AND WIT— POSEIDON— PRIAPUS 125 



whose request for a battered disused boat has been selfishly 

 refused by its owner, furnishes, according to a German critic, 

 " a perfect gem of the Art of the Sophist, and sounds itself 

 like an insoluble riddle." 



To enable the reader to form his own judgment on this 

 particular instance of calliditas, I subjoin the retort : ovk 

 yrriaa at a i\Hq aAX' a /tir) iytiQ' ettei St ov jSouXft a //?) t;(f'C trtpov 

 ix'^iv, t'xE a nn t\uq, " I didn't ask you for what you have, but 

 for what you haven't. Since, however, you don't wish another 

 to have what you haven't, what you haven't you can have ! " 



But apart from this and similar instances of calliditas, 

 the mood of piscatory poetry is generally serious or melancholy, 

 and in keeping with the surroundings ; we look in vain for the 

 sunny warmth of Sicilian meadows, where youths pipe and 

 sing gaily. 



Like their modern brethren fishermen offered, before 

 setting sail or after returning safe from dangers encountered, 

 gifts to the gods of their craft, of whom first came Poseidon or 

 Neptune, usually represented with a trident 1 ; second, Hermes 

 or Mercury, the most venerated, because of his wily cunning 

 and ready ruses 2 ; third, Pan, a son of Mercury, who taught 

 him all his craft, 3 and fourth, Priapus.^ 



* Some recent scholars hold that Poseidon wa.3 an early differentiation 

 of Zeus, and that his fish-spear was developed from the three-pronged lightning 

 symbol of that deity as soon as the former became himself specialised into 

 first a river god, and second a sea god. From my friend Mr. A. B. Cook's 

 forthcoming work, Zeus, vol. ii. c. 6, s. 4, I learn that the commonly supposed 

 Trident (in i^ischylus, Septem., I. 31), " the fish-striking tool of the sea-god," 

 is more likely in pre-classical times to have been the three-pronged lightning, 

 symbol of the highest Deity of all, and observable not only in Greece, but also 

 in Asia. Against this view lies the fact that only once in all the Greek art is 

 Poseidon represented with an unniistakable thunder-bolt, and this is on a 

 silver tetradrachm of Messana about 450 b.c. The name Poseidon merely 

 equals, it is held, iroTei-Aas, or ' Lord Zeus,' the correlative of irJrrja "Hp?;, ' Lady 

 Hera.' 



2 See Oppian's invocation of him in III. 9-28. 



^ Ibid. As Pan was worshipped as the god of animals, especially of herds, 

 on land, so did the fisherfolk venerate him, TVav &ktios (Theocr., Id., V. 14) or 

 a\lir\ayKTos (Soph., Aj., 695 : cf. Anih. Pal., X. 10), as the god of the animals 

 of the sea, and in especial for his service to them in netting Typhon, whose 

 " winds wrought havoc to their boats, and when Auster with Sirocco breath 

 prevailed, caused their catches to go bad." At Athens the god was regarded 

 with gratitude as a powerful benefactor, because of the aid vouchsafed in 

 securing naval victories (Hdt., 6. 105. Simonides /rag-. 133, Bergk*). 



* To Janus, however, the credit of being the first to teach the art of Fishing 

 to the Latins is assigned by Alexander Sardus, De Rerum Invenioribus, II. 16. 



