218 FISH IN SACRIFICES—VIVARIA—ARCHIMEDES 
or fish mixed with wheat, so among the Israelites the scape- 
goat had become the vicarious victim offered up to Jehovah 
“for the sins of all the people,’ and among the Assyrians the 
oblation had even shrunk to little fishes, made of ivory or 
metal. 
Fish, in addition to being worshipped as gods or held so 
sacred that eating them was prohibited, were frequently 
used by the Priests or by the Augurs for divinatory purposes. 
In accordance with their swimming or not, and in what direction, 
with their leaps into the air, how, whence, and whither effected, 
with their reception, or refusal, or smashing with their tails of 
particular foods, were framed the oracular deliverances or 
priestly predictions, as Plutarch and others show.! 
Thus at the spring of Limyra in Lycia, if the fish seized 
food thrown to them greedily, the omen was favourable; if 
they flapped at it with their tails, the reverse? In Lydia 
(according to Varro 3) from their movements, when rising to 
the surface at the sound of a flute, the watching seer deduced 
and delivered his answer. Divination was not limited to 
certain holy waters; when in the war between Augustus and 
Sextus Pompeius a fish darted from the sea and threw itself 
at the feet of the former, the ready augur found no difficulty 
in acclaiming him as the future ‘‘ Ruler of the Waves.’ ¢ 
Ichthyic soothsaying held its ground among the Greeks of 
the Byzantine empire. One prediction 5—when a boiled fish 
shall spring out of the pot, then the last hour of Constantinople 
will have struck—is of present-day importance. But whether 
the fish has filled his saltatory véle, and if so whether the doom 
of the city has sounded, lie for decision at the moment of 
writing on the lap of the Big Four in Paris. 
The belief that fish could and did foretell events lingered 
long in England ; thus the deaths of Henry II. and of Cromwell 
1 Pliny, [X. 22, and XXXII. 8. lian, VIII. 5; XII. 1. Athen. VIII. 8 
Plutarch, De soll. Anim. ch. 23. Hesych. s.v. Soura. 
2 Pliny, XXXI. 18. 
8 De Re Rust., III. 17, 4. ; 
« Suetonius, Augustus, 96. The subject of oracular fish is dealt with by 
A. Bouché-Leclercq, Histoive de la divination (Paris, 1879), i. p. 151 f., and 
also by W. R. Halliday, Greek Divination, p. 168, n. 3. 
5 ©, Keller, op. cit., 347- 
