2 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book XXXtl. 



as they constantly ebb and flow, and so regulate the currents 

 of the sea as though they were the waters of one vast river. 



And yet all these forces, though acting in unison, 

 ling in the same direction, a single fish, and that of a very 

 diminutive size the fish known as the "echcnciV 2 pos- 

 sesses the power of counteracting. Winds may blow and 

 storms may rage, and yet the echcne'is controls their fury, 

 restrains their mighty force, and bids ships stand still in their 

 career; a result which no cables, no anchors, from their pon- 

 deroUsncss quite incapable of being weighed, could ever have 

 produced ! A fish bridles the impetuous violence of the deep, 

 and subdues the frantic rage of the universe and all this by 

 no effort of its own, no act of resistance on its part, no act at 

 all, in fact, but that of adhering to the bark ! Trilling as this 

 object would appear, it suffices to counteract all these forces 

 combined, and to forbid the ship to pass onward in its way ! 

 Fleets, armed fur Avar, pile up towers and bulwarks on their 

 decks, in order that, upou the deep even, men may fight from 

 behind ramparts as it were. But alas for human vanity ! 

 when their prows, beaked as they are with brass and with 

 iron, 3 and armed for the onset, can thus be arrested and 

 rivetted to the spot by a little fish, no more than some half 

 foot in length ! 



At the battle of Actium, it is said, a fish of this kind stopped 

 the praHorian ship 4 of Antouius in its course, at the moment that 

 he was hastening from ship to ship to encourage and exhort his 

 men, and so compelled him to leave it and go on board another. 

 Ifeace it was, that the fleet of Ca?sar gained the advantage 5 in 

 the onset, and charged with a redoubled impetuosity. In our 

 own time, too, one of these fish arrested the ship of the Em- 

 peror 6 Caius in its course, when he was returning from Astura 

 to Antium : 7 and thus, as the result proved, did an insignificant 

 fish give presage of great events ; for no sooner had the em- 

 peror returned to Home than he was pierced by the weapons of 

 his own soldiers. Nor did this sudden stoppage of the ship 



2 The Echeneis rcinora of Liniueus. See B. ix. c. 41. 



3 He alludes to the " rostra," or metal beaks, with which the prows of 

 the ships of war were furnished. 



4 An absurd tradition, no doubt, invented, probably, to palliate the dis- 

 grace of his defeat. 



A From the delay caused by th stoppage of the pnelorian ship. 



* Caligula. " 7 For Astura and Antium, ace 1>. iii. c. 0. 



