SEALS, EELS, PROTEUS 85 



greater beast she may anywhere take, whereof the deep-voiced 

 Amphitrite feeds countless flocks." 



Seals 1 greedily devour a corpse in the sea {Od., XV. 

 480). //., XXL 122, 203, extend the pleasant practice to fish 

 and eels : " around him eels and fishes swarmed, tearing and 

 gnawing the fat about his kidneys." 



It is noteworthy that in Greek and Latin literature the 

 first fish attaining to the dignity of a name is the Eel.2 



The sea is called \xOv(mq, " fishy," or perhaps better 

 " fishful," twelve times : the Hellespont only once. Plutarch 

 {Symp., IV. 4) had this probably in mind, when he wrote, 

 " the heroes encamped by the Hellespont used themselves to a 

 spare diet, banishing from their tables all superfluous dehcacies 

 to such a degree that they abstained from fish." 'Ix^uoetc 

 happens but once in connection with a river, the Hyllus (//., XX. 

 392). 



Homer seemingly applies it only where he is impressed, 

 not by the number of fish obvious to the eye or still remaining 

 in, but by the number already taken out of the water. The 

 proportion of salt water ' fishfuls ' to fresh water ' fishfuls ' — 

 13 as against i — would, if not quite accidental, accord with the 

 fact that the early Greeks, whatever be the time at which they 

 became Ichthyophagists, set no high store on fresh-water 

 fish.3 



1 In Victor Berard's Les Phenicicns et I'Odyssee (Paris, 1903), vol. ii. p. 64 ff. 

 (a work, compact of knowledge and of both classical and modern research, 

 which tracks characters and episodes in Homer to and compares them with 

 Egyptian and Phoenician accounts), is found a very interesting dissertation on 

 Proteus, the guardian of the seals of Poseidon and foreteller of the future 

 {Od., IV.). Berard holds that the name was simply a Greek form of the 

 Egyptian word Prouiti, or Prouti, which was one of the ascriptions or titles 

 of the kings of Egypt, as to whose knowledge of or association with magicians 

 (who, like Proteus, were capable of transforming themselves or other objects) 

 he cites alike Maspero and the Old Testament. See, however, for other 

 possibilities, P. Weizs^cker in Roscher, Le.tr. Myth.,m. 3172-3178, who concludes 

 that for us, as for Menelaos or Aristaios, Proteus the shape-shifter is still a 

 very slippery customer. 



* Otto Keller, Die Antike Tierwelt (Leipzig, 1913), ii. 357. 



3 See infra, p. 201. 



