SAPPHO—ALCAUS—FISHING COMEDIES 117 
or in the articles on them by Mr. J. M. Edmonds in the Classical 
Review of May 1914 and June 1916, a second fisher epigram, 
or at any rate an allusion to fishing. Alas! the Papyri yield 
some amatory, but no piscatory verses. Apparently neither 
Sappho nor Alceus make any other reference to fishing. 
The verses of Alczeus stress poverty even more strongly : 
“ The fisher Diotimus had at sea 
And shore the same abode of poverty— 
His trusty boat—and when his days were spent, 
Therein self-rowed, to ruthless Dis he went : 
For that which did through life his woes beguile, 
Supplied the old man with a funeral pile.”’ ! 
“From fragments of Greek Comedy it is evident that 
fishers were among the familiar characters on the stage, and 
were sometimes the protagonists.’ Examination of the Old, 
Middle and New Comedians confirm Dr. Hall.2 
In Epicharmus (B.c. 540-450) the reputed founder of 
Comedy in Sicily ; in Sophron’s The Fisherman and the Clown, 
where the former naturally outwits the country boor ; in Plato 
the comedian’s Phaon, where he may have ridiculed the legend 
of Sappho’s vain love for the Lesbian fisherman; in The 
Fishes by Archippus, where people were satirised under the 
names of fishes spelled in the same way as their own; or (to 
pass from Old to Middle Comedy) in The Fisher-Woman by 
1In Anth. Pal., VII. 305, this epigram is headed in the MS. ’AdSS8alov 
MirvaAnvalov, which is obviously wrong, for either MurvAnvatov should be 
Maxedévos, or *Addafov is a mistake. Bergk assigns it to Alcwus of Messine— 
probably with reason, as it is not unlike his style, and his name is more than 
once confused with Alczus of Mitylene, the famous lyric poet. (For Alczus 
of Messene, see Mackail’s Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (London, 
1890), p. 297 f.) Stadtmiiller the latest editor of Anth. Pal. conjectures as 
author Alpheus of Mitylene, but unconvincingly to Mackail and other 
authorities. Translated by E. W. Peter—The Poets and Poetry of the Ancients, 
London, 1858. 
5 ypimebs Aidripos 6 kbpacw bAKdda morhy 
khy X9ovl thy aithy olxov éxwy mevins, .7.A. 
Cf. Etruscus Messenius, Anth. Pal., VII. 381, 5 f. 
bABios 5 ypimeds idtp kal mdvrov eméwAcr 
ynt, Kad é& idlns Zpayer eds ATSnr. 
* For this and other passages quoted or incorporated, I am greatly in 
debt to Dr. Henry Marion Hall's Idylis of Fishermen, New .York, 1912 and 
1914, and to A. F, Campaux’s preface to his De Ecloga Piscatoris qualems 
veteribus adumbratam absolvere sibi proposuit Sannazarius, Paris, 1859. 
