MAN'S DESCENT FROM FISH— THE TUNNY 99 



fish diet.^ Others, however, hold that the ukimate reason 

 of the tabu lay in the uncanny nature of creatures that can and 

 do live under water, while we can not. 



Fishermen rank higher in the time of Herodotus than in 

 the Homeric era. Even the oracles and soothsayers now 

 condescend to avail themselves of their technique and parlance 

 for framing their answers. Thus Amphilytus the Acarnanian 

 encourages Pisistratus before the battle of Pallene with 



" The casting net is thrown down, and the fishing net spread wide. 

 And the tunnies shall dart to and fro (therein) in the moonlight." 2 



If Pisistratus squared the Acarnanian, as effectively as 

 the Alcmaeonidae (his hereditary foes and the ejectors of 

 his descendants from Athens) absolutely bought the oracle 

 at Delphi, words of greater light and leading than " The 

 Tunnies shall dart to and fro in the moonlight " might have 

 been vouchsafed, for Herodotus relates that Pisistratus fell 

 on the enemy, when they were having their mid-day meal, or 

 asleep after it, or playing dice. To suppose that these words 

 foretold and were understood by Pisistratus to foretell the hour 

 of the subsequent capture of Athens itself presumes a power of 

 mental suggestion, which even Charcot would have envied. 



The deliverance may possibly have been particular as 

 regards time, but more probably was, oracle-like, entirely 

 general in terms and time. The words " And the tunnies 

 shall dart up and down in the moonlight " merely continue 

 the fishing analogy of the first hne, and refer to the well-known 

 method of catching Tunnies " at the full of the moon," when, 

 allured by the silvery light, they glide and race through the 

 water, and are easily taken. 



The mention here of the Tunny makes appropriate some 

 notice of a fish, which looms large in nearly all our authors. 

 Most of them dilate at length on its multitude, migrations, 

 habits, and size. Its economic value as a food asset, then and 



^ Symposium, VIII. 8, 3 : yiyovtv ayvtias ixepos aivoxv Ix^di'i'. Elsewhere 

 we read of more prosaic and practical reasons why the great majority of the 

 Greeks abstained from certain kinds of fish, e.g. the fear in the case of the 

 loach, of which the Syrian goddess was protectress, lest she gnaw their legs, 

 cover their bodies with sores, and devour their livers. 



* Herodotus, I. 62. 



