LAKE DWELLERS—ICHTHYOPHAGI 97 
single stage. At first the piles were fixed by all citizens, 
but since that time the custom that has prevailed about 
fixing them is this, every man drives in three for each wife he 
marries. Now the men all have many wives apiece, and this is 
the way they live. Each has his own hut (wherein he dwells) on 
one of the platforms, and each has a trap door, giving access to 
the lake beneath : their wont is to tie the baby children by the 
foot with a string, to save them from rolling into the water. 
They feed their horses and other beasts on fish, which abound 
in the lake in such a degree that a man has only to open his 
trap door, and let down a basket by a rope into the water, and 
then wait a very short time, when he draws it up quite full of 
fish.’’! 
Confirming and illustrating Herodotus’s account (I. 202) 
of how a tribe dwelling on the Araxes lived on raw fish,? but 
depicting more sharply how on fish a whole people were depend- 
ent for everything that made up their lives, comes Arrian’s 
description 3 of the Ichthyophagi of the Persian Gulf. 
Denied by the barrenness of their country the ordinary 
sources of subsistence, they were compelled to use fish for every 
purpose—food, clothes, houses, etc. These peoples (for the 
Indian Ichthyophagi are quite distinct from the Arabian) find 
comment by many authors—e.g. Strabo, Pausanias, Diodorus 
Siculus. Although by their diet of fish comparatively free from 
disease, they were noted as short-lived. Alexander the Great, 
with a view to increasing their span of existence, forbade all the 
Ichthyophagi an unmixed diet. 
Solinus (56, 9) testifies as to their extreme swiftness in 
swimming: non secus quam marine belue nando in mari valent. 
Marco Polo (III. 41) found on the coast of Arabia an interesting 
survival of the Ichthyophagi. In consequence of the sterility 
of the soil they fed their cattle, camels, and horses on dried 
fish, “‘ which being regularly served to them they eat without 
any signs of dislike. They are dried and stored, and the beasts 
1 V. 16, Rawlinson’s Translation. 
®? See also I. 200, where three Babylonian tribes exist only on fish which 
they ae in the sun, brayed in a mortar, and strained through a linen sieve. 
ndica, 26. 
