126 TRAITS OF FISHERMEN— DEITIES OF FISHING 



It is with a start of surprise that one finds Priapus, far 

 more notorious as the god of propagation and fecundity, 

 among the gods of fisherfolk. Can this be accounted for by 

 some subtle, but inverse connection between the behef in India 

 that the Fish was the symbol of Fecundation, and the God of 

 Fecundation in Greece ? Some support for this may lie in 

 the statement of de Gubernatis, that as in the East the fish 

 was a phallic symbol, so now pesce in the Neapolitan dialect 

 means the phallus itself. 



His lineage, either the son of Hermes, or his grandson, for 

 among the many putative fathers of Priapus was Pan, may 

 account for the inclusion of Priapus. To Priapus, arriving 

 how he may at goddom, offerings were more freely made than 

 to any other except Hermes, i 



In addition to these four flourished minor gods. God- 

 desses too of Fishing (such as Artemis 2), of rivers, of springs, 

 and of the fish therein found devotees. First and foremost, 

 ranked Aphrodite or Venus : 



" But she 

 Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on 



the sea. 

 And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds, and the viewless 



ways. 

 And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays." 



This in common with the behef that Janus invented boats is probably a mis- 

 taken inference from the fact that the early as libralis had a head of Janus on 

 one side and the prow of a ship on the other (Roscher, Lex. Myth., II. p. 23). 



^ The description in Anth. Pal., X. 10, " Me, Pan, the fishermen have 

 placed on this holy cliff, the watcher here over the fair anchorage of the 

 harbour ; and I take care now of the baskets and again of the trawlers off 

 this shore," and in Archias [Anth. Pal., X. 7, and 8) of the fishermen making 

 an image of Priapus to be set up, just where the sea leaves the shore, are 

 only three of very many similar passages. Among the Eleans Apollo was 

 honoured as a God under the title of The Fish-eater (Athen., VIII. 36). In 

 addition to Gods we read of Tritons who were half-men, half-fish, and of a 

 still more wonderful being, an Ichthyocentaurus, whose upper body was of 

 human form, and lower that of a fish, while in place of the hands were horses' 

 hooves ! 



^ The Phigaleans (in Arkadia) worshipped an old wooden image, called 

 Eurynome, which represented a woman to the hips, a fish below. This 

 curious eifigy was kept bound in golden chains and was regarded by the 

 inhabitants as a form of Artemis: see Pans., 8. 41, 4-6. A large Boeotian 

 vase at Athens shows Artemis with a great fish painted on the front of her 

 dress, a clear indication that she was held locally to be a goddess of fishing 

 (M. CoUignon and L. Couve, Catalogue des Vases Peints du Mus^e National 

 d'Aihenes (Paris, 1902), p. 108 f., No. 462 ; cp. lb.. No. 463). 



