CHAPTER XV 



FISH IN SACRIFICES — PICKLED FISH — VIVARIA OF 

 OYSTERS, ETC. — ARCHIMEDES 



The Feast Day, Ludi, of the Tiber fishermen was celebrated 

 on the Campus Martins in June under the management of the 

 PrcBtor Urbanus with much ceremony. Ovid ^ sings : 

 " Festa dies iUis qui Una madentia ducunt, 

 Quique tegunt parvis aera recur va cibis." 



The custom of offering to the Gods fish (although rarer 

 than that of animals) certainly and widely prevailed. Proof 

 can be piled on proof — pace a passage from Plutarch and 

 pace the contention that the practice is not purely Hellenic — 

 from the pages of both Greek and Roman authors. 



Take, for instance, the statement of Agatharchides of Knidos : 

 that the largest eels from Lake Copais were sacrificed by the 

 Boeotians, who crowned them like human victims, and after 

 sprinkling them with meal offered prayers over them. 2 Or 

 the story in Posidonius the Stoic of Sarpedon celebrating his 

 victory by " sacrificing to Neptune, who puts armies to flight, 

 enormous quantities of fish." 3 Theocritus in his fragmentary 

 Berenice, yEHan,* and Antigonus on the offering of the Tunny 

 all confirm the custom. ^ 



1 Fasti, VI. 239 ff. 



^ Agatharchides, frag, i ap. Athen., VII. 50. In these days of the Science 

 of Comparative Curiosity and International Meddling the answer of the 

 Boeotian to a foreigner asking how so singular a victim and sacrifice originated 

 rings out pleasantly refreshing: "I only know one thing: it is right to 

 maintain the customs of one's ancestors, and it is not right to explain them 

 to foreigners ! " 



3 Athen., VIII. 8. 



* ^Uan, XV. 6. 



* Athen., VII. 50, and Paulus Rhode, Thynnorum Captura (Lipsise, 1890), 

 p. 71. Most of the major deities — e.g. Diana, Apollo, Mercury, Juno, Neptune, 



215 



