Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

^———CHAPTER XVFISH IN SACRIFICES—PICKLED FISH—VIVARIA OFOYSTERS, ETC.—ARCHIMEDESThe Feast Day, Ludi, of the Tiber fishermen was celebratedon the Campus Martins in June under the management of thePrcBtor Urbanus with much ceremony. Ovid ^ sings :" Festa dies iUis qui Una madentia ducunt,Quique tegunt parvis aera recurva cibis."The custom of offering to the Gods fish (although rarerthan that of animals) certainly and widely prevailed. Proofcan be piled on proof pace a passage from Plutarch andpace the contention that the practice isfrom the pages of both Greek and Roman authors.not purely HellenicTake, for instance, the statement of Agatharchides of Knidos :that the largest eels from Lake Copais were sacrificed by theBoeotians, who crowned them like human victims, and aftersprinkling them with meal offered prayers over them. 2 Orthe story in Posidonius the Stoic of Sarpedon celebrating hisvictory by " sacrificing to Neptune, who puts armies to flight,enormous quantities of fish." 3 Theocritus in his fragmentaryBerenice, yEHan,* and Antigonus on the offering of the Tunnyall confirm the custom.1 Fasti, VI. 239 ff.^ Agatharchides, frag, i ap. Athen., VII. 50. In these days of the Scienceof Comparative Curiosity and International Meddling the answer of theBoeotian to a foreigner asking how so singular a victim and sacrifice originatedrings out pleasantly refreshing: "I only know one thing: it is right tomaintain the customs of one's ancestors, and it is not right to explain them"to foreigners !3 Athen., VIII. 8.* ^Uan, XV. 6.* Athen., VII. 50, and Paulus Rhode, Thynnorum Captura (Lipsise, 1890),e.g. Diana, Apollo, Mercury, Juno, Neptune,p. 71. Most of the major deities215