"Or because a fish carried from the Euphrates an egg of wonderful size, which a dove kept warm, and hatched the Syrian goddess; hence it was that they abstained from the eating of fish. They feared that if they ate those animals the vengeance of the goddess would be aroused: that the limbs of their body would swell; that they would be covered by ulcers, and consumed by wasting disease. Plutarch says of the Pythagoreans, that of sea creatures they especially abstained from eating the fish called mullet and urtic. They abstained from eating any kind of fish in order to instruct men and accustom themselves to acts of justice, for they say that fish neither do nor are capable of doing us harm. Others abstained from fish, the same author says, because man arose from a liquid substance, and therefore they worship fish as of the same production and breeding with themselves. "Anaximander says that men were first produced in fish, and when they were grown up and able to help themselves were thrown out, and so lived upon the land. So he contends that fishes were our common parents. "Xenophon, in his Anabasis, speaking of the river Chalos, says it was filled with large and gentle fish, which the Syrians worshipped as gods. Neither would they permit them to be injured. "These stories about fish are by no means the growth of the more ancient ages, for about the time of the return of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, the Tyrians were in the habit of taking fish to Jerusalem for sale. In Nehemiah xiii., v. 16 the words are as follows: 'There dwell men of Tyre also therein, which brought fish, and all manner of ware and sold on the sabbath, unto the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem.' At this time the Jews were not free from the profane rites of their neighbours, particularly such as had taken their wives from among the Philistines, who especially worshipped Dagon. To eat fish or to sell them on the public market-place was surely a great indignity to the god. There were certain fish sacred among other nations, as Pompilius among the Grecians, Anguilla among the Egyptians, and others among the Pythagoreans. In the same way as fish, so were also doves held in great honour out of favour to this god. It is, however, well known that doves were sacred to Venus, and she is Derceto. "The temple of Dagon is called Beth-Dagon, which is pure Hebrew. (See I. Maccabeus x., 23.) 'The horsemen also being scattered in the field, fled to Azotus and went into Beth-Dagon, their idol's temple, for safety.' Venus of the Ascalonites--that is Derceto--has the very same name with Herodotus, as Mylitta, Alitta, and the mother of the gods, and about the temple of the goddess of Hierapolis fish and doves were received as sacred, and in her honour, no less than where Derceto was worshipped. "'Paradise Lost' has the following of this deity:--