SAPPHO— ALC^.US— FISHING COMEDIES 117 



or in the articles on them by Mr. J. M. Edmonds in the Classical 

 Review of May 1914 and June 1916, a second fisher epigram, 

 or at any rate an allusion to fishing. Alas ! the Papyri yield 

 some amatory, but no piscatory verses. Apparently neither 

 Sappho nor Alcaeus make any other reference to fishing. 

 The verses of Alcaeus stress poverty even more strongly : 



" The fisher Diotimus had at sea 

 And shore the same abode of poverty — 

 His trusty boat — and when his days were spent, 

 Therein self-rowed, to ruthless Dis he went : 

 For that which did through life his woes beguile, 

 Supplied the old man with a funeral pile." ^ 



" From fragments of Greek Comedy it is evident that 

 fishers were among the famihar characters on the stage, and 

 were sometimes the protagonists." Examination of the Old, 

 Middle and New Comedians confirm Dr. Hall. 2 



In Epicharmus (b.c. 540-450) the reputed founder of 

 Comedy in Sicily ; in Sophron's The Fisherman atid the Clown, 

 where the former naturally outwits the country boor ; in Plato 

 the comedian's Phaon, where he may have ridiculed the legend 

 of Sappho's vain love for the Lesbian fisherman ; in The 

 Fishes by Archippus, where people were satirised under the 

 names of fishes spelled in the same way as their own ; or (to 

 pass from Old to Middle Comedy) in The Fisher-Woman by 



^ In Anih. Pal., VII. 305, this epigram is headed in the MS. 'A55aiou 

 MiTvX-nvalov, which is obviously wrong, for either MnvXr^valov should be 

 MatcfSui/os, or 'ASSalov is a mistake. Bergk assigns it to Alcaeus of Messine — 

 probably with reason, as it is not unlike his style, and his name is more than 

 once confused with Alcjeus of Mitylene, the famous lyric poet. (For Alcajus 

 of Messene, see Mackail's Select Epigrams from ike Greek AntJiology (London, 

 1890), p. 297 f.) Stadtmiiller the latest editor of Anth. Pal. conjectures as 

 author Alpheus of Mitylene, but unconvincingly to Mackail and other 

 authorities. Translated by E. W. Peter — The Poets and Poetry of the Ancients, 

 London, 1858. 



b ypiirevs AiSrtfios 6 Kv^affiv 6\Kd5a ■niiTTijv 

 KT)v x^ovl Triv aiirr]!' oIkov €)(^uv irej/frjs, k.t.A. 

 Cf. Etruscus Messenius, Anth. Pal., VII. 381, 5 f. 



uX^ios 6 7pi7r€us Ihiri Ka\ ir6vToy iirenXtt 

 VTjt, Koi e| j'SiT/s fSpanfv els 'AiSriv, 



- For this and other passages quoted or incorporated, I am greatly in 

 debt to Dr. Henry Marion Hall's Idylls of Fishermen, New York, 1912 and 

 1914, and to A. F. Campaux's preface to his De Ecloga Piscatoris qualemt 

 veteribus adumbratam absolvere sibi proposuit Sannazarius, Paris, 1859. 



