FISHES IN ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY. 21 



knew of the tradition of the world-supporting thing, and 

 did reverence to it. And so. from East to West, from 

 antiquity to to-day, the creature vast, ponderous, inert, 

 has commanded, and commands the homage of men. 



As a third type of myth — the fanciful without any 

 latent significance — the remora or sucking-fish, may be 

 cited. In modern times it has been used to illustrate the 

 power of technical trivialities to retard a lawsuit, but 

 antiquity believed it had the power of arresting a ship 

 under full sail by attaching its tail-end to a rock, and its 

 head-end to the keel of a passing vessel — 



" The lazy Remora's inhaling lips, 

 Hung on the keel, retard the struggling ships." 



In the Natural History of the period we read that "there 

 is a little fish, keeping ordinarie about rockes, named 

 Echeneis. It is thought that if it settle and sticke to the 

 keel of a ship under water, the ship goeth the slower by 

 that means, wherefore it is called the ' stay-ship.' " Now, 

 Pliny is here cautious enough, and attributes no more 

 to the remora than is actually the property of barnacles 

 when in number. But popular fancy outran fact, and a 

 single remora four inches long was supposed to have held 

 back Antony's flag-ship in the sea-fight off Actium. 

 Periander also among others declared himself the victim 

 of a similar accident,* and the fiction flourished, thanks 



* It is of this incident that Pantagruel makes fun : — 

 " I saw a remora, a little fish called echineis by the Greeks, and 

 near it a tall ship, that did not get ahead an inch, though she was in 

 the offing with top and top-gallants spread before the wind. I am 

 somewhat inclined to believe, that 'twas the very identical ship in 

 which Periander the tyrant happened to be, when it was stopt by such 

 a little fish in spite of wind and tide." — Rabelais. 



