64 HOMER— POSITION OF FISHERMEN 



accordance with the varying ages allotted to the Homeric 

 poems. ^ 



It is to Homer, whether wTitten by half a dozen different 

 authors or in half a dozen different centuries, 2 as the oldest 

 Greek writer extant that we naturally turn for information 

 about fishermen and fishing. His evidence is not only the 

 earliest, but also the most trustworthy, according to Athenaus. 

 " Homer treats of the art of fishing with greater accuracy 

 than professional writers on the subject such as Csecilius, 

 Oppian, etc." 3 — an endorsement from the piscatorial side 

 of the Theocritean fiXtc iravTeacTiv "Ofxiifwg. 



Neither fishermen nor traders in the Iliad and Odyssey 

 possess any real status. While farmers, more especially 

 pastoral farmers, occupy an acknowledged and — next to the 

 chiefs and warriors — the highest position, no fisherman or trader 

 is regarded as a representative unit of the body, politic or 

 social, or as a contributor to the wealth of the tribe or state, 

 a condition with which that of the fisherfolk in ancient Egypt ^ 

 and in China, both in early times and in the present day, is 

 elsewhere compared and contrasted. ^ 



^ Equally famous, perhaps even more so, is the representation of a fish 

 found in 18S2 near Vettersfelde in Lower Lausitz, but now in Berlin. It is 

 the shield-sign of a Scythian chief, made in gold repoiissi work early in the 

 fifth century B.C. See the publications of A. Furtwangler, Der Goldfund von 

 Vettersfelde (Berlin, 1883), {=id. Kleine Schriften (Miinchen, 1912), I. 469 ft. 

 pi. 18); cf. E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks (Cambridge, 1913), p. 236 ff. 

 iig. 146. Furtwangler thinks that the fish may have been meant for the 

 Thymus alalonga. 



* Homer, according to Sir A. Evans, " is at most sub-Mycenaean, his age 

 is more recent than the latest stage of anything that can be called Minoan or 

 Mycenaean," Jour. Hellenic Studies, xxxii. (191 2) 287. This would seem to 

 place Homer about the twelfth century. 



' DeipnosophistcB , I. ch. 22. 



* Herodotus (II. 164) describing the different grades of Egyptian society 

 begins with the priests and ends with the boatmen, among whom he appar- 

 ently includes the fishermen. Their humble position is confirmed by other 

 evidence ; see posiea 333. In Laconia fishing was confined to the Helots 

 and Uef)loiKot. 



' " With the division of the people of the Empire into four distinct 

 classes — scholars, agriculturists, artisans, and merchants — the men and women 

 who followed the trade of fishing for a livelihood were placed in an anomalous 

 position from not being included in any of the four classes. Thus socially 

 ostracised to a certain extent, they clung to themselves, forming groups or 

 colonies of their own along the coasts or on isolated islands. They lived in a 

 world of their own, knowing nothing of the affairs of their country and caring 

 Jess. To this day they do not come into direct contact with their countrymen 



