But other books, other legends! for the same author (in Met., V. 331) tells us that in the battle Venus changes herself into a fish.
Ktesias gives another account.[287] Derceto by the wiles of Aphrodite “fell in love with a beautiful young man and was brought to bed of a daughter: being ashamed of what she had done, she slew the young man, exposed in the desert the child (who, fed with milk and then with cheese by pilfering pigeons, grew up to become the famous Semiramis) and then cast herself into the lake at Ascalon and was transformed into a fish—whence it came to pass that at this very day the Syrians eat no fishes, but adore them as gods” (Booth’s Trans.).
Of the instances of calliditas or shrewd wit of fishermen, the story (supra) of the fisher lads’ answer to Homer and the following from Alciphron (I. 16) must suffice, although from Æsop, etc., many others can be gleaned. The whole passage is far too long for quotation, but the final retort of the fisher, whose request for a battered disused boat has been selfishly refused by its owner, furnishes, according to a German critic, “a perfect gem of the Art of the Sophist, and sounds itself like an insoluble riddle.”
To enable the reader to form his own judgment on this particular instance of calliditas, I subjoin the retort: οὐκ ᾔτησά σε ἃ ἕχεις ἀλλ’ ἃ μὴ ἓχεις ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐ βούλει ἃ μὴ ἓχεις ἕτερον ἕχειν, ἕχε ἃ μὴ ἓχεις, “I didn’t ask you for what you have, but for what you haven’t. Since, however, you don’t wish another to have what you haven’t, what you haven’t you can have!”
But apart from this and similar instances of calliditas, the mood of piscatory poetry is generally serious or melancholy, and in keeping with the surroundings; we look in vain for the sunny warmth of Sicilian meadows, where youths pipe and sing gaily.
Like their modern brethren fishermen offered, before setting sail or after returning safe from dangers encountered, gifts to the gods of their craft, of whom first came Poseidon or Neptune, usually represented with a trident[288]; second, Hermes or Mercury, the most venerated, because of his wily cunning and ready ruses[289]; third, Pan, a son of Mercury, who taught him all his craft,[290] and fourth, Priapus.[291]
It is with a start of surprise that one finds Priapus, far more notorious as the god of propagation and fecundity, among the gods of fisherfolk. Can this be accounted for by some subtle, but inverse connection between the belief in India that the Fish was the symbol of Fecundation, and the God of Fecundation in Greece? Some support for this may lie in the statement of de Gubernatis, that as in the East the fish was a phallic symbol, so now pesce in the Neapolitan dialect means the phallus itself.
His lineage, either the son of Hermes, or his grandson, for among the many putative fathers of Priapus was Pan, may account for the inclusion of Priapus. To Priapus, arriving how he may at goddom, offerings were more freely made than to any other except Hermes.[292]
In addition to these four flourished minor gods. Goddesses too of Fishing (such as Artemis[293]), of rivers, of springs, and of the fish therein found devotees. First and foremost, ranked Aphrodite or Venus:
“But she Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea, And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds, and the viewless ways, And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.”