[210] Noctes Atticæ, 6. 8. 1-7.
[211] For instances in classical mythology of rescues from drowning, and of corpses brought ashore, see A. B. Cook, Zeus (Cambridge, 1914), i. p. 170, and for similar hagiographical instances, see S. Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints (London, 1873-82), passim. C. Cahier, Caractéristiques des Saints dans l’art populaire (Paris, 1867), ii. 691 ff., gives an account full of interest, which is increased by his illustrations of Saints accompanied by fish.
[212] Brit. Mus. Cat., pl. XXI. 7. B. V. Head, Historia Numorum, 620 f. (ed. 2, Oxford, 1911). In Plutarch’s (de Sol. Anim., 36) the lad was thrown from the fish’s back by a terrible shower of hail and was drowned.
[213] Oppian, hal., V. 521 ff.
[214] B. V. Head, op. cit. p. 266 ff. As an emblem of the sea the dolphin is very general, from the rude sculpturings of Etruscan sarcophagi, the later mural adornments at Pompeii, down to the paintings of the walls of the Vatican by Raphael. In all, the striking dissemblancy to the actual dolphin of natural history can be remarked at a glance. In the case of Raphael, however, it must be remembered that the designs are modelled on the classical decorations which were discovered in the Baths of Titus, where the Dolphin had been with propriety introduced as a marine symbol (Moule, Heraldry of Fish, p. 8).
[215] De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology (London, 1872), ii. 336.
[216] Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy (London, 1910), ii. 636. W. A. Cork, op. cit., p. 96, states that the Karayás of the Amazon Valley, although eating nearly every other fish, abstain from the Dolphin.
[217] V. 16, Rawlinson’s Translation.
[218] See also I. 200, where three Babylonian tribes exist only on fish which they dried in the sun, brayed in a mortar, and strained through a linen sieve.
[219] Indica, 26.