AND WIT—POSEIDON—PRIAPUS 125 
whose request for a battered disused boat has been selfishly 
refused by its owner, furnishes, according to a German critic, 
“a perfect gem of the Art of the Sophist, and sounds itself 
like an insoluble riddle.” 
To enable the reader to form his own judgment on this 
particular instance of calliditas, I subjoin the retort: ovx 
atnod oe & Exec GAN’ a ph Exeuc’ erel 82 ov PobAe a pr} ExeLg Erepov 
txev, Eye & py Exec, “1 didn’t ask you for what you have, but 
for what you haven’t. Since, however, you don’t wish another 
to have what you haven’t, what you haven’t you can have!”’ 
But apart from this and similar instances of calliditas, 
the mood of piscatory poetry is generally serious or melancholy, 
and in keeping with the surroundings ; we look in vain for the 
sunny warmth of Sicilian meadows, where youths pipe and 
sing gaily. 
Like their modern brethren fishermen offered, before 
setting sail or after returning safe from dangers encountered, 
gifts to the gods of their craft, of whom first came Poseidon or 
Neptune, usually represented with a trident !; second, Hermes 
or Mercury, the most venerated, because of his wily cunning 
and ready ruses2; third, Pan, a son of Mercury, who taught 
him all his craft,3 and fourth, Priapus.¢ 
1 Some recent scholars hold that Poseidon was an early differentiation 
of Zeus, and that his fish-spear was developed from the three-pronged lightning 
symbol of that deity as soon as the former became himself specialised into 
first a river god, and second a sea god. From my friend Mr, A. B. Cook’s 
forthcoming work, Zeus, vol. ii. c. 6, s. 4, I learn that the commonly supposed 
Trident (in A’schylus, Septem., I. 31), ‘‘ the fish-striking tool of the sea-god,”’ 
is more likely in pre-classical times to have been the three-pronged lightning, 
symbol of the highest Deity of all, and observable not only in Greece, but also 
in Asia. Against this view lies the fact that only once in all the Greek art is 
Poseidon represented with an unmistakable thunder-bolt, and this is on a 
silver tetradrachm of Messana about 450 B.c. The name Poseidon merely * 
equals, it is held, zoref-Aas, or ‘Lord Zeus,’ the correlative of rérv1a“Hpn, ‘Lady 
Hera.’ 
2 See Oppian’s invocation of him in III. 9-28. 
3 Ibid. As Pan was worshipped as the god of animals, especially of herds, 
on land, so did the fisherfolk venerate him, May &«rios (Theocr., Id., V. 14) or 
aAlrrayKros (Soph., Aj., 695: cf. Anth. Pal., X. 10), as the god of the animals 
of the sea, and in especial for his service to them in netting Typhon, whose 
“winds wrought havoc to their boats, and when Auster with Sirocco breath 
prevailed, caused their catches to go bad.” At Athens the god was regarded 
with gratitude as a powerful benefactor, because of the aid vouchsafed in 
securing naval victories (Hdt., 6. 105. Simonides frag. 133, Bergk*). 
‘ To Janus, however, the credit of being the first to teach the art of Fishing 
to the Latins is assigned by Alexander Sardus, De Rerum Inventoribus, II. 16. 
