It may seem rather perverse, even misguided, to devote an entire chapter to abstention from fish. There is a remarkable enthusiasm for fish in many of our extant sources, in particular those pertaining to classical Greek societies (Athens in particular). Their writings from fifth and fourth centuries bc provide the primary source for excessive fish consumption, mainly in of the fragments preserved in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus. It is problematic to extrapolate from Athens to other Greek communities. It is likely the nature of Athenian diet (and the writings about it) was distinct from other areas of population. Many of the texts should be treated with caution: they are often fragmentary, cited in isolation, or derive from the genres of poetry or comedy. However, even if we allow for a certain amount of artistic hyperbole and distortion, or a pattern of survival of texts and archaeological evidence that presents an uncharacteristic or unrepresentative portrait of ancient dietary culture, it would still appear that fish was an abundant commodity that played a significant role, not just in gastronomy, but also in the general cultural consciousness. This is particularly evident in coastal communities. Fish and other forms of marine life were a recurrent motif that appeared not just in literary texts, but on mosaics, frescoes and coinage (on the latter, images of crabs and dolphins are prevalent).1 Fish appeared upon the stage, in cookbooks and as the subject of philosophical dialogues. In the face of this overwhelming fondness for marine produce, any attempt to postulate individual or collective aversions would be doomed to failure.
Yet there is evidence that fish was treated as a prohibited food, through either abhorrence or reverence. While this phenomenon was never widespread, I believe it played a critical role in Graeco-Roman cultural self-definition. Often, contemplation of the ancient seascape and its denizens provoked a diversity of attitudes that tended to veer towards fear, distrust, even fierce hostility. Once one left the shore – terra firma – the watery deep became terra incognita. This chapter will chart the journey of fish from despised and marginalized man-eating alien to symbol of luxury and lax morals.
Some historians have sought to implement a strict division of Greek and Roman attitudes to the sea. They attempt to categorize the first as a sea-faring people, and Romans as agrarian hydrophobes.2 This seems too crude, ignoring those who did not think themselves either Greek or Roman, and buying into rudimentary stereotypes that segments of Greek and Roman society were fond of disseminating and perpetuating. For a truly hydrophobic nation, Plutarch would have us look to the Egyptians, who thought the sea impure and alien. They were said to not even greet the sailors whom they met because they earned a living from the sea.3
The hostile sea is a common theme. The Halieutica, a poem about fishing written by Oppian in the later part of the second century ad and dedicated to the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus, portrayed it as mysterious and inhospitable, home to monsters.4 Even allowing for his hyperbolic language, which endeavoured to make epic the humble craft of the fisherman – an heroic canvas on which man performed daring exploits and displayed his mastery over the waves – this was plainly an environment in which man will never feel entirely at ease. It is a vast and almost unknowable province.5
The historian John Wilkins draws attention to the way in which both Greeks and Romans assimilated the creatures of the sea into a more familiar (and thus more controllable) sphere by the use of nomenclature.6 Fish were named after, and frequently assigned the characteristics of, land animals, perhaps trying to absorb them into the body of human knowledge. He also makes the point that fish were often seen as mankind’s potential nemesis. This was not always the case. Sometimes fish were presented as being indifferent or actively amiable (if one may use such a word in this instance) towards man.7 Texts presented both sides of the argument, though the general tendency was against rather than for. On the positive side, there was reference to the pilot fish that assisted man in locating the safety of the seashore.8 The dolphin was also praised because it was beloved of Poseidon.9 The elder Pliny devoted four chapters of his book on fish in the Natural History to this creature. In one chapter he explored evidence of sympathetic relationships between man and dolphin.10 In the next, he explained how dolphins assisted men in catching fish at a lake called Latera at Nemausus (Nîmes) in southern Gaul.11
Both Oppian and Pliny made much of the predatory nature of many sea creatures and their threat to seafarers. It has even been claimed that it was the octopus that provided the inspiration for the myth of the Gorgon.12 Martial imagery was deployed for this adversarial relationship. Pliny described an encounter of the fleet of Alexander the Great with a shoal of tuna in terms of a military battle.13 Fish were not merely the enemy of mankind; given the opportunity, they would consume his flesh. A fragment of Archestratus preserved in Athenaeus refers to the carnivorous nature of the shark, but goes on to state that this is not just a characteristic of this one creature, but was in fact common to all fish.14 A fragment of Alexis’ Women from Greece, also in Athenaeus, confirms this attitude:
Living or dead, the creatures of the sea are always at war with us. If, for example, a ship founders, and then, as often happens, a man is caught while he tries to swim, they quickly gulp him down for good and all.15
There are references in Homer to fish eating human flesh. In the Iliad, there are mentions of a slaughtered boar flung into the sea where it will be eaten by fish,16 and how a fish will lick the blood and eat the flesh of a human corpse.17 More generally, Homer presents a number of problems.18 Both the Iliad and the Odyssey are noteworthy for the absence of much reference to fish as part of the heroic diet. The discrepancy between the two texts – references are slightly more frequent in the Odyssey – has been used to reinforce arguments that the two poems are the work of two different authors.
The epics offer a vision of diet that seems (at least in retrospect) rather curious. It is a regimen that appears to have centred on meat, roasted rather than boiled, and wine, with little or no mention of either fish or vegetables. Scouring these texts for documentary evidence of eating practices in Bronze Age Aegean cultures is unwise, but we may formulate several hypotheses to explain the omission. Possibly Homer mentioned no fish because in fact little was eaten; the texts portray existing cultural mores in place either during the period in which the events of the Trojan War were putatively set, or at the time that Homer was supposed to have lived (or perhaps both). This conjecture seems improbable for a number of reasons, not least the physiological implications of such a heavily carnivorous diet. This pattern of eating would have had catastrophic effects on the body of a warrior.19 The poems do seem to recognize fishing as a normal activity: there is a reference in the Odyssey to fishing with hooks.20 Yet, it is clear that the poet thought it something resorted to in extremis, with starvation imminent. Odysseus’ crew chose to risk divine wrath by stealing the oxen of Helios rather than trying to catch fish (which would have been abundant and easy to procure). This surely points to rather more than mere distaste for fish (or conversely particular love of beef ). Fish were either anathema to these people, or were so to the author(s). Our difficulty is finding the motive for this aversion: disinterest, shame, reverence or something else?
Some scholars have argued the answer lay in geography: that the area of Asia Minor from which Homer was supposed to have come had a tradition of antipathy to fish.21 This theory, claiming Smyrna as Homer’s native city, suggested the ‘inferiority of Phrygian fish’ as the reason for their absence from Homeric diet.22 This has found little support. It is criticized for making general what is admitted particular and parochial.23 Others see this absence of fish as the remnants of a taboo that had become transformed into a cultural practice.24
Let us examine the notion of a taboo and its possible origins. Fish were taboo in Egypt and Syria and this may have exerted a powerful influence over other Mediterranean cultures. Yet, the Homeric texts fail to provide any mention of fish within a religious context. When reference is made, it is almost as an irrelevance. Perhaps the aversion to fish sprang from sentiments of dread or disgust. Plutarch saw such repulsion as perhaps springing from loathing of the sea itself.25 He appears to link this to the attitudes of the Egyptians. In his text on the rites of Isis, he refers to the Homeric attitude to fish as being something unnecessary and superfluous.26 He also relates the Egyptians’ antipathy towards the sea.27 The implication is that a revulsion for the sea and for the creatures it contains was a commonly held truth, of which both Homer and Egyptians were cognizant. Plutarch represents Egyptians as holding that the waters were composed of disgusting matter – that did not belong to this world. This attribution of a putrid quality to seawater is curious, but may be linked with the fact that fish do not just live in the water, but also excrete in it. They live in a quasi-faecal world, amidst a miasma of their own effluent.28
The aversion may have come from the notion that fish themselves were impure or polluting because they were not incorporated into the sacrificial process. They were, therefore, an ineligible food. However, this may be an unproductive route to take with regard to the Homeric poems.29 Many other foods, particularly fruit and vegetables, are similarly neglected in these texts, with no hint that they have an impure status.30 Another proposal is that any Homeric taboo on fish may have derived from the nature of the diet of the fish themselves.31 Fish were not appropriate for consumption by man because they were prone to consume human flesh. The stigmatization is problematic. Fish were omnivorous; they do not feed exclusively on human flesh.
The Pythagoreans made an explicit connection between eating the flesh of living beings and cannibalism. Through the process of metempsychosis, they believed that any living being could potentially house the soul of a human. However, the Pythagorean biographical texts were confused over the status of fish within diet. Fish were perceived as occupying a position that was analo-gous to, but separate and distinct from meat, since not all fish were regarded as forbidden.32 Avoidance of meat was a necessary precaution against inadvertent cannibalism but the attitude to fish was ambivalent. Again, a factor that may have counted against fish was their taste for humans: by attempting to eat people they were possibly regarded as subverting a natural hierarchy.
Fish were not the only scavengers in Homer. Birds, dogs and fish are all associated with dead bodies and it may be significant that fish and birds are only eaten in extreme circumstances, and dogs not at all.33 But the likelihood that it was solely their appetites that made them taboo is small. Birds do not feed exclusively (or mostly at all) on human flesh, and dogs, when domesticated, are taught (or constrained) not to eat it. A taboo or disinclination might have existed in Homeric times for simpler reasons: birds and fish exist at a distance from the realm of man, they were truly alien beasts.
The case for dogs is quite opposite. Their domestication, and their use in shepherding and hunting, as well as for protection,34 rendered them perhaps too close to man for comfort. Yet there were instances of their being killed and even eaten. Plutarch mentions that puppies were commonly sacrificed to the goddess Hecate, and dogs were sacrificed during the Roman festival of Lupercalia.35 Galen noted that at least some communities were happy to consume the flesh of dogs. The historian of Greek religion, Robert Parker, highlights the sometimes degraded status of the dog, noting its exclusion from sacred sites such as Delos, and its lowly place in the hierarchy of sacrificial animals.36 This appears to confirm the notion of the dog as scavenger, but nevertheless one may make a case for some feeling of sympathy between dog and man. We know that Greeks kept dogs as pets.37 There are in existence records of approximately four hundred dog names from antiquity.38
A sympathetic and symbiotic rapport between man and beast was offered as reason for the hallowed status of the dolphin; its intelligence and apparently congenial nature raised it above the mass of other aquatic creatures. Wilkins notes the sacred standing of the dolphin within Graeco-Roman culture, but also observes that in some other civilizations, it was rather less valued.39 The Mossynoeci (people who lived on the southern shores of the Black Sea, west of Trebizond) used dolphin fat in their cuisine, as well as pickling and storing slices of dolphin flesh.40 Clearly, the dolphin’s status was not absolute. This is not to say that the dolphin was the only form of marine life capable of arousing feelings of tenderness. Porphyry relates the implausible tale of the Roman triumvir Crassus (who ruled with Pompey and Julius Caesar) and his pet lamprey. This fish would answer when its name was called, and its death elicited from its master considerably more grief than that of his three children.41
Another plausible hypothesis for the exclusion of fish from Homer is that the author(s) chose to describe the warriors’ diet in these terms and that fish was considered food unfit for heroes.42 Plato made reference to this dietary idiosyncrasy in the Republic.43 For him, Achilles and the rest were akin to demigods, and their diet reflected this: like the immortals, they consumed animal flesh (although, obviously, they did not consume the same parts of the carcass that sacrificial ritual assigned to the gods). The gods rejected the flesh of fish, and so did the Homeric warriors. The critic Peter Garnsey posits that the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, as they were interpreted in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus, was endeavouring to map onto his literary landscape a dietary ideal. This had a didactic function: it sought to influence peer behaviour.44
Within the context of later societies (in particular, that of classical Athens), fish came to be regarded as a mark of ostentatious wealth and luxurious living, enjoyed by the gluttonous, the effeminate and the corrupt. If Plato were thus reflecting reality as he knew it, fish would have been an entirely inappropriate foodstuff for an Achilles or an Odysseus. Plutarch made a similar point about Homeric simplicity.45 In this strain of thought, fish was equated not with urbanity and sophistication, but with dissolute effeminacy. The warriors before Troy represented the pure and uncorrupted heroic archetype.
So far, I have concentrated largely upon Greek attitudes. Superficially, the beliefs and anxieties of the Romans appear to mirror them, proceeding from an initial distrust or distaste for fish as something unfamiliar and alien to an enthusiastic embrace of all things piscine. This latter-day conversion to seafood was, as the Greeks, allied to a nervousness about its ideological implications, particularly from those who linked eating fish with autocracy on the one hand and wanton behaviour on the other, hence a betrayal of cultural roots. The texts of the imperial period offer an amalgam of the poetic, the satirical and the scientific. Oppian transported the profession of the fisherman into the realms of the epic; the elder Pliny and Galen proposed an alternative view, largely shorn of religious or folkloric embellishment.
Just as Plato identified the eating of fish with profligacy and weakness, an aberration from the austere diet of an earlier epoch, so frequently Latin writ-ers saw fish as representing simultaneously development and degeneration. A transformation of diet formed part of the process whereby a society became more sophisticated and complex, but this was not always assumed to be a good thing. Social and cultural mutation could mean a shift away from idealized origins. In Book VI of Fasti, Ovid referred to a period when diet was simpler and, pointedly, fish were not eaten.
You ask why we eat greasy bacon-fat on the Kalends,
And why we mix beans with parched grain?
She is an ancient goddess, nourished by familiar food,
No epicure to seek out alien dainties.
In ancient times the fish still swam unharmed,
And the oysters were safe in their shells.46
The elder Pliny, too, warned against eating seafood:
But why do I mention these trifles when moral corruption and luxury spring from another source in greater abundance than from the genus shellfish?47
In short, fish was perceived as being both a symptom of, and an agent for increasing and promoting luxurious behaviour.
Even if fish were a prized commodity, the status of fishermen was less exalted. There was a definite schism between purchasing and consuming the fish and the physical act of catching it.48 The ancient seascape could be seen as a bleak realm in which man does not belong, and sea-fishermen could possess a marginal status.49 Even those who greatly cherished fish felt the need to distance themselves from the demeaning activity of catching it. Plutarch thought it more correct to purchase fish than to catch them.50
In Greece and Rome, certain fish were able to command enormous sums of money, the larger species especially.51 Such trafficking might suffer from the taint of ‘élitism’, something perhaps disliked or mistrusted in a community wary of autocratic forms of government, but even so, there were plenty of people who seemed to value fish over meat, even when the latter was available. Aelian’s report of this situation pertaining on Rhodes may be no more than a reflection of its (literal) insularity,52 but with the development of fish farms during the late Roman republic and early imperial period, fish and seafood became not merely esteemed, prized for taste, but valued possessions in themselves. They were frequently not even eaten, but lived as symbols of affluence, privilege and refinement. Varro recounts the enormous sums spent on pisciculture. Gaius Lucius Hirrus was said to have earned twelve thousand sesterces from the buildings around his fishponds, and this income was all spent on food for the fish.53
To balance this picture, fish could occupy a position at the very opposite end of the social and economic spectrum. Small fish could be caught by indi-viduals, either from the shore or from small boats. These largely bypassed the market economy, being consumed by the fishermen themselves, or sold/ bartered within the family or their immediate circle. These were not the enormous creatures worthy of a powerful ruler, a Polycrates or a Domitian,54 but they were easy to obtain. Catches did not depend on having the where-withal to own or equip a boat, nor on the vagaries of weather. Another factor which ensured that fish were available to all sectors of society was the widespread adoption of salting and preservation and the production of fish sauce (garum or liquamen).55 Preservation also allowed access to fish products at any season of the year.
Our discussion has concentrated on sea fishing, for here the most signi-ficant matters of cultural identity were forged. But people also ate river fish, though the catch usually commanded a lower price. Some of the arguments advanced for and against eating fish would have been applicable to both sorts. Galen was not a fan of freshwater fish, unless from fast-flowing streams and rivers. Swamps, marshes and other stagnant waters were not good.56 Slow or sluggish flows ran the risk of sewage pollution,57 and catches from polluted waters were less expensive still. Galen talks of an eel that lived in the Tiber which was cheap in Rome because the sewage made it taste unpleasant.58 The penurious would have had to balance the low price against the disagreeable taste and the very real hazard of falling ill. Varro, too, speaks disparagingly of freshwater fish, fit only for the poor.59
It will come as no surprise to discover that the main proponents of a meat-free diet – the Pythagoreans, Plutarch, Porphyry – also advocated turning away from food from the waters.60 But there was one significant difference between meat and fish in an ancient context. Meat bore certain connotations as part of ritual sacrifice. Fish presented less of a problem in this respect.61 This rendered it, in some ways, an inherently selfish foodstuff in that it was not shared with any of the gods. However, there were some sacred fish. Diogenes Laertius, in his life of Pythagoras, mentions the red mullet and the melanouros, although he does not give a reason for their sanctified status.62 Iamblichus also makes reference to the blacktail and the erythrinos fish, and maintained the Pythagoreans thought they belonged to the infernal deities.63 This would explain the Pythagorean prohibition on the eating of certain ‘sacred’ fish as Diogenes Laertius asserted that they believed that it was inappropriate for mortals and immortals to partake of the same food.64 Sacred fish, it seems, also fell into the category of belonging to the gods, although not subject to sacrificial slaughter.
There is plenty of evidence that fish were entities that could be feared or revered, especially if they seemed to be sympathetic or helpful to man, or connected in some way with a specific deity.65 However, it seems not to have been a characteristic of Graeco-Roman peoples to abstain from fish for religious reasons, even if they were cited as one of the categories forbidden to the initiates of the Eleusinian mysteries, along with domestic fowl, beans, apples and pomegranates.66 Robert Parker notes similar rules in connection to the Haloa, an Eleusinian festival devoted to Demeter and fertility.67 Fish abstention was generally regarded by Greeks as something that alien cultures did, in particular the Egyptians and the Syrians. Egyptian priests had precepts that prohibited them from eating fish, although this did not extend to the whole population.68 Fish abstention amongst the population was frequently selective: the people of Oxyrynchus did not consume those fish that were caught with a hook, believing them to be impure, whilst those who lived at Syene did not eat the sea bream, believing it to be a herald of the rising of the Nile. Herodotus maintained that only two sorts of fish were held in sanctity by the Egyptians – the lepidotus and the eel. These were regarded as sacred to the Nile.69
There are many references to the worship of the Syrian goddess known variously as Derceto, Astarte and Atargatis.70 Diodorus Siculus said that Derceto was turned into a fish through the wrath of Aphrodite, and this was why Syrians did not eat fish, instead revered them.71 In Athenaeus, it is asserted that, according to the Stoic Antipater of Tarsus, the edict prohibiting fish consumption derives from a desire to prevent anyone ‘except Gatis’ (Gatis being the queen of Syria) eating fish.72 A similar explanation is offered by Mnaseas, in On Asia.73 He relates that they were the preferred tribute of a cruel ruler, Queen Atargatis (note the difference in name). Lucian’s De Dea Syria deals extensively with the rites of this cult of Atargatis. He refers to a half-human, half-fish effigy, representing Derceto, in Phoenicia. However, he says that the image at the temple at Hierapolis is all woman. There is mention of the fish taboo, and he refers to a lake near the temple where fish were raised.74 Severe punishments were threatened to those who did not properly revere and care for the sacred fish:
The superstitious believe of the Syrian goddess that if someone were to eat small fish or sardines, she will eat through his shins, burn his body with ulcers and melt his liver. 75
The punishment is aimed not just at those who consume the larger and more prestigious species of fish, but any marine life. This rather florid description of the potential fate of fish abusers is reinforced by an inscription from Smyrna which threatens the destruction of those who insult fish or attempt to steal them.76 A taboo on fish was also associated with rites connected with the worship of Cybele.77
It seems evident that fish veneration, while not entirely absent from Greece and Rome, was more conspicuous in the ideological systems of neighbouring cultures. A more significant influence on Greek and Roman attitudes may have been the way fish was placed within the diet. If one looks at the way classical Greek thought broke down its idealized dietary regimen into a threefold division of opson, sitos, and oinos (put crudely, meat/fish/vegetables, cereal and wine), the first element was deemed to occupy a subordinate role.78 Both Plato and Xenophon used the form of the Socratic dialogue to examine the formulation of this dietary division.79 It is not that opson is inherently bad. Indeed, it is a necessary part of the diet. However, it must not be allowed to take a predominant position, lest the components of the diet become unbalanced.
These many strands of fishy ideologies are confusing and ambiguous. They point to an apparent volte-face in Greek and Roman cultures. Fish are transformed from something that was despised and marginal in the Homeric texts, to a commodity that was coveted and revered, yet was feared for its power to corrupt. It may not be unreasonable to suggest that this shift may have accompanied growing cultural, political and economic confidence, a self-assurance marked by maritime expansion. The frequent references to compulsive fish eating in Athenian comedies came when Athenian imperial ambitions ensured a steady flow of tribute into the city from its overseas possessions. Was the incidence of fish gluttony in the fourth century, when tribute to Athens had dried up, a display of some form of nostalgia? Similarly, the Roman mania for fish farms developed as the state’s tendrils spread over the Mediterranean. There was a growing sense of control, even mastery, over the waves. Travel became safer as the threat of pirates was removed.80 Fish fall under human domination as the sea is brought under control. Both Athens and Rome experienced the influx of wealth that accompanied both political dominion and increased trading opportunities. Fish become almost synonymous with material wealth and political potency. The contents of a Roman fish farm were not there to be eaten, but to be admired. They were a valuable piece of property that signified wealth and social status; just as the purchase of a large fish in the Athenian agora showed the affluence of the consumer (although a rich man eating cheap fish may be taken for an arrant miser).
This equating of fish and affluence carries intriguing ideological impli-cations.81 The consumption of fish was a signifier of urban sophistication, and was an inherently secular and human activity. It was a selfish foodstuff, not offering any part of itself to the gods, nor was it divided among the diners. It was consumed not for its ritual significance but for the sake of gastronomic gratification. In a sense, it is hardly surprising that it should have been the signal for social anxiety. The transition from utilitarian to hedonistic was a sign of societies in the process of mutation. Increased wealth meant greater freedom from the shackles of self-sustenance and more time that could be devoted to pleasure. Anxieties that connect increased affluence across the social spectrum with the disintegration of morality are themes that concern social commentators even in modern Western societies. Inevitably, the social spectrum is limited almost exclusively to the élite. It is the affluent who suffer paroxysms of cultural angst.
Scholars are far from unanimous about the importance of fish in ancient Mediterranean diet. Sallares and Gallant warn about the perils of using literary texts to form hypotheses about historical processes. Given that so much of our information about a mania for fish within Greek culture comes from Athenian comedies, there is a risk that we may fall prey to treating the hyperbole of the stage as documentary evidence and view Athens as the same as other Greek communities.82 This is also a concern when we look at cities such as Rome, Alexandria or Ephesus. One cannot extrapolate from them a homogeneity of diet across swathes of territories. These urban maelstroms of disparate cultures and religions cannot be convincingly compared to small village communities located in provincial backwaters.
Gallant in particular feels that the importance of fish in classical Greek diet has been greatly exaggerated. In his Fisherman’s Tale, he describes how ancient fishing techniques were small-scale and labour-intensive. They were subject to the vagaries of migration (not always accurately predictable). Hence, he sees fish as marginal.83 It is a perplexing state of affairs. Gallant’s thesis is plausible, particularly his assertion that the movement of fish (particularly the pelagic species such as mackerel and tuna) was too unpredictable to permit it the status of dietary or economic staple. Yet the extant literature from both Greek and Roman sources affords fish huge ideological weight. If we accept Gallant’s theory, then we are compelled to interpret literary representations of fishing and fish (whether large or small) as something more than tracts about food and diet. Fish become ideological constructs of identity; they are status markers. They become a metaphor that revolves around notions of aspiration or derogation. Once, caviar and champagne were regarded as useful signifiers in the Western world. These words would instantly conjure up images of wealth and sophistication. It may be profitable to think of fish in Graeco-Roman antiquity in a similar way. It was a useful linguistic and conceptual tool which enabled a writer to use the word fish as an ultra-dense mass of imagery and innuendo, understood within the confines of that culture as representing something more subtle and complex. Fish had taken on a role that went far beyond its actuality. The extent to which it actually featured in the diet may be not as important as first thought.
All the evidence so far has suggested a widespread anxiety in Graeco-Roman about the sea and the forms of life that it contained. Yet, if we accept this analysis, this was not the prime focus of their fear. Rather, it was an apprehension about the way wealth and foreign cultural influences were trans-forming indigenous societies. This oozes from the ancient texts and reflects the concerns of the well-heeled. Wealth becomes spread throughout the social order, invariably facilitating a greater degree of social mobility. Eating fish could be a revolutionary act.84
Actual habitual abstention from fish within these cultures was rare. The Pythagoreans and others who espoused a vegetarian diet were in a definite minority. Fish exerted alternating forces of repulsion and attraction, but in general people seem not to have desisted from fish consumption (even with all those dubious moral connotations). The concern with fish seems to have been ideological. It appears that abstention from fish was viewed as something foreigners did. Unusual attitudes to fish could be a method of culturally defining other races. Herodotus notes that there were three Babylonian tribes that ate nothing but fish.85 Of course, such a diet seems highly unlikely, and may just have been an example of the Herodotean ‘mirror’, by which the ‘normality’ of Greek customs were defined as the inverse of other alien practices.86 If these Babylonians are defined as eating only fish, surely it is to contrast them with Greeks who have a ‘proper’ balanced diet, or who eat rather more meat than fish (and more cereal than meat). A repudiation of fish may have been as abnormal in the same way as a diet that was comprised exclusively of fish.
An absolute proscription was regarded as the hallmark of other races, something unnatural: their diets were unbalanced. This may have been one of the fears that lay behind the criticism of opsophagia (the excessive desire to eat only opson – fish and meat): it could have been construed as the start of an inexorable slide towards the behaviour of the other. It undermined cultural identity. This is difficult to reconcile with the deficiency of fish in the Homeric diet. Lack of fish in Homer is equated with purity and heroic virtue, not with primitivism. Ultimately, it is difficult to say why a dearth of fish in Homer was lauded, while fish abstention in other cultures was viewed with mistrust. Perhaps it was simply nostalgia for simpler times, a rose-tinted view of the past inspired by the tumult and turbulence of social and economic change. It is surely this that concerns writers such as Athenaeus and Plutarch; the search for identity in a constructed purer past amidst the uncertainty of (their) modernity. The upsurge in fish-eating and the veneration of fish as a supremely desirable foodstuff occurred during periods when territorial expansion in the Greek and Roman world brought a substantial influx of wealth and immigrants, accentuating and accelerating the process of hybridization.
One cannot fail to notice the repeated connection made in antiquity between the consumption of fish and social status. Small fish are consumed by those at the lower end of the social spectrum; the larger species were reserved for the moneyed and the politically dominant. Embedded within this analysis is the ideological dichotomy that both positions may be simultaneously good and bad. Poverty is to be despised but may in some way be eulogized as being closer to an untainted and uncorrupted archetype. Luxury may signify progress, but with it brings the potential to erode the qualities that made that success achievable. If fish were in any way marginal to ancient diet, its ideological significance was such that it burned itself onto the ancient Mediterranean consciousness.
(1) See Jenkins (1972); Sutherland (1974). Also Wilkins and Hill (2006), 156
(2) Meijer (1986), 147.
(3) Plut Quaest. conv. VIII.8.729.
(4) Opp. Halieut. I.40–55. In the notes to the Loeb translation of this work, A. W. Mair has the following to say on the word kêtos: ‘denotes Whales, Dolphins, Seals, Sharks, Tunnies, and the large creatures of the sea generally’; 203, note d. His translation of it as ‘Sea monsters’, in line with LSJ, seems to accurately convey the sense of dread of the strange beings that inhabit the depths of the oceans. See Olson and Sens (2000), note on Archestratus frag. 35, page 40: ‘The term kêtos may be used of any huge sea creature... and in biological writing is generally applied to whales (Arist. HA 566b2)’.
(5) Opp. Halieut. I.85.
(6) Wilkins (1993), 191.
(7) It should certainly not be discounted that posited antagonistic sentiments of fish towards humans in texts may have been exaggerated for dramatic licence, transforming fishing from a rather mundane and repetitive occupation into a potential life and death struggle. One has only to see what the film Jaws did for the reputation of the great white shark.
(8) Opp. Halieut. I.186–210.
(9) Opp. Halieut. I.385: ‘For Poseidon loves them’.
(11) Plin. HN IX.9.
(12) Elworthy (1903), 215. Elworthy rather overstates his case, believing the octopus to be the most fearsome and dangerous creature that lurked in ancient waters.
(13) Plin. HN IX.2.3.
(14) Frag. 35 Olson and Sens; Ath. Deip. 301f–2b. See Olson and Sens (2000), 40; Wilkins and Hill (1994), 72–73.
(15) Kassel and Austin fr. 2.60 in Ath. Deip. 226 f–g; Arnott (1996), 208–210.
(16) Hom. Il. XIX.268.
(17) Hom. Il. XXI.122–127.
(18) Pl. Resp. III.404c; Ath. Deip. I 9d. Also Heath (2000), 342–352; Davidson (1996), 57–64; Davidson (1997b), 12–13; 16–17. Garnsey (1999), 73–77; Wilkins and Hill (2006), 253–260.
(19) This may be a contentious point as, in spite of modern nutritional theories about the use of carbohydrates in athletic training, there was a tradition in Greek antiquity linking the consumption of meat with physical strength. Diogenes Laertius asserts that a certain Pythagoras (who may, or may not, have been the philosopher) was the first to alter the diet of athletes from one of figs and cheese to one of meat; Pythag. VIII, 12. Dalby (2003), 38. Excessive eating of beef is linked with the physical power of Hercules and Milo of Croton. See Davis (1971), 122–142 for the diet of the Roman soldier.
(20) Hom. Od. XII.330–333.
(21) Scott (1917), 330.
(22) Fraser (1923), 240.
(23) Scott himself later came to recognize the deficiencies in this approach in a later article in the Classical Journal in 1936 (Vol. 32. no. 3).
(24) Fraser (1923), 241.
(25) Plut. Quaest. conv. VIII.8.729.
(26) Plut. De Is. et Od., 353D.
(27) Plut. De Is. et Od., 353E: ‘In short, they [the Egyptians] believed the sea to come from pus and to lie outside the boundaries; it is neither a part nor an element but is a diseased and corrupted remnant of something else’.
(28) A revulsion towards an animal that is supposed to exist in, or to eat, its own waste matter may be partly behind the prohibition placed by some cultures upon the flesh of pigs.
(29) Wilkins notes that the Homeric poets were not averse to the sea, citing the inventory of regal properties in Od. XIX.109–114; Wilkins and Hill (2006), 256. Also Ath. Deip. 9d for Homeric references to fish as a source of wealth and symbol of abundance.
(30) However, maybe the existence of fish, vegetables and fruit is implied by the use of the vague term eidata polla (a multitude of foodstuffs), Hom. Od. XVII.95. See Wilkins and Hill (2006), 257.
(31) Combellack (1953).
(32) Iambl. VP 109 specifies the melanouros and erythrinus. Diog. Laert. Pythag. VIII. 19 also lists the former, but does not mention the erythrinus, but instead the red mullet.
(33) Combellack (1953), 260.
(34) Hes. Op. 603–605.
(35) Plut. Quaest. Rom. LII;LXVII.Lupercalia(on the ides of February)celebrated Lupercus, the god of shepherds, as well as Lupa, the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus. At the festival, two goats and a dog were sacrificed and thongs were made from the skins of the offerings. Adepts then ran a predetermined route round the city lashing young girls and women who gathered along the way: a stroke of the lash would ensure fertility and banish sterility.
(36) Parker (1983), 357–358.
(37) Lonsdale (1979), 150.
(38) Lonsdale (1979), 149.
(39) Wilkins and Hill (2006), 155.
(40) Xen. An. V.4.28; Wilkins and Hill (2006), 155.
(41) Porph. Abst.3.5.See Clark (2000),166 note 403,which notes that Plutarch mentions this in De soll. an. 976f but omits the three children. See Ward (1974), 185–186 for argument that the Crassus mentioned is not the triumvir, but the orator Lucius Crassus.
(42) There is one another possibility, albeit hugely implausible: that all references to fish were excised from the material during some later period. However, it would be difficult to discern a motive for such action.
(43) Pl. Resp. III.404bc. See also Heath (2000),342–352.
(44) Garnsey (1999), 76.
(45) Plut. Quaest. conv. IV.4.668F.
(46) Ov. Fast. VI.169–182. Translation A.S. Kline, http://www.poetryintranslation.com/klineasfasti.htm.
(47) Plin. HN IX.liii.34. See also Wilkins (2000), Ch. 6 ‘Luxurious Eating in Comedy’, 257–311.
(48) If we are to believe Athenian comedy,the mediator between these worlds,that of the artisan and the consumer – the fish seller – was also a troublesome and untrustworthy figure.
(49) Purcell (1995), 135.
(50) Plut. De soll. an. 965e–966b.
(51) Davidson (1995), 135.
(52) Ael. VH. I.28.
(53) Varro Rust. II.xvii.2–9.
(54) Hdt. III.42; Juv. IV. Wilkins (1993); Purcell (1995).
(55) Curtis (2001), 402–417.
(56) Gal. De al. fac. 6.709–738 K.
(57) Gal. De al. fac. 6.722–723 K.
(58) Gal. De al. fac. 6.722 K.
(59) Varro Rust. II.xvii.2–9.
(60) Iamb. VP 98 asserts that not all fish were taboo for the Pythagoreans. Laertius also denies a blanket piscine proscription. According to him, only the red mullet and melanouros were taboo; Diog. Laert. Pythag. VIII.19
(61) Fish were not generally sacrificed, although there were exceptions; Ath. Deip. 297c for the sacrifice of conger eels by the Boeotians, and tuna in Attica.
(62) Diog. Laert. Pythag. VIII.19. However, later, he refers to abstention from meat and fish (specifically mullets) in the context of purification (VIII.33). However, it is not entirely clear whether the exhortation was meant to apply to all species of fish.
(63) Iamb. VP 24.109.
(64) Diog. Laert. Pythag. VIII.34.
(65) For example, Paus. XLI.4–8. Pausanias describes a sanctuary to Eurymone in Phigalia, Arcadia. It was believed that she was a daughter of Ocean. Although Pausanias did not see the image of Eurymone himself, he was informed that the wooden image therein represented a figure that was half-human and half-fish.
(66) Porph. Abst. 4.16. See Clark (2000), page 189, note 642.
(67) Parker (1983), 358.
(68) Hooke (1961), 535; Plut. De Is. et Os.353C–D.
(69) Hdt. II.72.
(70) See Burkert (1983), 204–207; Gilhus (2006), 93.
(71) Diod. Sic. II.4.2–4.
(72) Ath. Deip. 346d.
(73) F.H.G.iii.155; Ath. Deip. 346d–e..
(74) Lucian Syr. D. 45. There is also a reference in Xenophon to sacred fish, revered by the Syrians in the Chalus river; Xen. An.1.4.9.
(75) Plut. De superst. 170D.
(76) Syll 997.
(77) Scott (1922), 226.
(78) LSJ notes that opson was generally thought of as signifying meat, but at Athens was mostly understood as meaning fish. It also has the meaning of ‘anything eaten with bread’, or ‘seasoning’, or ‘sauce’. It may be helpful to us to view the opson/sitos division in terms of a protein/carbohydrate split. See Davidson (1995), 205–207. Davidson appreciates the difficulty of determining a precise definition of opson, and locating it within this dietary system: ‘It is a necessary element of the diet and yet somehow superfluous to it’. I am not sure that Davidson is correct in defining it as a superfluous element; even Plato in Resp. allowed fruit and vegetables into the diet.
(79) Xen. Mem.3.14; Pl. Resp. 2.372a–373c.
(80) App. Rom. Hist. XII.xiv.94–96 for Pompey’s crushing of piracy in the Mediterranean in 67 bc.
(81) Davidson (1997b), 20.
(82) Gallant (1985), 12.
(83) Gallant (1985), 42.
(84) Davidson (1993) for fish as a destabilizing influence in classical Athenian society.
(85) Hdt. I.200. Also, II.92 for Egyptian marsh dwellers who also subsisted only on fish, in this instance dried.
(86) Hartog (1988). See Davidson (1997b), 309–315.