THE FISH-GATE— F/F^i?/^ VERY LATE 4^3 



been obvious to and eagerly utilised by a race whose passionate 

 plaint was f or " a plenty of fish." 



Their great Eastern neighbour inculcated the same object 

 lesson. Most Assyrian towns and temples possessed an artificial 

 or semi-artificial piscina. Yet not till some 1600 years after 

 the Exodus do we glean in theTalmudic term hihar (an attempt 

 at transHteration of the Roman word, vivaria, which of itself 

 betokens the lateness of the effort) the first indication of their 

 emplojnnent by the Jews. 



This may read as flat heresy, when compared with Isaiah's 

 words (xix. 10), " And they shall be broken in the purposes 

 thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish." The transla- 

 tion, however, in the R.V. (N.B., there is no word equalHngyis^ 

 in the Hebrew text), " Her pillars shall be broken in pieces, 

 all they that work for hire shall be grieved in soul," shatters 

 the assertion that vivaria, or fish lakes, were early institutions 

 in Palestine. This shattering is complete, when the only 

 other buttress, the passage in Canticles vii. 4, " Thine eyes 

 (are) Uke the fish pools in Heshbon," falls to the ground with 

 the R.V. rendering, " Thine eyes are as the pools of Heshbon." 



If the IsraeHtes, on the one hand, lacked till late the 

 constructive abiUty of the Romans with regard to vivaria, 

 they, on the other, seem to have lacked or failed to apply the 

 destructive devices employed by the latter for the wholesale 

 slaughter of fish by poison and drugs, made famiUar to us by 

 Oppian and iEHan. 



Note— V^ith reference to Mainzer's absurd contention, Prof. Kennedy 

 writes me as follows: " Naturally the working of the large drag net required 

 considerable elbow-room, and it was understood, as Krauss pomts out (ralm. 

 Archdol ii. 145), that a fisherman would not encroach on his neighbours 

 ground ' If we assume, for the sake of argument, that the ancient drag was 

 as long as those used by the GaUlean fishermen of to-day— i.e. about 400 

 metres (437 yards) according to Masterman (op. cit., 40)— a boat s crew work- 

 ing from the beach and spreading their drag in a semi-circle. would not 

 monopohse more than 250-280 yards of sea-front, a very diflerent 'proposi- 

 tion ' from the Talmud's or Mainzer's parasang." 



