THE FISH-GATE—VIVARIA VERY LATE 423 
been obvious to and eagerly utilised by a race whose passionate 
plaint was for “a plenty of fish.” 
Their great Eastern neighbour inculcated the same object 
lesson. Most Assyrian towns and temples possessed an artificial 
or semi-artificial piscina. Yet not till some 1600 years after 
the Exodus do we glean in the Talmudic term bibar (an attempt 
at transliteration of the Roman word, vivaria, which of itself 
betokens the lateness of the effort) the first indication of their 
employment by the Jews. 
This may read as flat heresy, when compared with Isaiah’s 
words (xix. 10), ‘“‘ And they shall be broken in the purposes 
thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish.”” The transla- 
tion, however, in the R.V. (N.B., there is no word equalling fish 
in the Hebrew text), “‘ Her pillars shall be broken in pieces, 
all they that work for hire shall be grieved in soul,”’ shatters 
the assertion that vivaria, or fish lakes, were early institutions 
in Palestine. This shattering is complete, when the only 
other buttress, the passage in Canticles vii. 4, ‘‘ Thine eyes 
(are) like the fish pools in Heshbon,”’ falls to the ground with 
the R.V. rendering, “‘ Thine eyes are as the pools of Heshbon.”’ 
If the Israelites, on the one hand, lacked till late the 
constructive ability of the Romans with regard to vivaria, 
they, on the other, seem to have lacked or failed to apply the 
destructive devices employed by the latter for the wholesale 
slaughter of fish by poison and drugs, made familiar to us by 
Oppian and lian. 
Nore.—With reference to Mainzer’s absurd contention, Prof. Kennedy 
writes me as follows: ‘ Naturally the working of the large drag net required 
considerable elbow-room, and it was understood, as Krauss points out (Talim. 
Archéol., ii. 145), that a fisherman would not encroach .on his neighbour’s 
ground. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that the ancient drag was 
as long as those used by the Galilean fishermen of to-day—i.e. about 400 
metres (437 yards) according to Masterman (op. cit., 40)—a boat’s crew, work- 
ing from the beach and spreading their drag in a semi-circle, would not 
monopolise more than 250-280 yards of sea-front, a very different ‘ proposi- 
tion’ from the Talmud’s or Mainzer’s parasang.” 
