138 THEOCRITUS—GREEK EPIGRAMMATISTS 
Who fell beside his lines and hooks and rod, 
And the choked fisher sought his last abode. 
His dust lies here. Stranger, this humble grave 
An angler to a brother angler gave.” 
Alciphron, judging from his extant letters, seems the most 
prolific of the later Piscatory writers. His tribute to the 
veracity of Sosias, ‘‘ who is famous for the delicious sauce made 
of the fish which he entices,’ reads in such deadly opposition 
to the common but false impression that fishermen rank next 
to mining engineers as the biggest liars in the world, that it 
must be quoted, if only on the principle of “ An angler to a 
brother angler gave.” 
“He is one of those who duly reverence Truth, and such 
an one would never even slip into Falsehood.” 
Lest as an Angler I may be accused of “slipping into 
Falsehood ” in my translation, I subjoin the Greek : 
"Eore O& TOv émiekOe tir GAHDaav riudvrwr, Kal ovK dv Tor’ 
éxetvog ic Pevdnyoplay dAtcBou.) 
Lucian’s Dialogues of the Sea Gods, by their confidential 
chat, give witty expression to the author’s own scepticism 
towards mythology. “ With their imitation of the earlier 
poets and their amcebean form they may be considered as 
connecting links between Theocritus and others of his group 
and the eclogues of marine mythology, sometimes classed as 
piscatory eclogues during the renaissance.”’ 2 
If any doubt be as to their being “links,” there can be 
none as to the charm of The Dialogues of (in Macaulay’s words) 
“the last great master of Attic eloquence, and Attic wit,” or 
(he has been perhaps equally well termed) “the first of the 
moderns.” 
1 Bk. J. 18, 
3 See Hall, of. cit. Pp. 22 (1914), and ibid., p. 35 (1912). Lucian, although 
a Syrian (to which nation fish was from the earliest times a forbidden food), 
frequently shows himself very conversant with fishes and avails himself of 
their characteristics: e.g. Menelaus, after witnessing some of the “‘ turns” 
of that celebrated “ lightning-change artist,” Proteus, exclaims frankly, ‘‘ there 
must be some fraud!” The artist pooh-poohs him and bids him consider the 
everyday miracle of invisibility wrought by the Polypus, who having “‘ selected 
his rock and having attached himself by means of his suckers, assimilates 
himself to it, changing his colour to match that of the rock. Thus there is no 
contrast of colour to betray his presence: he looks just like a stone ” (Dialogues 
of the Sea Gods, iv. 1-3, Fowler’s Translation). 
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