118 TRAITS OF FISHERMEN—DEITIES OF FISHING 
Antiphanes (in the fragments of which, however, we are con- 
fronted by no Sex problem, by no Suffragettism !) ; and (of 
the New Comedy authors) in Menander’s The Fishermen 
(where we gather from Pollux that a fisher came on the stage 
fully equipped for fishing), in all these plays and many more 
appear fisher folk.? 
Archippus’ drama deserves a moment’s notice, because in 
imitation of Aristophanes’ Birds the poet ventured on a 
chorus composed exclusively of Fishes. Extant fragments of 
the play (performed probably in 413 B.c.) tell of war being 
declared by the fish against their oppressors the Athenians, 
who were passionate opsophagists. The principal condition 
of the Peace Points—whether Fourteen or more our data do 
not determine—secured the prompt delivery to the Fishes of 
the head of their chief foe, Melanthios. 
If the protocol of this Treaty had attracted the notice of 
President Wilson, who as a constitutional historian attaches 
importance to the “broadening down from precedent to 
precedent,’’ the demands of the Allies for the immediate 
surrender of our arch-enemy, the Kaiser, might have been 
more insistent and scarcely less successful. 
And so from the first Joc? classici of fishing in Homer we 
journey on through the succeeding centuries. In nearly all 
we encounter fishing and fishermen in literature or play. In 
the third B.c. we reach the next locus classicus—‘ The Fisher- 
man’s Dream,”’ Idyll XXI. of Theocritus. 
“‘ Theocritus is the creator of the literary piscatory, as he 
is also of the literary bucolic.’’ This dictum would, I think, 
be rendered more accurate by the substitution of modeller in 
place of creator. Theocritus, even if we allow for Stesichorus, 
Epicharmus, and Sophron, stands out the first, not to create 
but to gather, and by his genius reduce to regular literary 
shape, the existent poems and songs (Volkslieder) which formed 
1 And yet “the eternal feminine ’’ question was to the fore very early, 
as we see from the old oracle quoted by Herodotus, VI. 77: ‘‘ But when the 
female at last shall conquer the male in the battle, Conquer and drive him forth, 
and glory shall gain among Argives.” 
2 Poll., Onomasticon, 10,52,and10, 45. In later literature references, etc., 
to fish are countless: one of the lost plays of Aristophanes bore, indeed, the 
title of The Eel, according to Keller, op. cit., 357. 
