LAKE DWELLERS— ICHTHYOPHAGl 97 



single stage. At first the piles were fixed by all citizens, 

 but since that time the custom that has prevailed about 

 fixing them is this, every man drives in three for each wife he 

 marries. Now the men all have many wives apiece, and this is 

 the way they live. Each has his own hut (wherein he dwells) on 

 one of the platforms, and each has a trap door, giving access to 

 the lake beneath : their wont is to tie the baby children by the 

 foot with a string, to save them from rolling into the water. 

 They feed their horses and other beasts on fish, which abound 

 in the lake in such a degree that a man has only to open his 

 trap door, and let down a basket by a rope into the water, and 

 then wait a very short time, when he draws it up quite full of 

 fish."i 



Confirming and illustrating Herodotus's account (L 202) 

 of how a tribe dwelling on the Araxes lived on raw fish, 2 but 

 depicting more sharply how on fish a whole people were depend- 

 ent for everything that made up their fives, comes Arrian's 

 description 3 of the Ichthyophagi of the Persian Gulf. 



Denied by the barrenness of their country the ordinary 

 sources of subsistence, they were compelled to use fish for every 

 purpose — food, clothes, houses, etc. These peoples (for the 

 Indian Ichthyophagi are quite distinct from the Arabian) find 

 comment by many authors — e.g. Strabo, Pausanias, Diodorus 

 Siculus. Although by their diet of fish comparatively free from 

 disease, they were noted as short-lived. Alexander the Great, 

 with a view to increasing their span of existence, forbade all the 

 Ichthyophagi an unmixed diet. 



Solinus (56, 9) testifies as to their extreme swiftness in 

 swimming : non secus quam marincB helucB nando in mari valent. 

 Marco Polo (III. 41) found on the coast of Arabia an interesting 

 survival of the Ichthyophagi. In consequence of the sterility 

 of the soil they fed their cattle, camels, and horses on dried 

 fish, " which being regularly served to them they eat without 

 any signs of dishke. They are dried and stored, and the beasts 



^ V. 16, Rawlinson's Translation. 



^ See also I. 200, where three Babylonian tribes exist only on fish which 

 they dried in the sun, brayed in a mortar, and strained through a Unen sieve. 

 ^ Indica, 26. 



