Another reason for abstention from fish, apart from their sacredness to the goddess, we owe to Antipater of Tarsus.[300] Gatis, queen of Syria, developed such a passion for fish that she issued a proclamation forbidding their being eaten without her being invited (ἄτερ Γάτιδος). Hence the common people thought her name was Atargatis and abstained wholly from fish. Mnaseas[301] assigns to her the deserved and not inappropriate fate of being thrown into her own lake near Ascalon and devoured by fishes.[302] But against this legend must be placed the fact that Atargatis, in common with many Asian deities and cults translated westward, found sanctuary and high veneration, in her case at Delos.[303] Theocritus in the fragment on Berenice recommends the sacrifice of a certain fish to a goddess. “And if any man that hath his livelihood from the salt sea, and whose nets serve him for ploughs, prays for wealth and luck in fishing, let him sacrifice, at midnight, to this goddess, the sacred fish that men call ‘silver white,’ for that it is brightest of sheen of all; then let the fisher set his nets, and he shall draw them full from the sea.”[304] If Apollonius of Tyana had been compelled to commend a beauteous fish for sacrifice—an act which his Pythagorean tenets forbade—he must have plumped for the Peacock fish. Whether he were, _teste_ Hieroclas, as great a sage, as remarkable a worker of miracles, as potent an exorcist as JESUS of Nazareth, or merely, in the words of Eusebius, a rank charlatan, whose magic, “if he possessed any,” was the gift of the powers of evil with whom he lived in league is no question to be considered here. Apollonius, at any rate, stands out, not only as one of the most interesting and most discussed personalities of the third century, but also as one of the most travelled. During his fifty odd _Wanderjahre_ many men had he known, and many cities had he seen of Asia and Africa. In the Hyphasis river of India there exist (we learn from his _Life by Philostratus_, III. 1) Peacock fish (sacred to Aphrodite) to which, if colour or “silver sheen” insure full creels, the Theocritean certainly must yield place, for “their fins are blue, their scales beautifully dappled, their tails, which fold or spread at will, of golden hue!” But dominant over all other characteristics stands the inevitable and insistent connection of fishermen with Old Age, Toil, and Poverty. Everywhere, in every author, does this note strike loudest; nowhere, have I come across a _young_ fisherman, except Virgil’s Menœtes. These characteristics find their place not only in Greek and Latin literature from and before the “sleepless chase” of Sophocles (_Ajax_, 880) to the last Romanticist,[305] but also in the statuary, pictures, frescoes, mosaics of Greek and Roman Art. Numerous examples can be cited from the museums of Naples, Rome, Paris, and London sustaining the contention that all real fishermen were ever depicted old and careworn.[306]