This statement, unless explained in some manner, contrasts queerly with the passage in Plutarch’s Life of Numa Pompilius, where the king is taught by Picus and Faunus, reinforced subsequently by Jupiter himself, to make a lustration “as a charm against thunder and lightning, composed of Onions, Hair, and Pilchards!” Lest these curious constituents arouse your mirth and infect you with doubt as to their efficacy, hearken unto Plutarch’s further words, “which is used even unto this day!”
From this account (wittily versed by Ovid)[511] we discover Jupiter, resentful at being brought down to earth by the magic of Picus and Faunus, ordering the charm to consist “of Heads”—“Of onions,” replied Numa. “Human”—“Hairs,” said Numa, desirous to fence against the dreadful injunction, and interrupting the god. “Living,” said Jupiter—“Pilchards,” broke in Numa.
Whether fish were but rarely sacrificed or not, Festus[512] at any rate makes clear that at the Ludi on June 7th, and possibly the Volcanalia in September (although at the latter the oblations were mostly animal), Roman fishermen did offer up fish, “quod id genus pisciculorum vivorum datur ei Deo pro animis humanis.”
Offerings of fish may be (as O. Keller suggests) a relic of Totemism resting on the belief that the spirits of men after death pass into fish.
The suggestion gains force when we remember that Anaximander[513] and others taught that men lived once as fishes, but later came on land and threw off their scales; and that the early religious conceptions of Latium were so debased as readily to engender or harbour such a conception. On the other hand, it must be admitted that not a single clear and convincing case of Totemism has hitherto been adduced from the Græco-Italic area.
In these oblations and in Varro’s “Populus pro se in ignem animalia mittit,”[514] an animal in place of a man be it remarked—can be detected a mitigated survival of the widespread custom of human sacrifice in propitiation of a deity.[515] On much the same lines grew up the custom, as civilisation progressed, of burning the weapons of, instead of killing, the captured foe, after a battle. The immolation of prisoners formed a sacrifice not so much of revenge, as one in honour of the slain on the side of the victors: such at least is the conclusion suggested to me by the words of Festus, “humanum sacrificium dicebant, quod mortui causa fiebat.”[516]
As offerings at Rome had dwindled from men down to animals, or small fish, or eventually even salt or pickled fish, 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.[517]
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.[518] In Lydia (according to Varro[519]) 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.”[520]
Ichthyic soothsaying held its ground among the Greeks of the Byzantine empire. One prediction[521] —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 rôle, 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.