PILOT-FISH— ATHEN^.US— CRABS 183 



Some of Oppian's best bits contain animated portraits 

 of sea-fights. The combatants are as intensely personified as 

 Homer's Greeks and Trojans in their hand-to-hand fight on 

 the banks of the Scamander. But unhke the Heroes, the 

 belhgerents of Oppian pull each other to pieces without any 

 responsibihty on their part, or shock to moral sense on ours : 



" Unwise we blame the rage of warring fish 

 Who urged by hunger must supply the wish ; 

 While cruel man, to whom his ready food 

 Kind Earth affords, yet thirsts for human blood." 



In proportion as fish, which according to the earliest 

 authors was despised or disregarded, grew in favour with the 

 Greeks, the frequency of its mention in Greek literature 

 increased apace. 



The Deipnosophistcu by Athenseus, to which belongs the 

 distinction of being one of the earliest collections of Ana, is 

 a curious sort of philosophers' feast. It quotes from nearly 

 every writer on nearly every topic ; it discusses almost every 

 conceivable subject, especially gastronomy. It weighs the 

 qualities of all things edible. Comments on fish, taken from 

 plays, histories, treatises, etc., are plentifully, if incongruously, 

 scattered. ^ 



Everything goes in this work ; grammatical problems are 

 mixed up with gastronomic ; the discursiveness of Athenaeus 

 races from grave to gay, grim death to any story, however 

 apparently disconnected. 



His tale of the Pinna (III. 46), a bivalve shell-fish, and the 

 Pinnothere (a small crab who inhabits the shell of the Pinna) 

 resembles many of the fables current among the West Indian 

 negroes as regards the cleverness of the Crab. As soon as the 

 small fish, on which the Pinna subsists, have swum within 

 the shell side, the Pinnothere nips the Pinna as a signal to 

 him to close his sheU and secure them. 



Plutarch {De Sol. Anim., 30) shows that the habit was not 

 entirely altruistic, for " this being done, they feed together 



claimed that this fish, Kai Kai-a-waro, was not only the embodiment of his 

 tribal Mana and his family guardian angel, but had guided his ancestor eleven 

 generations before in his exploring of Cook Sound, etc. 



» See W. Smith, Did. Gk.-Rom. Biog. and Myth., s.v. ' Athenaeus.' 



