If Pisistratus squared the Acarnanian, as effectively as the Alcmæonidæ (his hereditary foes and the ejectors of his descendants from Athens) absolutely bought the oracle at Delphi, words of greater light and leading than “The Tunnies shall dart to and fro in the moonlight” might have been vouchsafed, for Herodotus relates that Pisistratus fell on the enemy, when they were having their mid-day meal, or asleep after it, or playing dice. To suppose that these words foretold and were understood by Pisistratus to foretell the hour of the subsequent capture of Athens itself presumes a power of mental suggestion, which even Charcot would have envied.
The deliverance may possibly have been particular as regards time, but more probably was, oracle-like, entirely general in terms and time. The words “And the tunnies shall dart up and down in the moonlight” merely continue the fishing analogy of the first line, and refer to the well-known method of catching Tunnies “at the full of the moon,” when, allured by the silvery light, they glide and race through the water, and are easily taken.
The mention here of the Tunny makes appropriate some notice of a fish, which looms large in nearly all our authors. Most of them dilate at length on its multitude, migrations, habits, and size. Its economic value as a food asset, then and now, finds ample recognition by writers separated over two thousand years (such as Aristotle and Apostolides), and in its current title of “The Manna of the Mediterranean.”
CUTTING UP THE TUNNY.
From Gerhard, Aus. Vas., Pl. 316, 2.
It is curious that the first two fish, the Dolphin and Tunny, on which I have occasion to comment because of the chronological sequence of Hesiod and Herodotus, should have greater attention paid them and should occupy more space in ancient writers than any other.
The reasons, however, are very dissimilar.
The Dolphin by its engaging habits of aidfulness and of comradeship—to it scarcely anything human seems alien—evoked gratitude and liking. The Tunny, apart from the wonder awakened by its multitudes and migrations, compelled an economic interest from its food-producing quantities and qualities. Rhode has excellently summarised the dissemblance: “Delphinus veterum cordibus atque animis se insinuavit, thynnus gulis atque ventriculis.”[225]