[302] According to an inscription at Smyrna, H. Dittenberger, _Sylloge inscriptionum Græcarum_, (Lipsiæ, 1900), ii. 284 f., No. 584, a violator of the sacred fish was forthwith punished by all sorts of misfortunes and finally was eaten up by fish. If one of these fish died, an offering must on the self-same day be burnt on the altar. Cf. Newton, _Gk. Inscript._, 85. [303] Keller, _op. cit._, 345. [304] For discussion as to which was _the_ “sacred fish,” see Plutarch, _de Sol. Anim._, 32, and Athen., VII. 20. [305] To cite but one of the scores of intermediate authors as regards poverty, Ovid, _Met._, III. 586-91, Pauper et ipse fuit, linoque solebat et hamis Decipere, et calamo salientis ducere pisces. Ars illi sua census erat. Cum traderet artem, “Accipe quas habeo, studii successor et heres,” Dixit, “opes.” Moriensque mihi nihil ille reliquit Præter aquas: unum hoc possum appellare paternum. [306] The νέοι παῖδες in the oracles’ warning to Homer, which seem at first sight antagonistic to the above, become in Homer’s own words of greeting, ἅνδρες. Perhaps the employment of νέων παίδων by the Delphic priestess may be due (1) to the fact that they were “fish-boys” proper, (2) to an early and intelligent anticipation of the “juvenescent” tendency, or (3) to the exigency, not unknown to sixth form Hexameter-makers of the present, but (alas! if Oxford and Cambridge be obeyed) not of the future day, of scansion! [307] Cf. _Mus. Borbon._, IV. 54, or Baumeister, _Denkmäler Klass. Altert._ (Munich, 1885), i. 552, f. 588. [308] The happiest, perhaps _the_ only happy, fishermen are those shown at the bottom of drinking cups, etc.! In P. Hartwig’s (_Die griechischen Meisterschalen_ (Stuttgart-Berlin, 1893), p. 37 ff.) collection of red-figured Greek vases representing fishermen at work, there is an Attic _kylix_ (fifth cent. B.C.) with such a fisherman, who (the idea ran) was only in his element, when the cup was filled with wine. Cf. Theocritus, I. 39 ff., for another old fisherman in the bottom of a herdsman’s cup. CHAPTER VII THEOCRITUS—THE GREEK EPIGRAMMATISTS But to return to our second _locus classicus_, ‘The Fisherman’s Dream’ of Theocritus.[309] The whole Idyll (XXI.), an exquisite piece of word painting, deserves careful reading as a study of the piscatory _genre_, but room can only be found for part of it here.[310] “’Tis poverty alone, Diophantus, that awakens the arts; Poverty, the very teacher of labour. Nay, not even sleep is permitted by weary cares to men that live by toil, and if, for a little while, one closes his eyes in the night, cares throng about him and suddenly disquiet his slumber.