SACRED FISH 79 
Athenzus ! after trying to answer, “ But what is the fish 
which is called Sacred ? ’’ by citing instances where the Dolphin, 
Pompilus, Chrysophrys, etc., are so designated, adds a sentence 
which seems either to be the authority for, or to confirm the 
authority of Faesi ; ‘‘ but some understand by the term ‘sacred 
fish’ one let go and dedicated to the God, just as people give 
the same name to a consecrated ox.” 
Seymour holds that ‘the epithet isopdce as applied to a fish 
in Il., XVI. 407, has not been satisfactorily explained from 
ordinary Greek usage: instead of sacred, it seems rather to 
mean active, vigorous, strong. Cf. the same epithet applied 
to the picket guard of the Achzans in J/., X. 56.” Curtius 
connects the word with the Sanskrit ishira=vigorous. ‘Iepéc¢ 
as active, agile, strong is applied to horses, spies, mind, women, 
and cows. 
Leaf suggests that the word, when applied to night, etc., 
would have developed the meaning of mighty, mysterious, and 
so later on sacred. If sacred, the epithet may have arisen out 
of some sort of ¢abu or religious feeling against eating fish, in 
early times often regarded as either uncanny creatures living 
under water and possessed of superhuman powers, or as divine 
or semi-divine.? 
Gradually the dread of fish as creatures tabu wore off, 
but survived for long in a hole-and-corner way, e.g. the venera- 
tion of rérri€ évadioc, ‘the lobster,’ at Seriphos,3 or the 
deification of xapxivor, ‘ crabs,’ in Lemnos.4 
If icode does mean a big, fine, vigorous fish, to most modern 
fishermen a Rod would seem implied. This is strengthened by 
the nature of the act to which the simile applies: dc eAxe Soupi 
paevy, as Patroclus dragged Thestor on the bright spear from 
the chariot, so the fishermen dragged the fish from the sea. 
In D. the case, if any, for the implied use of the Rod is very 
weak. In this alone of all the references does lead as a weight 
occur. Here we have no comparison to action such as dragging 
up a fine fish, but simply to swiftness; the effect of it, the 
1 vii, 18-21. 
® See S. Reinach, Cultes, Mythes, et Religions (Paris 1908), iii. 43 ff. 
8 lian, N. H., xiii. 26. 
4 Hesych, s.v. KdBeipou, 
