The fishing boys and women of the _Amorini_ at Pompeii and elsewhere may be adduced as vitiating this statement: but these, it must be borne in mind, are merely artistic representations of Anglers and of dalliance, not of real fishermen toiling for their livelihood. So, too, in the Greek representations where boys, not _Putti_ or _Amorini_, figure as fishing, it will be found that they are helpers or “fish-boys” of the working fisherman.[307] The explanations why fishermen are so rendered vary. Perhaps the truest, certainly the concisest, is Alciphron’s, τρέφει γὰρ οὐδέν’ ἡ θάλαττα—the sea feeds no one. According to Bunsmann, fishermen are always represented as old and poor and worn, because their delineators desired by painting the career as blackly as possible to excite sympathy. For this purpose old age and poverty and heavy toil, which appeal unto all, stood ready as their most effective strokes. According to Hall, the fisher, a common character in all Greek literature, was in early times described with simple truth. Only later, when imitation took the place of originality, did conventionalism render him always as aged, pathetic, superstitious, wretchedly poor, yet patient and content.[308] Whatever be the reason, Greek fishermen, whether we read of them in the Epigrams or in the fragments of lost works, all come down as old, patient, half-starved through dint of toil by day and night, sea-worn. Their horny hands grasp better a trident than hold the delicate pastoral reeds. They play no tunes, they dance no dances, they sing no songs save some rowing chant, as they tug at the oars when homeward bound. [Illustration: THE HAPPY FISHERMAN, ATTRIBUTED TO THE ARTIST CHACHRYLION. From P. Hartwig’s _Die griechischen Meisterschalen_, p. 57, pl. 5.] Meniscus and Diotimus (in Sappho and Alcæus) are aged, lonely, and miserably poor. They are not “white-limbed” like Daphnis in _The Herdsman’s Offering_. They play no flute, nor carry the apples of Love. So too the circumstances, the life, the recreations of the Shepherd of the Pastoral Idyll of Theocritus are as far removed as can be from those of the Fisherman of the Piscatory Idyll by the same author. The _locus_ is the same. The characters dwell near each other, but how dissimilar their lots! FOOTNOTES: [266] Burton, _Arabian Nights_. [267] Mackail, _op. cit._, p. 92. Cf. Strabo’s naïve but curiously true phrase about her, “a marvellous creature” (θαυμαστόν τι χρῇμα). [268] _Anth. Pal._, VII. 505: τῷ γριπεῖ Πελάγωνι πατὴρ ἐπέθηκε Μενίσκος κύρτον καὶ κώπαν, μνᾶμα κακοξοΐας. Translated by T. Fawkes.