MAN’S DESCENT FROM FISH—THE TUNNY 99 
fish diet.!1 Others, however, hold that the ultimate reason 
of the ¢abu lay in the uncanny nature of creatures that can and 
do live under water, while we can not. 
Fishermen rank higher in the time of Herodotus than in 
the Homeric era. Even the oracles and soothsayers now 
condescend to avail themselves of their technique and parlance 
for framing their answers. Thus Amphilytus the Acarnanian 
encourages Pisistratus before the battle of Pallene with 
“The casting net is thrown down, and the fishing net spread wide. 
And the tunnies shall dart to and fro (therein) in the moonlight.” 2 
If Pisistratus squared the Acarnanian, as effectively as 
the Alcmzonide (his hereditary foes and the ejectors of 
his descendants from Athens) absolutely bought the oracle 
at Delphi, words of greater light and leading than “ The 
Tunnies shall dart to and fro in the moonlight’ might have 
been vouchsafed, for Herodotus relates that Pisistratus fell 
on the enemy, when they were having their mid-day meal, or 
asleep after it, or playing dice. To suppose that these words 
foretold and were understood by Pisistratus to foretell the hour 
of the subsequent capture of Athens itself presumes a power of 
mental suggestion, which even Charcot would have envied. 
The deliverance may possibly have been particular as 
regards time, but more probably was, oracle-like, entirely 
general in terms and time. The words “And the tunnies 
shall dart up and down in the moonlight ’’ merely continue 
the fishing analogy of the first line, and refer to the well-known 
method of catching Tunnies “‘ at the full of the moon,” when, 
allured by the silvery light, they glide and race through the 
water, and are easily taken. 
The mention here of the Tunny makes appropriate some 
notice of a fish, which looms large in nearly all our authors. 
Most of them dilate at length on its multitude, migrations, 
habits, and size. Its economic value as a food asset, then and 
1 Symposium, VIII. 8, 3: yéyover ayvelas uépos aroxh ixOdwy. Elsewhere 
we read of more prosaic and practical reasons why the great majority of the 
Greeks abstained from certain kinds of fish, e.g. the fear in the case of the 
loach, of which the Syrian goddess was protectress, lest she gnaw their legs, 
cover their bodies with sores, and devour their livers. 
2 Herodotus, I. 62. 
