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The Punic people were however not long the only fishing 

 race, for the Greeks, as soon as their migratory convulsions 

 had passed, laid the foundation of all we know respecting fish. 

 It seems they also at first neglected or undervalued fishing 

 before their civilization. Homer, Plato, and Athenseus, hint 

 the existence of prejudices on that head, although the former 

 was most certainly acquainted with the use of nets and the 

 angler's rod \ Hesiod speaks of the casting net 2 : nor was it 

 possible that such prejudices, if ever they did exist, should 

 continue in a peninsular country, every where indented with 

 sounds and creeks, and whose population, in a great measure 

 insular, was from the commencement familiar with the sea. 

 Fresh and salt fish soon became a prominent article of diet 

 among the Greeks, their comic poets also constantly advert 

 to it. Aristophanes notices fish more than twenty times, and 

 Athenaeus quotes perhaps two hundred passages from authors 

 whose works are now lost, where fish are mentioned. The 

 art of fishing became in this manner one of the most lucrative 

 avocations : large establishments for the purpose of salting 

 and curing fish, were made in favourable situations, which 

 grew into flourishing cities. Byzantium and Synope were 

 indebted to them for their celebrity, and the harbour of 

 Byzantium, in particular, obtained the name of golden horn 

 on account of the abundance of this produce. In the Euxine 

 it appears that the Greeks as well as the Phosnicians had a 

 fishery in the Heracleotic Chersonesus, probably at Balaclava. 

 From these sources, private individuals soon rose to opulence, 



ziras ? Portus Hannibalis, Lagos bay, Clunia, said to be Corunna. All 

 these places abound in fish, though some of them may not have been 

 actual fisheries for distant markets. Of Malaga it should be remarked, 

 that according to Bochart, Malach in Hebrew and Phoenician denotes to 

 salt. Balak is a general oriental name for fish, of which Halec is a mere 

 mutation. 



1 Odyss. 1. xxii. v. 324. and 1. xii. v. 251. 2 Hes. Scut. Here. v. 212. 



