[246]. Odyssey, xxii. 468.
[247]. Odyssey, xvii. 295.
The fish-eating tastes of the Greeks were of comparatively late development. Homeric prepossessions were decidedly against ‘fins and shining scales’ of every variety. Eels were ranked apart. Etymological evidence shows them to have been primitively classified with serpents,[[248]] and they appeared, from this point of view, not merely unacceptable, but absolutely inadmissible, as food. The resemblance was thus protective, not by the design of nature, but through the misapprehension of man, and the ingenuity of hunger was diverted from seeming watersnakes to less repulsive prey. This was found in the silvery shoals and ‘fry innumerable’ inhabiting the same element, but differentiated from their congeners by the more obvious possession, and more active use of fins. The Homeric fishermen, however, were not enthusiastic in their vocation. Its meditative pleasures made no appeal to them, and they were very sensible of the unsatisfied gastronomic cravings which survived the utmost success in its pursuit. Nets or hooks were employed as occasion required. A heavy haul from the deep is recalled by the gruesome spectacle of the piled-up corpses in the banqueting-hall at Ithaca.
[248]. Skeat, Etymological Dictionary. Ἔγχελυς, an eel, is equivalent to anguilla, diminutive of anguis, a snake; cf. Buchholz, Realien, Bd. i. Abth. ii. p. 107.
But he found all the sort of them fallen in their blood in the dust, like fishes that the fishermen have drawn forth in the meshes of the net into a hollow of the beach from out the grey sea, and all the fish, sore longing for the salt sea-waves, are heaped upon the sand, and the sun shines forth and takes their life away; so now the wooers lay heaped upon each other.[[249]]
We do not elsewhere hear of net-fishing;[[250]] but rod-and-line similes occur twice in the Iliad, and once in the Odyssey. So Patroclus, after the manner of an angler, hooked Thestor, son of Enops.
[249]. Odyssey, xxii. 383-89.
[250]. Either birds or fishes might be understood to be taken in the net mentioned in Iliad, v. 487.
And Patroclus caught hold of the spear and dragged him over the rim of the car, as when a man sits on a jutting rock, and drags a sacred fish forth from the sea, with line and glittering hook of bronze; so on the bright spear dragged he Thestor gaping from the chariot, and cast him down on his face, and life left him as he fell.[[251]]
[251]. Iliad, xvi. 406-410.