130 TRAITS OF FISHERMEN— DEITIES OF FISHING 



Sophocles {Ajax, 880) to the last Romanticist, ^ but also in the 

 statuary, pictures, frescoes, mosaics of Greek and Roman Art. 

 Numerous examples can be cited from the museums of Naples, 

 Rome, Paris, and London sustaining the contention that all 

 real fishermen were ever depicted old and careworn. 2 



The fishing boys and women of the Amorini at Pompeii 

 and elsewhere may be adduced as vitiating this statement : 

 but these, it must be borne in mind, are merely artistic repre- 

 sentations of Anglers and of dalliance, not of real fishermen 

 toiling for their livelihood. So, too, in the Greek representa- 

 tions where boys, not Putti or Amorini, figure as fishing, it will 

 be found that they are helpers or " fish-boys " of the working 

 fisherman. 3 



The explanations why fishermen are so rendered vary. 

 Perhaps the truest, certainly the concisest, is Alciphron's, 

 Tpi(^H yap ovB(v 1) daXarra — the sea feeds no one. According 

 to Bunsmann, fishermen are always represented as old and 

 poor and worn, because their delineators desired by painting 

 the career as blackly as possible to excite sympathy. For this 

 purpose old age and poverty and heavy toil, which appeal 

 unto all, stood ready as their most effective strokes. 



According to Hall, the fisher, a common character in all 

 Greek literature, was in early times described with simple 

 truth. Only later, when imitation took the place of originality, 

 did conventionalism render him always as aged, pathetic, 

 superstitious, wretchedly poor, yet patient and content. ^ 



^ To cite but one of the scores of intermediate authors as regards poverty, 

 Ovid, Met.. III. 586-91, 



Pauper et ipse fuit, linoque solebat et hamis 

 Decipere, et calamo salientis ducere pisces. 

 Ars illi sua census erat. Cum traderet artem, 

 " Accipe quas habeo, studii successor et heres," 

 Dixit, " opes." Moriensque mihi nihil ille rehquit 

 Praeter aquas : unum hoc possum appellare paternum. 

 2 The vfoi ira7Ses in the oracles' warning to Homer, which seem at first 

 sight antagonistic to the above, become in Homer's own words of greeting, 

 AvSpes. Perhaps the employment of veaiv TraiSuv by the Delphic priestess 

 may be due (i) to the fact that they were " fish-boys " proper, (2) to an early 

 and intelligent anticipation of the " juvenescent " tendency, or (3) to the 

 exigency, not unknown to sixth form Hexameter-makers of the present, but 

 (alas ! if Oxford and Cambridge be obeyed) not of the future day, of scansion ! 

 ' Cf. Mus. Borbon., IV. 54, or Baumeister, Denkmdler Klass. Altert. (Munich, 

 1885). i. 552. f. 588. 



* The happiest, perhaps the only happy, fishermen are those shown at the 



