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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
 “Emito sepiolas, lopadas, loligunculas.”

Even Pythagoras, according to Lilius Giraldus, believed that

cupidity could be aroused, not by fish, which were apparently
banned to his disciples, but by Urtica marina.[726]
Pliny’s list of proved aphrodisiacs and antaphrodisiacs includes
among the former “the eye-tooth of a crocodile attached to the
arm,” and among the latter “the skin from the left side of the
forehead of the hippopotamus attached fast to the body in
lambskin.”[727]
 CHAPTER XX
DIOCLETIAN’S EDICT, 301 A.D.—PRICES OF FISH
AND OTHER ARTICLES THEN AND NOW
Struck with Adam’s words with regard to the Edict of Diocletian,
301 a.d.—“if we could fix the value of the denarius at this epoch, the
prices of fish then would prove an interesting subject for comparison
with those now (1883) current at Billingsgate”—I set to work to
ascertain how great had been the depreciation of and what was the
exact value of the denarius at the opening of the fourth century.
Much labour would have been saved, had I earlier come across
Abbott’s The Common People of Ancient Rome, but I found some
compensation in the solution of my sum coinciding approximately
with his estimate of the denarius = ·4352 cent.[728]
The Edict of Diocletian[729] contains, as Mr. Abbott (to whose
book I am indebted for very much that follows) indicates, many
points of great economic interest to us at the present time.
First—sentences of the Introduction (probably from intrinsic
evidence written by the Emperor himself) might well pass for a
diatribe in to-day’s paper against a Beef or other Trust. Fortunate it
is for these that the newspaper man possesses not the power of life
and death wielded by Diocletian.
The Emperor, having decided that the prices promulgated shall
be observed in “all our domain,” goes on, “it is our pleasure that if
any shall have boldly come into conflict with this formal statute, he
shall put his life in peril. In the same peril also shall he be placed,
who, drawn by avarice in his desire to buy, shall have conspired
against these statutes. Nor shall he be esteemed innocent of the
same crime who, having articles necessary for daily life and use,
shall have decided that they can be held back, since the punishment
ought to be even heavier for him who causes need, than for him
who violates laws.”
Second—the prices are maximum prices, not for commodities
only, but also for wages.
Third—although the number of slaves owned had decreased
since Augustan days, the scale of wages was still distinctly affected
by slaves being hired out by their owners for day or job work.
Fourth—the absence of power being applied to manufacture, of
the assemblage of men in a common workshop, and of the use of
any other machines than the hand loom, or the mill for grinding
corn.
Fifth—for the urban workman in the fourth century (as Mr.
Abbott, p. 176, demonstrates), conditions of life must have been
almost intolerable. It is indeed hard to understand how he managed
to keep body and soul together, when almost all the nutritious
articles of food were beyond his reach. “The taste of meat, fish,
butter, and eggs must have been almost unknown to him, and even
the coarse bread and vegetables on which he lived were probably
limited in amount. The peasant proprietor who raised his own cattle
and grain would not find the burden so hard.”
Sixth—the failure within a dozen years of the Emperor’s bold
attempt to reduce the cost of living. Lactantius,[730] writing in 313-
14, sums up the result of this interference with economic check and
countercheck—“for the veriest trifles much blood was shed, and out
of fear nothing was offered for sale, and the scarcity grew much
worse, until after the death of many persons the law was repealed
from necessity.” Sixty years later the Emperor Julian made a similar
but smaller attempt to control prices, but the corn speculators of
Antioch so entirely worsted him that he had to acknowledge defeat.
By the courtesy of the Secretary of the Fishmongers’ Company I
was furnished, with some average wholesale prices for 1913, the last
year unaffected by the war. The consumer, it must be remembered,
is compelled, in general, to pay the retailer one-third per lb. more to
defray handling, rent, etc.
The following sea fish were sold in London, per lb., as follows:
Cod for 4, Turbot for 9½, Mullet (Mugil capito) for 11, Sole for 17
pence. In the Edict the price of fresh sea fish is lumped at from 4½
to 7 pence, so we have no datum for comparison of individual prices.
In the case of the Mugil capito, however, we are enabled to contrast
its price, i.e. 11 pence, with that in Egypt, c. 1200 b.c., i.e. 9⁄20 of a
penny.[731]
A comparison with America in 1906 shows that the average price
of fresh sea fish was from 4d. to 7d. per lb., or practically the same
as in Diocletian’s time, while that of river fish—fresh—per lb. was 6
to 7½ as against 3¾ pence in the Edict.[732]
Salt fish, per lb. in 301 a.d. cost 4¼d., in U.S.A. 4d. to 7½d.
Oysters (by the 100), 1s. 10d., (in London) 4/-to 14/-.
The figures show that prices of other commodities in the Edict
vary extremely, but for sea fish are not far apart.
From the articles of raw material and manufactured wares, which
number in the Edict over eight hundred, and from the wages, etc., I
subjoin some items and prices on account of their general interest.
[733]

Price in—
1906 a.d. in the
301 a.d. United States.
s. d. s. d.
Wheat per bushel 18 4 10 (wholesale)
Beef per lb. 0 3-2½d. 0 5-9d.
Butter 05 1 1 to 1 4
Eggs, per doz. 0 2½ 10”13
 Wages per Day.
301
1906 a.d. in the
a.d.

s. d. United States.
Unskilled Workman receives 5/- to 9/- (8
0 5¼
keep. hours)
Carpenter 0 10½ ” ” 10/- to 16/- ”
Painter 1 4¼ ” ” 11/- to 16/- ”
I add a few other prices, without attempting in these years of the
ever-climbing wave of cost to give the corresponding modern
quotations.
£ s. d.
Fowl 0 0 6½
Snails (per score) 0 0 0½
Asparagus (25 to the bunch) 0 0 1½
Apples (best, 10) 0 0 0¾
Barber 0 0 4½
Tailor (for cutting out and finishing best over
0 1 1¼
garment)
Elementary Teacher (per pupil per month) 0 0 10¼
Writing ” ” ” 0 1 4
Greek, Latin, or Geometry (per pupil per month) 0 3 7
Advocate for presenting a case 0 4 2
” ” finishing ” 0 17 5
Watcher of Clothes in public baths (for each
0 0 4½
patron)
Patricians’ shoes (per pair) 0 2 9
Boots (Women’s) ” 0 1 1
” (Soldiers’, without nails) 0 1 10½
Transportation (1 person, 1 mile) 0 0 4½
Waggon (1 mile) 0 0 2½
White Silk (per lb.) 10 10 0
Genuine Purple Silk (per lb.) 130 10 0
Washed Tarentine Wool (per lb.) 0 3 1
from 5½ to
Ordinary washed Wool ”
11d.
 CHAPTER XXI
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ROMAN AND MODERN
PISCICULTURE
With the opinion held by some, that the method of breeding fish
employed by the Romans was practically the same as that of the
modern Pisciculturists, Badham[734] seems to agree, when he
remarks: “The plan of stocking rivers with fish ab ovo has been,
after the lapse of many centuries, revived by two Vosges fishermen,
Gehin and Rémy,” and “they have thus re-established a very ancient
practice, and succeeded in stocking the streams of France.”
But this is a total misconception. It can only have arisen from
ignorance either of what is found in Latin writers, such as Columella,
or of what is the nature of the method used by Rémy and, with
great improvements, by present Pisciculturists.
Shortly, the Roman method collected from the bottom of a river
or a marsh eggs, already fertilised in the natural manner by fish, and
removed them to other lakes or vivaria.
Rémy and his successors catch and strip the females of their
eggs, which are pressed out into a pan. They then extrude the milt
of the male on to the eggs, in a proportion, differing according to
what fish are being spawned, of one male to one or more female.
They next place the eggs on perforated wire or other trays fixed in
long boxes, over and under which water of a regulated temperature
passes.[735]
The erroneous view of those of Badham’s school needs
correction. By tracing historically the various and not generally
known discoveries which led to our modern practice of fish-breeding
I hope to prove that the process of the Romans differed from ours.
For this reason I subjoin a short résumé showing why and how
Pisciculture as we term it and know it came about.[736]
 The same demand for fish, the same dearth of fish, which
compelled the enactment in mediæval Europe of stringent laws
protecting fish, spawn, and fry, caused in ancient China and Imperial
Rome the breeding of fish in lakes and vivaria by non-natural
methods, and in Europe from the fourteenth to the nineteenth
century the quest of an unnatural or artificial method.
Laws aimed at repairing the dearth of fish—a very serious
economic matter when all Europe observed frequent fast days—
caused by destruction of spawn and of fish during the breeding
seasons by human and animal agencies, were made in England as
early as the reign of our Ethelred II., who in 996 forbade the sale of
any young fish.[737] Malcolm II. of Scotland fixed the times and
conditions under which salmon fishing was permitted. Under Robert
I. the willow of the bow-nets had to be two inches apart, so as to
allow a passage for the grilse. In 1411 Robert III. punished with
death anyone taking a salmon in the close season. The Kings of
France were not idle. Many ordinances fix the meshes of the nets
and the length of saleable fish.
The first known attempts at fish-breeding were made by the
Chinese and Romans. M. Haime asserts that “we have no positive
data as to the epoch in which the Chinese began their experiments,
although everything shows that they reach back to the most remote
antiquity.” The address of Mr. Wei-Ching W. Yen dates the epoch as
probably that of Tao Chu Kung, who lived in the fifth century b.c.
[738]

In Rome considerable trade was done in the sale of young fish

for stocking waters. In China the commerce in fish eggs was on a
vast scale and extremely lucrative. The Jesuit missionary Du Halde
writes, “Le gain va souvent au centuple de la dépense, car le Peuple
se nourrit en partie de Poissons.”[739]
The method, however, of both the Chinese and the Romans was
to gather eggs, already naturally fertilised, lying at the bottom of, or
adhering to weeds in, the water. The Chinese went farther by
employing special traps of hurdles and mats to bar the rivers and
catch the eggs deposited on these.
During the long interval between the Roman Empire and the
eighteenth century, we note little or no progress in the rearing of
fish, although preserves became numerous in Italy and France.
Kings and nobles were zealous and jealous in making and
maintaining artificial ponds. Charlemagne the Great personally
ordered the repairing of old and digging of new ponds. By sales from
their vivaria, and by heavy royalties from their fisheries the religious
communities amassed large revenues.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages new methods to counter the
scarcity universally prevalent, despite the teaching in the thirteenth
century of Peter of Vescenza, were eagerly sought. Dom Pinchon, a
monk of the Abbey of Réome, seems the first to have conceived the
idea of artificially fecundating the eggs of trout. He pressed out in
turn the milt of a male and the eggs of a female into water, which he
then agitated with his finger. He placed the resulting eggs in a
wooden box, with a layer of fine sand on the bottom, and a willow
grating above and at the two ends. The box till the moment of
hatching was immersed in water flowing with a gentle stream.
The process—described in a manuscript dated 1420, but not
published till about 1850—naturally led to no practical results.
Consequently Pinchon’s claim to be the father of modern Pisciculture
—a term first used some three hundred years after his death—can
hardly be sustained. His discoveries interest only from a historical
point of view.
The middle of the eighteenth century witnessed an improvement
on Pinchon’s plan. In Sweden (where the care taken to protect fish
even prohibited the ringing of bells at the spawning season) the
bream, perch, and mullet attach their eggs either to rocks, or twigs
of pine.
Lund shut up males and females for three or four days in three
boxes, furnished with twigs of pine, etc. (on which the fish
spawned), and pierced with little holes to allow the entrance of
water. He succeeded at his first attempt in raising from 50 female
bream, 3,100,000 fry; from 100 perch, 3,215,000 fry; and from 100
mullet, 4,000,000 fry.
Jacobi of Westphalia, the first real inventor of practical
fecundation by artificial means, experimented on trout and salmon
for sixteen years before attaining definite success.
He pressed in turn the eggs and milt into a vase half filled with
water which he kept gently stirred with his hand. The fertilised eggs
were at once placed in a grated box inside a larger chest, in which
Jacobi had inserted at the sides and at the top fine metallic gratings
to allow the easy flow in and out of water over the sand or gravel
lying at the bottom. The apparatus was set in a trench by the side of
a brook, or, better still, in an artificial channel into which springs
were led. The young fish after hatching lived for three or four weeks
on their umbilical sac, and were then passed into a reservoir.
By these simple means Jacobi, who for his services was granted
by England a pension for life, solved the problem of protecting
fertilised eggs against their enemies, and yet of leaving them in
surroundings not unlike those of Nature. The experiment, as far as it
went, succeeded admirably.
In Great Britain[740] Shaw, Andrew, Young, Knox, and Boccius,
and in Germany, Blooch, and others carried on, at various times and
with varying methods and measures of success. In France little or
nothing was done, except by Quatrefages, till we reach the two
peasants, Rémy and Gehin, whose labours laid firm the foundation
on which all subsequent Pisciculturists have built.
In 1849 the Academy of Sciences learned that a prize had been
granted in 1845 by the Society of the Vosges to two fishermen of La
Bresse, Rémy and Gehin, for having fertilised and artificially hatched
eggs from trout, and for having raised some five to six thousand
trout from one to three years old, which continued to thrive in the
waters in which they were confined.
 On investigation by the Academy, it was found that Rémy and
Gehin (who came in later) had been led from conclusions based
entirely on their own observations (for “they are quite unlettered and
ignorant of the progress of the Natural Sciences”) to employ with
success methods rather similar, but superior, to those of Jacobi.
They had enormously decreased the high mortality by their
greatest and probably unique achievement, i.e. provision for the fry
of a natural food. This was produced by the simultaneous rearing of
a smaller and non-cannibal species, and by the collection in the
enclosed streams or made waterways into which the young trout
were liberated of hundreds of frogs, whose spawn afforded an
excellent subsistence.
Jacobi’s and Rémy’s discovery was the parent of our modern
Pisciculture. The gear and apparatus, especially in America, have
been transformed. The methods of stripping, of hatching, of feeding
are enormously improved, with mortality in eggs and fry incredibly
reduced.
From this account of their discoveries and from the nature of the
methods now in use, it is obvious that the suggestion of Badham
and others that the method of breeding fish employed by modern
Pisciculturists was practically that of the Romans must go by the
board.
 THE RAPE OF HELEN.[741]
From a Fifth Century b.c. Scyphos, made by the potter Hieron and painted by the
artist Makron, from Furtwängler and Reichhold, Griech. Vasenmalerei, Vol. II., Pl.
85.
See n. 1, p. 295.
 CHAPTER XXII
THE RING OF HELEN
In the countries dealt with in this book I give instances where
Fish and Fishing have, according to myth or tradition, played a
prominent part in human affairs, and have been the cause, direct or
indirect, of important events.
Thus in Greece and Rome, to fish is assigned the responsibility
for—
(A) The death of Homer, from his inability to solve the
riddle of the lads.[742]
(B) The death of Theodoric, who recognised in the
head of a pike which he was eating the head of his
murdered victim, Symmachus.[743]
(C) No less an event than the Trojan War, which,
according to the windbag Ptolemy Hephæstion, happened
on this wise.
In the belly of a huge fish named Pan (from its resemblance to
that god) was found a gem (asterites), which when exposed to the
sun shot forth flames and became a powerful love philtre. Helen, on
acquiring this, had it engraved with a figure of the Pan fish, and
when desirous of making a special impression wore it as a signet
ring.
Thus, when Paris visited Sparta the charm blazed from her finger
with the result of the immediate conquest of Paris, the flight from
Menelaus, and the Ten Years’ War!
 THE RETURN OF HELEN.
From a Fifth Century Scyphos, made by the potter Hieron and painted by the artist
Makron, from Furtwängler and Reichhold, Griech. Vasenmalerei, Vol. II., Pl. 85.
But, despite Homer, it was discovered (!) afterwards that Helen
was not in Ilium at any time during the siege, and that what the
Trojans harboured was not her real self, but only her “living image,”
εἴδωλον ἔμπνουν.[744] The discoverer of this interesting fact was (so
ran the slander) Stesichorus. Struck with blindness after writing an
attack on Helen, he recovered his sight by composing a Palinodia.
[745] The ghost of Achilles, when raised by that most famous
medium of antiquity, Apollonius of Tyana, denied positively that
Helen was in Ilium.[746]
If Mr. J. A. Symonds be right, “We fought for fame and Priam’s
wealth,” and for naught else, then she “with the star-like sorrows of
immortal eyes” was neither causa causans nor any cause of the Fall
of Troy. Perhaps “Priam’s wealth” is but an intelligent anticipation of
Mr. Leaf’s theory that the War was fought for “The Freedom of the
Sea” (Euxine), and, incidentally, the capture of another nation’s
profits.
EGYPTIAN FISHING

MEN CARRYING A LARGE FISH.

From Petrie’s Medum, Pl. XII.
See n. 1, p. 301.

NOTE
 Conflicting chronologies prevent the definite
dating of the earlier Egyptian monarchs: verily a
thousand years are but as yesterday in the sight of
Manetho, Mariette et cie. Thus it is that the reign of
Menes, the first historical king, has no permanent
abiding place in the 3167 years between 5867 and
2700 b.c. Discrepancy in dates is not confined to
the older or later computators, such as
Champollion-Figeac, Wilkinson, Lepsius, and Petrie,
but has infected quite recent writers, like Borchardt
and Albright, who in 1917 and in 1919 respectively
place Menes c. 4500, and c. 2900 b.c.
If the authorities disagree as to the dates of the
Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms (the divisions used
in my pages), they agree fairly well on what
Dynasties are comprised in each of these. So
whether a reader adhere to 5867 or to 2700 b.c. for
Menes, the Old Kingdom still comprises Dynasties I.
to XI.; the Middle Kingdom Dynasties XII. to XVI.;
the New Kingdom Dynasty XVII. to Alexander the
Great or 332 b.c., at which stage the Ptolemies
came on the scene.
 EGYPTIAN FISHING[747]

CHAPTER XXIII
“THE NILE IS EGYPT”
This terse epigram seems foreshadowed by Homer, who calls the
river (ὁ) Αἴγυπτος, and the country (ή) Αἴγυπτος, thus indicating
correctly that Egypt is only the Nile valley.[748]
The all importance of the river to the country meets early and
general recognition. In a hymn[749] it is lauded as “the creator of all
things good”: solemn rituals from the earliest down to Mohammedan
times implored “a good Nile”: temples in its honour existed at
Memphis, Heliopolis, and Nilopolis: at Silsileh ceremonies and
sacrifices,[750] from time immemorial, welcomed its annual rise;
magnificent festivals were universal throughout the land.[751]
To Egypt, river or country, goes out the undying reverence of all
Anglers. Whether Egyptian or the Sumerian civilisation were the
older; which of the two have left the earlier signs of a written
language[752]; whether the Egyptian surpassed the Assyrian empire
in extent or magnificence—about all these points “disquisitions” (in
Walton’s word) have not ceased.
But to Egypt belongs the glory of holding in future and happy
thrall world-wide subjects, who salute, or rather should salute (had
previous writers not been reticent on the point) her (and not
Assyria) as the historical mistress and foundress of the art of
Angling.
In my Assyrian and Jewish chapters I stress the remarkable
absence, despite the close and long connections of these nations
with the land of the Nile, of anything graven or written which
indicates knowledge of the Rod. In Egypt two instances of Angling
are depicted: the first[753] probably (to judge by his place on the
register) by a servant or fishing-ghillie as early as c. 2000 b.c., the
second by a magnate some 600 years later.[754]
The argument of silence—because a thing is not depicted or
mentioned it therefore never existed—often pushes itself
unjustifiably. May not absence of the Rod be an instance? Had
Mesopotamia (it may be further urged) been endowed with the
atmospherical dryness of Egypt and the consequent preservative
qualities of its soil instead of a widely-spread marsh-engendered
humidity, would not scenes of Angling there probably meet our
eyes? Humidity may account for great losses in Mesopotamia, but its
toll in the Delta of Egypt was also heavy. This large area has yielded,
compared with the Upper Kingdom, inappreciable returns.
But even if the country of the Two Rivers had possessed the
same climatic conditions as the Upper Kingdom, it could never have
become to the same extent the historical storehouse for posterity of
the works and records of ancient Man.
Difference in religious belief, for one thing, precluded. The
Sumerians, the first settlers recognised by history in the plains of
Shinar, conceived (as did their successors the Babylonians and
Assyrians) the next world to be a forbidding place of darkness and
dust beneath the earth, to which all, both good and bad, descended.
Hence burial under the court of a house or the floor of a room, often
without any tomb or coffin, or much equipment for the life beyond
the grave, was sufficient.
In belief and equipment the Egyptians differed toto orbe. For
them after death was pre-ordained a life to obtain which the body
must be preserved from destruction; otherwise it hastened to
dissolution and second death, i.e. annihilation. To avoid this fate,
they resorted to permanent tombs, embalmment, and
mummification.
 But as the Double, or Ka, of the departed (unlike the Soul, or Ba,
which fared forth to follow the gods) never quitted the place where
the mummy rested, daily offerings of food and drink for its
sustenance had to be placed in the chapel chamber of the richer
tombs. Sooner or later came the time when for reasons of expense,
or other, the dead of former generations found themselves
neglected, and the Ka was reduced to seeking his food in the refuse
of the town. To obviate such a desecration, and ensure that the
offerings consecrated on the day of burial might for all time preserve
their virtue, the mourners hit upon the idea of drawing and
describing them on the walls of the chapel.
Furthermore to make homelike and familiar his new abode, or
the “Eternal House” (in contrast to which the houses of the living
were but wayside inns) elaborate precautions were taken. We find
depicted on the walls of the chapel the lord of the domain,
surrounded by sights and pursuits familiar to him when alive. “The
Master in his tomb,” writes Maspero, “superintends the preliminary
operations necessary to raise the food by which he is to be
nourished in the form of funerary offerings: scenes and implements
of sowing, harvesting, hunting, fishing meet his eye.”
From these representations of actual life, intended for the
comfort of the dead, we, the living, are enabled not only to
reconstruct in part the manner and social economy of the Ancient
Egyptians, but also to gather, aided by excavated tackle, fairly
accurate knowledge of their various devices for catching fish. And so
to the religious conception which fostered the adornment of the
tombs the gratitude of all fishermen is due, and should be deep.
If the god Hapi, who is represented with the girdle of a
fisherman round his loins, and bearing lotus flowers, fowl, and fish,
was hymned by the people as “the Creator of all things good,” to the
Father of Rivers[755] the Father of History renders tribute for his gift
of one “thing good” which furnished to all, bar kings and priests, a
stable and staple food, fish.
 Its economic importance can hardly be over-rated. Testimony as
to its cheapness and abundance is not wanting. Of such is the wail
of the poorer folk that the price of corn might be that of fish.[756]
Not less impressive rings the plaint of wandering Israel—even
heaven-sent manna apparently palls!—“we remember the fish we
did eat in Egypt for naught.” The Egyptians accounted the fish
plague, next to the death of the firstborn, as direst in result.
Confirmatory witnesses are Diodorus Siculus, who notes the
great number and the many varieties of fish found in the Nile,[757]
and Ælian, who neatly and truly characterises the aftermath of the
annual inundation as “a harvest of fish.”[758] Evidence, again, of “a
plenty” of fish, its pursuit, and its copious consumption fronts us in
the prehistoric kitchen-middens and in the bone or horn harpoons of
pre-dynastic graves. Later, the frequent tomb fishing-scenes and
some textual notices attest absence of dearth.
The numerous slate palettes in the pre-dynastic graves furnish
Mr. Bates with further proof, and with a new theory, which seems to
me, if ingenious, too ingenuous and too far-fetched.
The palettes,[759] almost invariably presenting the profile of only
those fishes, birds, or beasts that historic men pursued for food,
were intended (by the aid of colours extracted from the malachite,
galena, etc., crushed upon them) to establish an unpalpable, but, in
human eyes, very serviceable connection between the fisher and his
prey.
One method of such connection consists in creating a likeness of
the intended quarry. Such a likeness, by the belief that the
simulacrum is actively en rapport with that which it represents,
bestows on the possessor power over the original. “Cases,” Bates
correctly adds, “of this sort are the commonplaces of imitative
magic.” Usually a hunting or fishing amulet which simulates the form
of the quarry was worn by the owner, or attached to his gear.
The palettes themselves played the part of mere paint-stones,
but their supposed resident power might very efficaciously be
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