Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 2).djvu/126

 37. These, then, are the things, said Democritus, which I myself have brought in the way of my contribution, not going to eat fish myself, for the sake of my excellent friend Ulpian; who, on account of the national customs of the Syrians, has deprived us of our fish, continually bringing forward one thing after another. And Antipater of Tarsus, the Stoic philosopher, in the fourth book of his treatise on Superstition, tells us that it is said by some people that Gatis, the queen of the Syrians, was so exceedingly fond of fish, that she issued a proclamation that no one should eat fish without Gatis being invited ([Greek: ater Gatidos]); and that the common people, out of ignorance, thought her name was Atergatis, and abstained wholly from fish. And Mnaseus, in the second book of his History of Asia, speaks thus—"But I think that Atergatis was a very bad queen, and that she ruled the people with great harshness, so that she even forbad them by law to eat fish, and ordered them to bring all the fish to her, because she was so fond of that food; and, on account of this order of hers, a custom still prevails, when the Syrians pray to the goddess, to offer her golden or silver fish; and for the priests every day to place on the table before the god real fish also, carefully dressed, both boiled and roasted, which the priests of the goddess eat themselves." And a little further on, he says again—"But Atergatis (as Xanthus the Lydian says), being taken prisoner by Mopsus, king of Lydia, was drowned with her son in the lake near Ascalon, because of her insolence, and was eaten up by fishes."

38. And you, perhaps, my friends, have willingly passed by (as if it were some sacred fish) the fish mentioned by Ephippus the comic poet, which he says was dressed for Geryon, in his play called Geryon. The lines are these:—

A. When the natives of the land Catch a fish which is not common, But fine, as large as the whole isle Of Crete, he furnishes a dish Able to hold a hundred such; And orders all who live around, Sindi, and Lycians, and Paphians, Cranai, and Mygdoniotæ, To cut down wood, because the king Is boiling this enormous fish. So then they bring a load of wood, Enough to go all round the city,