Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

—CHAPTER XXIITHE RING OF HELENIn the countries dealt with in this book I give instances whereFish and Fishing have, according to myth or tradition, playeda prominent part in human affairs, and have been the cause,direct or indirect, of important events.Thus in Greece and Rome, to fish is assigned the responsibilityfor(A) The death of Homer, from his inability to solve theriddle of the lads.2(B) The death of Theodoric, who recognised in the head ofa pike which he was eating the head of his murdered victim,Symmachus.3(C) No less an event than the Trojan War, which, accordingto the windbag Ptolemy Hephaestion, happened on this wise.In the belly of a huge fish named Pan (from its resemblanceto that god) was found a gem {asterites), which when exposedto the sun shot forth flames and became a powerful love philtre.Helen, on acquiring this, had it engraved with a figure of thePan fish, and when desirous of making a special impressionwore it as a signet ring.Thus, when Paris visited Sparta the charm blazed from herfinger with the result of the immediate conquest of Paris,fiight from Menelaus, and the Ten Years' War !theBut, despite Homer, it was discovered (!) afterwards thatFrom a splendid vase-painting representing the two sides of a magnificent^scyphos made by the potter Hieron and painted by the artist Makron. Theoriginal (now in Boston) is of the finest fifth-century (b.c.) art. See Furtwanglerand Reichhold, Griechische Vasemnalerei (Miinchen, 1909), vol. II.125 ff., pi. 85.^ See Chapter III.* See antea, p. 200.295