i84 PLUTARCH— CLEOPATRA— OPPIAN—ATHEN^US 



upon the common prey." From the Pinna which haunts 

 the bottom of the sea came "the most transparent pearls, 

 very pure and very large," ^ 



The enormous industry of Athenaeus, who (VI IL 15) speak- 

 ing of the materials he had amassed for this one book, casually 

 states that he himself " had read and made extracts from 800 

 plays of the Middle Comedy alone," and in it cites nearly 800 

 authors, and over 1200 separate books, has undoubtedly 

 preserved to us many valuable passages of the ample literature 

 and numerous plays in which fishermen once figured. My 

 many quotations from and references to his Dei-pnosophistcB 

 make it unnecessary to deal with this author 2 at greater length. 



^ Athen., III. 46. From Faber, op. cit., p. 94, we learn that " the pin- 

 notherus finds refuse in the shells of living bivalves, living on the small 

 animalculas contained in the constant stream of water, which flows in and out 

 of these molluscs. The fancy of the ancients has attributed the status exist- 

 ing between the two species as arising from a friendly alUance, protection 

 and board afforded on the one hand, and watching against and warning of 

 the approach of an enemy on the other. These observations descend from so 

 early a date that we find the pinna and the crab among the Egyptian hiero- 

 glyphs, bearing the interpretation of the duty of paterfamilias to provide for 

 his offspring." 



* The rendering of passages from Athenaeus {Deipn.) and from Pliny (.V, H.) 

 are usually Bohn's. 



