FISH EATEN ONLY BY THE POOR 69 
they owed much, begin to realise and utilise the wealth of the 
harvest to be won from the adjacent seas.! 
Fishing, followed at first mainly by the very poor to procure 
a food in low esteem, gradually found itself. 
In the Idiad and Odyssey no fish appear at banquets or in the 
houses of the well-to-do: only in connection with the poorest 
or starving do they obtain mention. 
Meleager of Gadara accounted for this fact—previously 
noted by Aristotle—by the suggestion that Homer represented 
his characters as abstaining from fish, because as a Syrian by 
descent he himself was a total abstainer. The curious omission 
of fish has been held to indicate that Homer either lived before 
the adoption of fish as food, or, if not, that the social conditions 
and habits of diet which he delineates are those of generations 
before such transition.? 
The decision, if one be possible, lies for Homeric scholars, 
and not for a mere seeker after piscatoriana. Even to such an 
one, however, two alternatives seem clear. 
First, if Homer did live after the transition occurred, his 
descriptions of ancient times and customs unconsciously 
included habits and conditions of a more modern society. 
to Pausanias, V. 17) with figures in relief, holds an intermediate place between 
The Shield of Achilles and the art of the classic period. Hence we infer that the 
Shield belongs to the earlier time, when (as we also learn from Homer) the 
Phoenicians were the great carriers between the Mediterranean countries 
and the East” (Monro, f/., XVIII). Professor Jebb (Homer, p. 66) ranks, in 
the earlier period, Phoenician lower than Phrygian influence, but the latest 
writer on the subject—F. Poulsen, Dey Ovient und die friihgriechische Kunst, 
Leipzig-Berlin, 1912—makes large claims for the influence of the Phoenicians 
in art. 
1 Under ‘ Piscator ’ in Dict. des Antiquites Daremberg and Saglio write: 
“The configuration of the country generally would naturally induce a large 
part of the population to seek their livelihood in fishing and fish.” 
2 The explanation of Athenzus (Bk. 1.16, 22 and 46) is ingenious. Homer 
never represents fish or birds, or vegetables, or fruit ‘‘ as being put on the table 
to eat, lest to mention them would seem like praising gluttony, thinking besides 
there would be a want of decorum in dwelling on the preparation of such things, 
which he considered beneath the dignity of Gods and Heroes.” The latest 
explanation—by Professor J. A. Scott, Class. Journ. ; Chicago, 1916-17, p. 329 
—that “ Homer looked upon fish with great disfavour, because as a native 
of Asia Minor he had been trained to regard fish as an unhealthful and distaste- 
ful food to be eaten only as a last resort,” would attain nearer ‘‘ what seems the 
solution of this vexed question” (Scott’s words), if he produced (1) data 
establishing Homer’s country of birth, and (2) evidence far stronger than 
“‘ Tips to Archeological Travellers ’’ (even though these be written by Sir Wm. 
Ramsay) as regards the general ‘‘ unhealthfulness ” of the fish of Asia Minor. 
® Schrader, Reallexikon (Strassburg, 1901), p. 244, states that in neither the 
