14 Gleanings from the 



claws, alive, yet gafping ; and not yet had it for- 

 gotten to fight, for it fmote the eagle which held 

 it in the breaft by the neck, bending itfelf back 

 to do fo. But the other let it drop to the ground, 

 grieved at the anguifh, and caft it down into the 

 midft of the crowd, while it fled fcreaming on the 

 wings of the wind." Snakes (or dragons) of 

 "Cyanus" are fafhioned gleaming like rainbows 

 on Agamemnon's mield. A dying man lies like 

 a worm ;* while maggots, in another paflage, are 

 made to eat corpfes. 



With regard to fim and fifhing, fome fingular 

 facts appear in the Homeric poems. We will 

 group them together without entering into modern 

 views of clarification, feeling fure that Homer re- 

 garded the whale, for inftance, as a fim, and not 

 a mammal. Fifhers apparently cruifed from ifland 

 to ifland of the ^gean, for bodies of the {lain 

 wooers are delivered to the fifher-folk to be con- 

 veyed each to his own city in mips. The whales 

 (or larger fim of the fea) are faid to fport round 

 Pofeidon's chariot as he drives over the fea to 

 recognife their king. A fea-monfter (or /CTJTOC, 

 which means any large fifti or monfter) purfued 

 Hercules from the more of the Troad to the plain 

 in the myth. Fifties, and efpecially eels, 3 are 

 feveral times fpoken of as devouring the flain. 

 Dolphins purfue and eat fifh. Homer had noticed 

 a fim " rife," though it is fomewhat bewildering 



1 "Iliad," xiii. 654, oKuXiiZ ; ibid., xxiv. 414, o 



2 "OdyfTey," xxiv. 418. 



3 "Iliad," xxi. 353 (the eels and fifh in the river Xanthus). 



