184 PLUTARCH—CLEOPATRA—OPPIAN—ATHENAUS 
upon the common prey.” From the Pinna which haunts 
the bottom of the sea came “the most transparent pearls, 
very pure and very large.” } 
The enormous industry of Atheneus, who (VIII. 15) speak- 
ing of the materials he had amassed for this one book, casually 
states that he himself “ had read and made extracts from 800 
plays of the Middle Comedy alone,” and in it cites nearly 800 
authors, and over 1200 separate books, has undoubtedly 
preserved to us‘many valuable passages of the ample literature 
and numerous plays in which fishermen once figured. My 
many quotations from and references to his Detpnosophiste 
make it unnecessary to deal with this author 2 at greater length. 
1 Athen., III. 46. From Faber, op. cit., p. 94, we learn that “ the pin- 
notherus finds refuse in the shells of living bivalves, living on the small 
animalculz contained in the constant stream of water, which flows in and out 
of these molluscs. The fancy of the ancients has attributed the status exist- 
ing between the two species as arising from a friendly alliance, protection 
and board afforded on the one hand, and watching against and warning of 
the approach of an enemy on the other. These observations descend from so 
early a date that we find the pinna and the crab among the Egyptian hiero- 
glyphs, bearing the interpretation of the duty of paterfamilias to provide for 
his offspring.” 
§ The rendering of passages from Athenzus (Deipn.) and from Pliny (N. H.) 
are usually Bohn’s, 
