the Romans abstained, like the Maeataeor Celts 2 of North Britain, from fresh-water fish from similar,or any motives, cannot be estabhshed. It goes far beyondthe evidence at our command, although some aversion maybe possibly deduced from Ovid {Fast., VI. 173 f.), and asregards shell-fish from Varro. Unlike the Greeks, however,they certainly in a very short period became great consumersof fish from the Tiber, the Po, the ItaUan Lakes, and afterwardsfrom the Danube, Rhine, etc., but in their estimation,as in that of the Greeks, fish from the sea ever held the higherplace.* Passages which at first sight seem to conflict with this summary can oftenbe ruled out from (A) geographical reasons, where (i) the fishing occurs insome non-Greek water, as in the Tiber (Galen, irepl rpocpwv Swdfitoos, 3), or(2) the locality is not specified, as in Athen., VIII. 56, which is merely aquotation from a treatise of Mnesitheus, concerned with all kinds of fishfrom a digestive point of view ; and (B) from the brackish nature of water.* Dio. Cass. 70, 12, 2, speaks of the Scottish Seas as swarming and crammedwith fish.3 Damm, p. 465, asserts that the order of eating of fish among the Greekswas (i) Fish from the sea, and then, but much later, (2) Fish from the rapidsof a river. Daremberg and Saglio :" Pour les Grecs le poisson d'eau douce