FISH, VICE HUMAN SACRIFICES— VARRO 217 



and interrupting the god. " Living," said Jupiter — " Pil- 

 chards," broke in Numa. 



Whether fish were but rarely sacriticed or not, Festus * 

 at any rate makes clear that at the Ludi on June 7th, and 

 possibly the Volcanalia in September (although at the latter 

 the oblations were mostly animal), Roman fishermen did offer 

 up lish, " quod id genus pisciculorum vivorum datur ei Deo 

 pro animis humanis." 



Offerings of fish may be (as O. Keller suggests) a relic 

 of Totemism resting on the belief that the spirits of men after 

 death pass into fish. 



The suggestion gains force when we remember that 

 Anaximander - and others taught that men lived once as 

 fishes, but later came on land and threw off their scales ; and 

 that the early religious conceptions of Latium were so debased 

 as readily to engender or harbour such a conception. On the 

 other hand, it must be admitted that not a single clear and 

 convincing case of Totemism has hitherto been adduced from 

 the Graeco-Italic area. 



In these oblations and in Varro's " Populus pro se in ignem 

 animalia mittit," ^ — an animal in place of a man be it remarked 

 — can be detected a mitigated survival of the widespread custom 

 of human sacrifice in propitiation of a deity. ^ On much the 

 same lines grew up the custom, as civilisation progressed, of 

 burning the weapons of, instead of killing, the captured foe, 

 after a battle. The immolation of prisoners formed a sacrifice 

 not so much of revenge, as one in honour of the slain on the 

 side of the victors : such at least is the conclusion suggested 

 to me by the words of Festus, " humanum sacrificium dicebant, 

 quod mortui causa fiebat." ^ 



As offerings at Rome had dwindled from men down to 

 animals, or small fish, or eventually even salt or pickled fish, 



1 Festus, p. 274, 35 ft. W. Lindsay. 



2 Plutarch. Symp., VIII. 8. 4. 



* De Lingua Latina, 6. 20 (in his description of the Volcanalia). 



* F. Boehm, De symbolis Pythagoreis (Berhn, 1905), p. 19, would connect 

 the fish-offering of the Volcanalia with the belief that the soul took the form 

 of a tish. G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Romer* (Miinchen, 1912), p. 229, 

 m. 13. 



^ Cf., however, Keller, op. cit., 348. 



