FISH ON COINS—ARETHUSA 221 
reaching seeming safety in the Isle of Ortygia, close to Syracuse, 
she welled forth in the midst of the salt sea a fountain of sweet 
pure water. Alpheus, not to be outdone, got himself trans- 
formed into a river to emerge also at Ortygia and to mix his 
stream with the spring of the nymph. 
Around her head or amidst her hair on Syracusan coins 
dart dolphins (some hold eels, which were sacred to Artemis), 
symbolic of the sea, to show that 
the sweetness of the fountain was 
still untainted by the surrounding 
salt of the ocean.! Sweet the 
water may have been, but 
Atheneus (II. 16) characterises 
it as “of invincible hardness.’ 
These coins are the work of 
those great masters, Cimon, 
Euaenetus, and an unknown 
third, the ‘New Artist’ of Sir 
Arthur Evans.2. On an electrum 
coin of Syracuse an octopus is SES vers Ate aril 
well delineated, while the obverse From G. F. Hill's Handbook of 
shows a veiled female head in Coins, Pl. 6, Fig. 6. 
profile. 
The octopus, judging by the fact that at Mycene in one 
tomb alone Dr. Schliemann excavated fifty-three golden models 
of it, and by the many gold ornaments of which the fish forms 
the chief or only figure, was undoubtedly a very frequent and 
favourite subject for the craftsmen of the ‘Minoan’ age, 
1 Some authorities (Preller, Griech. Myth., 1. 191) believe the head to be 
that of Artemis, not only the protectress of Arethusa, but also the goddess of 
rivers and springs, and of the fish therein—one of her emblems was a fish. 
Some coins show her or Arethusa’s head with seaweed plaited in the hair, or 
the hair plaited in a sort of fish-net surrounded by little fish. The whole 
island of Ortygia was absolutely dedicated to Artemis—no plough could cut 
a furrow, no net ensnare a fish, without instantly encountering a sea of troubles. 
See Keller, op. cit., p. 343. The sacred fish were seen by Diodorus (V. 3) as 
late as Octavian’s reign. 
2 For an admirable account of Syracusan coin-types during the ‘ fine’ 
period (413-346 B.c.), see G. F. Hill, Coins of Ancient Sicily (London, 1903), 
p. 97 ff., with frontispiece and pls. 6-7. On the widespread representation of 
the Tunny on vases and coins—Carthaginian, Pontic, etc.—see Rhode, op. cit., 
PP: 73-77: f 
3 See G. F. Hill, of. cit., Pl. 7, 13. 
