126 TRAITS OF FISHERMEN—DEITIES OF FISHING 
It is with a start of surprise that one finds Priapus, far 
more notorious as the god of propagation and fecundity, 
among the gods of fisherfolk. Can this be accounted for by 
some subtle, but inverse connection between the belief in India 
that the Fish was the symbol of Fecundation, and the God of. 
Fecundation in Greece? Some support for this may lie in 
the statement of de Gubernatis, that as in the East the fish 
was a phallic symbol, so now fesce in the Neapolitan dialect 
means the phallus itself. 
His lineage, either the son of Hermes, or his grandson, for 
among the many putative fathers of Priapus was Pan, may 
account for the inclusion of Priapus. To Priapus, arriving 
how he may at goddom, offerings were more freely made than 
to any other except Hermes.! 
In addition to these four flourished minor gods. God- 
desses too of Fishing (such as Artemis 2), of rivers, of springs, 
and of the fish therein found devotees. First and foremost, 
ranked Aphrodite or Venus : 
“ But she 
Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on 
the sea, 
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds, and the viewless 
ways, 
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.” 
This in common with the belief that Janus invented boats is probably a mis- 
taken inference from the fact that the early as libvalis had a head of Janus on 
one side and the prow of a ship on the other (Roscher, Lex, Myth., II. p. 23). 
1 The description in Auth. Pal., X. 10, ‘‘Me, Pan, the fishermen have 
placed on this holy cliff, the watcher here over the fair anchorage of the 
harbour; and I take care now of the baskets and again of the trawlers off 
this shore,” and in Archias (Auth. Pal., X. 7, and 8) of the fishermen making 
an image of Priapus to be set up, just where the sea leaves the shore, are 
only three of very many similar passages. Among the Eleans Apollo was 
honoured as a God under the title of The Fish-eatey (Athen., VIII. 36). In 
addition to Gods we read of Tritons who were half-men, half-fish, and of a 
still more wonderful being, an Ichthyocentaurus, whose upper body was of 
human form, and lower that of a fish, while in place of the hands were horses’ 
hooves ! 
2 The Phigaleans (in Arkadia) worshipped an old wooden image, called 
Eurynome, which represented a woman to the hips, a fish below. This 
curious effigy was kept bound in golden chains and was regarded by the 
inhabitants as a form of Artemis: see Paus., 8. 41, 4-6. A large Boeotian 
vase at Athens shows Artemis with a great fish painted on the front of her 
dress, a clear indication that she was held locally to be a goddess of fishing 
(M. Collignon and L. Couve, Catalogue des Vases Peints du Musée National 
d’Athenes (Paris, 1902), p. 108 f., No. 462; cp. Ib., No. 463). 
