330 SACRED FISH 



defiled by having at some time or other been employed in 

 catching their favourite fish." i ^lian goes farther : " were 

 but one of these fish taken in a net, the townsmen would let 

 the whole catch free." - 



Holy Wars, even if unpreached by a tarbushed Kaiser, 

 came to pass in Plutarch's day ; " \vithin our memory, because 

 the people of KjmopoHs presumed to eat their fish, the Oxyrhyn- 

 cites 3 in revenge seized on all the dogs, or sacred animals of 

 their enemies that came in their way, offering them in sacrifice, 

 and eating their flesh in Uke manner as they did that of their 

 other victims : this drew on a war between the two cities, 

 wherein both sides, after doing each other much mischief, 

 were at last severely punished by the Romans." ^ 



To another rehgious war, between the Ombites and the 

 Tentyrites, we owe the great Satire XV. of Juvenal, when 

 banished to Egypt at the age of eighty. ^ The poem ranks 

 high, not only for its mordant irony but also for its description 

 of the origin of civil society, " a description infinitely superior 

 to anything that Lucretius or Horace has deUvered on the 

 subject," according to the not always laudatory Gifford. 



" Who knows not to what monstrous gods, my friend. 

 The mad inhabitants of Egypt bend ? 

 The snake-devouring ibis. These enshrine, 

 Those think the crocodile alone divine." 



" Those " were the Ombites, " These " the Tentyrites, who 

 hated the crocodile worshipped at Ombos : hence 



" Blind bigotry, at first, the evil wrought. 

 For each despised the other's gods, and thought 

 Its own the true, the genuine — in a word 

 The only deities to be adored." ^ 



1 Pint., 8. 



2 N. H., X. 46. 



^ The Mormyri, to which the Oxyrhynchns belongs, figure on the walls, 

 and in bronzes, 0. kannum and O. caschive being most frequent ; but the 

 Bana {Petrociphalus bane) and Graihojietnus aprinoides also occur. The best 

 delineations are found in the tombs of Ti and of Gizeh. — G. A. Boulenger, 

 Fishes of the Nile, London, 1907. 



* Plut.. Ibid., ch. 72. 



* The banishment is disputed by Franke and others. Cf., however. Sat., 

 XV. 45. " Aegyptus, sed luxuria, quantum ipse notavi." 



' From Gilford's Translation. 



