Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

64 HOMER—POSITION OF FISHERMENaccordance with the varying ages allotted to the Homericpoems. *It is to Homer, whether written by half a dozen differentauthors or in half a dozen different centuries, 2 as the oldestGreek writer extant that we naturally turn for informationabout fishermen and fishing. His evidence is not only theearhest, but also the most trustworthy, according to Athenaeus." Homer treats of the art of fishing with greater accuracythan professional writers on the subject such as C^cihus,Oppian, etc." 3 —an endorsement from the piscatorial sideof the Theocritean aXig Travreaaiv "O/ur/po?.Neither fishermen nor traders in the Iliad and Odysseypossess any real status. While farmers, more especiallypastoral farmers, occupy an acknowledged and—next to thechiefs and warriors—the highest position, no fisherman or traderis regarded as a representative unit of the body, politic orsocial,or as a contributor to the wealth of the tribe or state,a condition with which that of the fisherfolk in ancient Egypt ^and in China, both in early times and in the present day, iselsewhere compared and contrasted.^* Equally famous, perhaps even more so, is the representation of a fishfound in 1882 near Vettersfelde in Lower Lausitz, but now in Berlin. It isthe shield-sign of a Scythian chief, made in gold repoussJ work early in thefifth century B.C. See the publications of A. Furtwangler, Der Goldfund vonVettersfelde (Berlin, 1883), {—id. Kleine Schriften (Miinchen, 1912), I. 469 ff.pi. 18); cf. E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks (Cambridge, 1913), p. 236 ff.fig. 146. Furtwangler thinks that the fish may have been meant for theThymus alalonga.' Homer, according to Sir A. Evans, " is at most sub-Mycenaean, his ageis more recent than the latest stage of anything that can be called Minoan orMycenaean," Jour. Hellenic Studies, xxxii. (1912) 287. This would seem toplace Homer about the twelfth century.* Deipnosophistcs, I. ch. 22.* Herodotus (II. 164) describing the different grades of Egyptian societybegins with the priests and ends with the boatmen, among whom he apparentlyincludes the fishermen. Their humble position is confirmed by otherevidence ; see postea 333. In Laconia fishing was confined to the Helotsand TltploiKoi.' " With the division of the people of the Empire into four distinctclasses—scholars, agriculturists, artisans, and merchants—the men and womenwho followed the trade of fishing for a livelihood were placed in an anomalousposition from not being included in any of the four classes. Thus sociallyostracised to a certain extent, they clung to themselves, forming groups orcolonies of their own along the coasts or on isolated islands. They lived in aworld of their own, knowing nothing of the affairs of their country and caringless. To this day they do not come into direct contact with their countrymen