Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

FISH ON COINS—ARETHUSA 221reaching seeming safety in the Isle of Ortygia, close to Syracuse,she welled forth in the midst of the salt sea a fountain of sweetpure water. Alpheus, not to be outdone, got himself transformedinto a river to emerge also at Ortygia and to mix hisstream with the spring of the nymph.Around her head or amidst her hair on Syracusan coinsdart dolphins (some hold eels,symbolic of the sea, to show thatthe sweetness of the fountain wasstill untainted by the surroundingsalt of the ocean, i Sweet thewater may have been, butAthenseus (II. i6) characterisesit as " of invincible hardness."These coins are the work ofthose great masters, Cimon,Euaenetus, and an unknownthird, the New ' Artist of Sir'Arthur Evans. 2 On an electrumcoin of Syracuse an octopus iswell delineated, while the obverseshows a veiled female head inprofile. 3which were sacred to x\rtemis),ARETHUSA, FROM A TETRADRACHMOF SYRACUSE BY CIMON.From G. F. Hill's Handbook ofCoins, PI. 6, Fig. 6.The octopus, judging by the fact that at Mycenae in onetomb alone Dr. Schliemann excavated fifty-three golden modelsof it, and by the many gold ornaments of which the fish formsthe chief or only figure, was undoubtedly a very frequent andfavourite subject for the craftsmen of the Minoan ' 'age,1 Some authorities (Preller, Griech. Myth., i. 191) believe the head to bethat of Artemis, not only the protectress of Arethusa, but also the goddess ofrivers and springs, and of the fish therein— -one of her emblems was a fish.Some coins show her or Arethusa's head with seaweed plaited in the hair, orthe hair plaited in a sort of fish-net surrounded by little fish. The wholeisland of Ortygia was absolutely dedicated to Artemis— -no plough could cuta furrow, no net ensnare a fish, without instantly encountering a sea of troubles.See Keller, op. cit., p. 343. The sacred fish were seen by Diodorus (V. 3) aslate as Octaviau's reign.^For an admirable account of Syracusan coin-types during the ' fine 'period (413-346 B.C.), see G. F. Hill, Corns of Ancient Sicily (London, 1903),p. 97 ff., witii frontispiece and pis. 6-7. On the widespread representation ofthe Tunny on vases and coins—^^Carthaginian, Pontic, etc.—see Rhode, op. cit.,PP- 73-77-" See G. F. Hill, op. cil.. PI. 7, 13.