1 6 Gleanings from the 



in the Homeric poems. The monfter Scylla is 

 faid to fifh, with her hands groping to catch dog- 

 fifh or dolphins. Plato notices that the Homeric 

 heroes in their feafts never eat fifh, and that their 

 viands are always roafted, never boiled. It is a 

 curious confirmation of the former ftatement that 

 when the men of OdyfTeus fifh in the Ifle 

 Thrinacia, with "crooked hooks," for fifh or fowl, 

 under the prefTure of famine, their mafter will 

 have nothing to do with it, but wanders off" 

 alone. 1 Yet in a picture drawn by the hero of 

 a righteous and profperous king, one touch is that 

 " the fea for him gives fifh." 2 



Afingular pafTage occurs in the " OdyfTey/'v. 432, 

 where OdyfTeus is compared, while in danger of 

 drowning, to a cuttle-fim "which is dragged out 

 of its hole, the many pebbles clinging to its 

 fuckers ;" juft in the fame manner the hero's fkin 

 is torn off from his hands as he grafps at the 

 rocks, and the mighty wave covers him. Again, 

 a man ftricken with a mortal wound, who falls 

 headlong from his chariot, is jeered at in the 

 " Iliad " " if only he were in the fifhy deep, this 

 man would fatiffy many men by grafping for 

 oyfters, plunging in from a fhip, although it was 

 ftormy weather." 3 Were it not for thefe curious 



1 Plato, "Repub.," 404, B. ; "Odyfley," xii. 331. 



2 " Odyfley," xix. 1 13. That fifh were eaten, too, appears 

 from Od. xxii. 383, where OdyfTeus fees the flain wooers lie 

 " like fifh which fifhermen have drawn from the grey fea in a 

 many-mefhed net to a hollow beach, and they all longing for 

 the fca-waves are heaped upon the fand, and the fun fhining on 

 them takes away their life." 



3 " Iliad," xvi. 745. 



