ii8 TRAITS OF FISHERMEN— DEITIES OF FISHING 



Antiphanes (in the fragments of which, however, we are con- 

 fronted by no Sex problem, by no Suffragettism ^) ; and (of 

 the New Comedy authors) in Menander's The Fishermen 

 (where we gather from Pollux that a fisher came on the stage 

 fully equipped for fishing), in all these plaj^s and many more 

 appear fisher folk. 2 



Archippus' drama deserves a moment's notice, because in 

 imitation of Aristophanes' Birds the poet ventured on a 

 chorus composed exclusively of Fishes. Extant fragments of 

 the play (performed probably in 413 B.C.) tell of war being 

 declared by the fish against their oppressors the Athenians, 

 who were passionate opsophagists. The principal condition 

 of the Peace Points — whether Fourteen or more our data do 

 not determine — secured the prompt dehvery to the Fishes of 

 the head of their chief foe, Melanthios. 



If the protocol of this Treaty had attracted the notice of 

 President Wilson, w^ho as a constitutional historian attaches 

 importance to the " broadening down from precedent to 

 precedent," the demands of the AlHes for the immediate 

 surrender of our arch-enemy, the Kaiser, might have been 

 more insistent and scarcely less successful. 



And so from the first loci classici of fishing in Homer we 

 journey on through the succeeding centuries. In nearly all 

 we encounter fishing and fishermen in Hterature or play. In 

 the third B.C. we reach the next locus classicus — " The Fisher- 

 man's Dream," Idyll XXI. of Theocritus. 



" Theocritus is the creator of the literary piscatory, as he 

 is also of the literary bucolic." This dictum would, I think, 

 be rendered more accurate by the substitution of modeller in 

 place of creator. Theocritus, even if we allow for Stesichorus, 

 Epicharmus, and Sophron, stands out the first, not to create 

 but to gather, and by his genius reduce to regular literary 

 shape, the existent poems and songs (Volkslieder) which formed 



^ And yet " the eternal feminine " question was to the fore very early, 

 as we see from the old oracle quoted by Herodotus, VI. 77: " But when the 

 female at last shall conquer the male in the battle, Conquer and drive laim forth, 

 and glory shall gain among Argives." 



- Poll., Onomasticon, 10, 52, and 10, 45. In later literature references, etc., 

 to fish are countless : one of the lost plays of Aristophanes bore, indeed, the 

 title of The Eel, according to Keller, op. cit., 357. 



