52 PEOSE HALIETTTICS. 



fish, and though the priests of these harsh taskmasters of 

 Israel abstained from their flesh; whether this arose from 

 considering the natives of the Nile too sacred to be 

 eaten, as Clement of Alexandria suggests, — or too im- 

 pure from connection with the sea, as Plutarch has sur- 

 mised, it was no doubt an act of self-denial on their 

 part: and so largely did the watery race enter into the 

 people's food, that we find recorded, as one of the 

 plagues of Egypt, that God slew their fish* The pre- 

 valence of this diet in the beginning of our era, through- 

 out the civilized world and amongst all ranks, is proved, 

 inter alia, by the secondary meaning of oi|roi't hav- 

 ing superseded the primary : this word originally signi- 

 fying cooked provisions generally, and then fish as the 

 commonest of victuals. The proverbial expression also 

 cited by our blessed Lord, ' If a son ask his father for a 

 fish, will he give him a serpent?' — that is, if he ask for 

 his daily and necessary food, will he give him what is 

 noxious ? — points out the universality of the practice of 

 opsophagizing in no bad sense of the term; afterwards 

 indeed it came to mean an addiction to fine and costly 

 fish exclusively, and the word opsophagist degenerated 

 into a mere piscivorous epicure. The notices furnished 

 by ancient records, of all these worthies, would be far too 

 long to cite; we shall therefore content ourselves with a 

 few ana of some of the chief worshipers of ' Apollo Opso- 



* In the heroic times men required a strong aliment to fight 

 on, and whatever their taste, Homer's heroes are all introduced 

 iu camp as raw-beef-eaters ; which, next to blaoit-puddings, was 

 deemed 



' the properest food 

 For warriors who delight in blood.' 



t Thus the chance provisions of the poor, on which the divine 

 bounty called for an increase — ^bread and fish^ — are by one evan- 

 gelist called bread and IxBves, which is the common Greek word 

 for fish; by another, bread and oifrdpia, in Latin, obsonium. 



