ANTHIAS SACER. 21 



following lines of the elegant little fragment on the defensive instincts 

 of fishes, attributed by Pliny to Ovid ; but which some later critics have 

 supposed to be the composition of Gratius Faliscus. The style, however, 

 is certainly O vidian. 



" Anthias his, tergo quae non videt,* utitur armis ; 

 Vim spinse novitque suae, versoque supinus 

 Corpora Una secat, fixumque intercipit hamum." 



Halieut. 45 — 47. Ovid. Op. 



The greatest difficulty indeed encumbers the attempt to ascertain this 

 Anthias'f in modern nomenclature ; for although it may safely be affirmed 

 that not one of the ancient Greek and Roman authors intended by this 

 name to designate the subject of the present chapter, there can be little 

 doubt that they confounded several other fishes under it. The Aulopias 

 of that omnivorous compiler, ^lian (Lib. xiii. cap. 17), a gregarious fish, 

 attaining a size less only than the largest Tunny, to which it is in strength 

 and force superior, with large round eyes, and of the deepest blue (kvccvov) 

 on the back, with the belly white, and a golden stripe from the head to the 

 tail, ending in a circle, might well, as Cuvier conjectures (Hist. ii. 261), be 

 the Thi/nnus alalonga Cuv. and Val., the Atum Avoador of Madeira. 

 And that this Aulopias was at least a kind of Anthias, though ^lian was 

 ignorant of this, may be inferred from his subjoining to this description an 

 account of its capture very similar to that which Oppian (' AX. y. 205 — 280) 

 gives 0^ i\\?ii oi Anthias : and more precisely still from Oppian's line, re- 

 lating to one sort of his Anthias. 



AXXovs 8' evanrovs re xal avXamovs KoXeovcriu. 



'AX. a. 256. 



But this identity is rendered nearly certain by Aristotle's direct statement 

 long before, that the Aulopias is also called Anthias {ocvkwTricig ov jccckov- 

 aiv ccv&idv. Hist. Z. 25. 3). Again, the large toothless Anthias of Op- 



* The frequent reading " tergo quae concutit," adopted by the Elzevirs, Burman, Maittaire, &c. 

 rests merely on a conjectural emendation of Heinsius. 



+ " Where an Anthias is seen," says Aristotle, " there is no fierce beast : of which sign the sponge- 

 divers avail themselves, and call these fishes sacred. And this seems something of the nature of a 

 symptom : as where there is a snail-shell, there is neither swine nor partridge ; for they eat up every 

 snail-shell." Arist. Hist. (Schn.) I. xt. 3. See also Athenagus, (Dindorf.) vii. 17 ; Plutarch de Solertia 

 Animal. (Reiske, Lips.) Vol. x. p. 84 ; and Eustathius in Horn. II. •r. 407. — Pliny (ix. cap. 47) 

 attributes the epithet of sacred on the same ground to the " flat-fishes " (pianos pisces) • perhaps 

 misunderstanding Aristotle to include these, of some of which he has indeed immediately before been 

 speaking, in the passage above-quoted, under the expression, "these fishes" {ix^"i rovr'ovi). Yet 

 many different fishes doubtless were so designated : and Athenaeus has a chapter (vii. 18) beginning 

 with the inquiry, " What is the fish called sacred ?" However, Bloch's application of this title 

 after Rondeletius, to the subject of the present chapter, is clearly founded upon its supposed identity 

 with Aristotle's Anthias. 



