2i8 FISH IN SACRIFICES— VIVARIA— ARCHIMEDES 



or fish mixed with wheat, so among the Israelites the scape- 

 goat had become the vicarious victim offered up to Jehovah 

 " for the sins of all the people," and among the Assyrians the 

 oblation had even shrunk to little fishes, made of ivory or 

 metal. 



Fish, in addition to being worshipped as gods or held so 

 sacred that eating them was prohibited, were frequently 

 used by the Priests or by the Augurs for divinatory purposes. 

 In accordance with their swimming or not, and in what direction, 

 with their leaps into the air, how, whence, and whither effected, 

 with their reception, or refusal, or smashing with their tails of 

 particular foods, were framed the oracular deliverances or 

 priestly predictions, as Plutarch and others show.^ 



Thus at the spring of Limyra in Lycia, if the fish seized 

 food thrown to them greedily, the omen was favourable ; if 

 they flapped at it with their tails, the reverse. 2 In Lydia 

 (according to Varro 3) from their movements, when rising to 

 the surface at the sound of a flute, the watching seer deduced 

 and dehvered his answer. Divination was not limited to 

 certain holy waters ; when in the war between Augustus and 

 Sextus Pompeius a fish darted from the sea and threw itself 

 at the feet of the former, the ready augur found no difficulty 

 in acclaiming him as the future " Ruler of the Waves." * 



Ichthyic soothsaying held its ground among the Greeks of 

 the Byzantine empire. One prediction ^ — when a boiled fish 

 shall spring out of the pot, then the last hour of Constantinople 

 will have struck — is of present-day importance. But whether 

 the fish has filled his saltatory role, and if so whether the doom 

 of the city has sounded, lie for decision at the moment of 

 writing on the lap of the Big Four in Paris. 



The belief that fish could and did foretell events hngered 

 long in England ; thus the deaths of Henry II. and of Cromwell 



1 Pliny, IX. 22, and XXXII. 8. .EUan, VIII. 5; XII. i. Athen. VIII. 8 

 Plutarch, De soil. Anim. ch. 23. Hesych. s.v. Soura. 



2 Pliny, XXXI. 18. 



8 De Re Rust., III. 17, 4. 



* Suetonius, Augustus, 96. The subject of oracular fish is dealt with by 

 A. Bouche-Leclercq, Histoire de la divination (Paris, 1879), i. p. 151 f., and 

 also by W. R. Halliday, Greek Divination, p. 168, n. 3. 



' O. Keller, op. cit., 347. 



