Homer and Little Fishes

Author(s): Max Radin

Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 17, No. 8 (May, 1922), pp. 461-463
Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Inc. (CAMWS)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3288612
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 [Contributions in the form of notes or discussions should be sent to John A.
Scott, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.]

HOMER AND LITTLE FISHES

In a recent article in the Classical Weekly, (15, 164) Mr. Fraser m

the attractive and interesting suggestion that the Homeric heroes ab
from fish because of a tabu that the common people were not requi
observe. That the heroes did abstain, that is, that they ate fish only
driven by dire necessity, is a commonplace of ancient and modern H
study. It is not as often explicitly stated, but it ought to be, that th
mon people ate fish freely,-indeed it was one of their important f
staples. "And the black earth bears wheat and barley," says Ody
(Od. xix, 111-114, Lang's Tr.) "and the trees are laden with fruit, a
sheep bring forth and fail not, and the sea gives store of fish, and al
his good guidance, and the people prosper under him." Amidst these
signs of a people's prosperity, no mention, we notice, is made of the fa
and fatter swine, in which the heroes delighted,-when they could get
The social dietary cleft is marked enough.
But is the cleft based on religion, as Mr. Fraser argues, or on the
drum fact that the poet thought fish wretchedly bad food, as Pro
Scott believes (Class. Journ. 12, 328; 17, 226; Unity of Homer, pp. 6
Well, both reasons are good ones. It many places, we know, fishes w
eaten because they were holy, and not because they were poor in q
And some of these places were much nearer than Peru and Sumatra,
Mr. Fraser found in the Golden Bough. The author of the Golden Bo
a note to Pausanias, iv, 153-154, has collected a number of instance
veneration of fishes closer to the Scamander, one in Smyrna itself.
the word "hieros" in Homer always meant "tabu," the case would hav
proved, because Homer speaks of iep6v ix0Ov, "a sacred fish" (II. xvi,
In later Greek, tep6s does mean "tabu," among other things. But w
scarcely say it does in Homeric usage, unless threshing-floors are ta
v, 499) and sentinels (I1. x, 56) and the like.
There is another consideration, however, that weakens Mr. Frase
position. Some things in ancient Greece could not be eaten because the
religiously unclean. But when people refrain for that reason, they ge
tell us so. The Homeric heroes, on the contrary, plainly state that when
refrain, they do so because they despise fish as a food. At least they
only under protest, driven by gnawing hunger. And nothing happ
them. Now, that is quite irregular for tabus. If this was a violation,
hunger would have constituted no excuse, any more than a guiltless s
of blood in later Hellas, was saved from miasma by his innocence,
461

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462 THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL

companions of Odysseus, who had killed the Sun's

were saved by their extremity from the god's wrat
In one or two Mediterranean regions, where fish
the inference that people drew as to the propriety
the opposite to that which Mr. Fraser supposes H
drawn. The Syrians and Philistines certainly w
fishes, but instead of the nobles abstaining and the
Askelon the dignitaries, i.e., the priests,--and they
thing. So Mnaseas tells us, (ap. Athenaeus, vii, 8, 3
thing that even an irresponsible marvel-monger m
own eyes. Here, too, with a real fish-tabu in oper
were the normal ones. Those who ate fish were afflicted with sores or ulcers.
(Selden, De Dis Syr., 2, 3; Enc. Bib. s.v. fish; Robertson Smith, Rel. of
Sem. 292.)
Professor Scott thinks Homer may have been a Smyrnaean, as the best
authenticated ancient tradition held. At the present day, the river fish in
the neighborhood of Smyrna are very poor. Since there is every reason to
believe that the situation has not materially changed even in three thousand
years, Homer may have grown up with a contempt for fish, and ascribed to
his heroes a lordly distaste for them. But as Mr. Fraser points out, Smyrna
was a sea-port, and it is quite possible that whatever may have been the
quality of the river-fish, the sea-fish were good. Indeed, in later times, many
of the cities on the Asiatic coast, whether on the Aegean, the Propontis, or
the Euxine, were famous fish-marts from which fish of all sorts were exported
to all parts of the world. Smyrna was not very far from the Hellespont, and
to "carry fish to the Hellespont," 1xBY ets 'EXXairaYroroV, was as proverbially
futile as to carry coals to Newcastle. To come very close to our region,
Schliemann found what he thought were the vertebrae of tunny fish and
dog-fish in the ruins of the third or fourth city on the hill at Hissarlik (Ilios,
pp. 360, 364).
But the fact that some cities on the Asiatic coast were fish-marts, does not
quite establish that Smyrna was one. Indeed, in the not infrequent enumera-
tion of sources of the fish-supply, we shall find Smyrna mentioned only in a
particular way. Oribasius, for example, quotes Xenocrates in extenso on the
subject of fish (ii, 58, p. 151, Bussenaker and Daremberg). We learn there that
Smyrna was known only for its sea-squirts, or ascidians, which Homeric
society probably had not yet learned to enjoy. And the Dorian who wrote
On Fishes, (ap. Athen. 319 d) speaks of the size and variety of all species of
sharks in Smyrna and the Gulf of Smyrna.. The other great Ionian sea-port,
Miletus, was especially famous for "sea-wolves," lupi, XjppaKEr, a large and
ravenous fish, sometimes identified, but dubiously, with the sea-bass.
The presence of such fish may have meant that other fish were plentiful;
but it does seem rather likely that the larger and more succulent of food
fishes shunned such grisly company, and that the sea-wolves fed on the
smaller fishes that teemed in these waters. So that, neither in the sea, nor
in the streams, would a native of Smyrna find such material for training a nice
palate in the discrimination of fishes.

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 NOTES 463

The instance of veneratio

is given to us in an inscr
fish here are those of a s
ably dedicated to Atarga
Smyrnaean practise.
All this cannot prove t
will explain why he migh
to eat fish.
MAx RADIN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

APOLLO AS AN ASIATIC DIVINITY

In an address delivered in Oxford in 1908 Professor von Wilamowitz-

Moellendorff advocated the theory that Apollo was an Asiatic god taken over
by the Greeks, and that in Homer this divinity was still regarded as foreign
and hostile. He argues also that the Homeric Apollo has few of the attributes
of the later Hellenic god.
These quotations will show the basis of his theory: p. 28: "In Homer
Apollo makes no music, no prophecy."; p. 31: "It is not until Hesiod and
Greece proper that the Muses form a choir for Apollo's harping."; p. 29:
"The only reference to Delphi and its treasures comes in a poem whose
geographical horizon is different from all the rest."; p. 31: "Apollo bears the
name Letoides: it is the only metronymic in Olympus, and it was only among
the Lycians that sons bore their mothers' names."; p. 33: "Apollo was the
alien and hostile god."
His four arguments will be taken up in the above order: 1) Apollo
makes no music in Homer and is not connected with the Muses. At the close of
the feast of the gods at the end of the first book of the Iliad we have these
words: "There was no lack of the lyre which Apollo had, nor of the Muses
who sang responding with melodious voice." In the last book of the Iliad,
verse 63, Hera tells how Apollo had brought his lyre to the wedding of Peleus
and Thetis. When Odysseus listened to the song of Demodocus, Odyssey
viii, 488, he asked him the source of his music, "Did the Muse teach you, or
even Apollo himself?"
2) Apollo is no prophet and is not connected with Delphi, except in one late
passage.
Iliad IX, 405: "The rich shrine of Phoebus Apollo, in rocky Pytho."
Odyssey viii 79: "Thus Phoebus Apollo gave oracular response to him, in
goodly Pytho, when he crossed over the stone threshold for the purpose of
consulting the god." Besides these positive references we have inferences of
his prophetic skill in such expressions as o 526, "As he spake a bird of omen
flew on his right, a hawk, the swift messenger of Apollo;" and o 245 where the
seer Amphiarafis is called "the beloved of Apollo."
3) The metronymic Letoides shows Lycian connections, since only in Lycia
were such names used.
This is, no doubt, based on the story of the Lycians as told in Herodotus
I, 173. Stein in his great edition of Herodotus makes the following comment

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