Myth of the Ship- holder. 277 



question 7, he says : (i Chseremouianus the Thralliau, when 

 we were at a very noble fish dinner, pointing to a little, 

 long, sharp-headed fish, said the Echeneis (ship-stopper) was 

 like that, for he had often seen it as he sailed in the Sicilian 

 sea, and wondered at its strange force ; for it stopped the 

 ship when under full sail, till one of the seamen perceived 

 it sticking to the outside of the ship and took it off" But 

 there was incredulity even in that day for Plutarch adds, 

 " Some laughed at Chaeremonianns for believing snch an 

 incredible and unlikely story. " Then Plutarch offers for 

 this phenomenon an explanation of his own which will be 

 given later. 



Next we come to Oppian, who flourished kite in 200 a.d. 

 In his poem Halieutica — " On the Nature of Fishes and the 

 Fishing of the Ancients" — as translated by John Jones, 

 there are some 38 lines in which in very poetical and effusive 

 fashion the action of the " sucking-fish " is described. Iu 

 short, he tells how the fish clings to the keel of the swift 

 ship and retards it, though the wind causes the sails to belly 

 out. He seems, however, to have confused with the 

 Echeneis the lamprey eel which has a round suctorial 

 mouth. 



The last of the ancients to catalogue the myth of the 

 ship-detainer was Aelian, a Roman author contemporary 

 with Oppian in the latter part of the third century a.d. 

 In his ' De Natura Animalium/ Book I. Chapter 36 } he 

 refers to " that fish which all men call remora because it 

 holds back and delays ships." And, again, in Book III. 

 Chapter 17, he tells us in very interesting fashion that: 

 " Echeneis is a pelagic fish, black in appearance, equal in 

 length to an average-sized eel, and named for the thing it 

 does. For adhering with its teeth to the extreme stern of a 

 ship driven by a following wind and full sails, just as an 

 unmastered and unbridled horse is held iu with a strong- 

 rein, so the fish overcomes the most violent onset of the winds 

 and holds the ship as if tied fast to her wharf. In vain the 

 middle sails belly out, in vain the winds rush forth, it 

 holds steady the thing to which it adheres. The sailors 

 know this indeed for the cause of this matter. Hence the 

 name given to this fish, which, hecause of their experience 

 with it, they call Echeneida (Remora)." 



We next hear of the ship-holder in the writings of the 

 early Christian Fathers, and I am able, thanks to the kind 

 help of Dr. Eastman, to quote herein from two. The first 

 of these seems to have been Saint Basil, sometimes called 

 the Great, bishop of Caesarea iu Cappadocia. Iu his 



