The touching charm of the passage[421] about the _Naucrates ductor_ or pilot fish (whence its name of ἡγητήρ), which for some reason in more modern times has transferred its affection and services from the whale to the shark, compels quotation: “Bold in the front the little pilot glides, Averts each danger, every motion guides; With grateful joy the willing whales attend, Observe the leader and revere the friend; True to the little chief obsequious roll, And soothe in friendship’s charms their savage soul. Between the distant eyeballs of the whale The watchful pilot waves his faithful tail, With signs expressive points the doubtful way, The bulky tyrants doubt not to obey, Implicit trust repose in him alone, And hear and see with senses not their own; To him the important reins of life resign, And every self-preserving care decline.”[422] Some of Oppian’s best bits contain animated portraits of sea-fights. The combatants are as intensely personified as Homer’s Greeks and Trojans in their hand-to-hand fight on the banks of the Scamander. But unlike the Heroes, the belligerents of Oppian pull each other to pieces without any responsibility on their part, or shock to moral sense on ours: “Unwise we blame the rage of warring fish Who urged by hunger _must_ supply the wish; While cruel man, to whom his ready food Kind Earth affords, yet thirsts for human blood.” In proportion as fish, which according to the earliest authors was despised or disregarded, grew in favour with the Greeks, the frequency of its mention in Greek literature increased apace. The _Deipnosophistæ_ by Athenæus, to which belongs the distinction of being one of the earliest collections of _Ana_, is a curious sort of philosophers’ feast. It quotes from nearly every writer on nearly every topic; it discusses almost every conceivable subject, especially gastronomy. It weighs the qualities of all things edible. Comments on fish, taken from plays, histories, treatises, etc., are plentifully, if incongruously, scattered.[423] Everything goes in this work; grammatical problems are mixed up with gastronomic; the discursiveness of Athenæus races from grave to gay, grim death to any story, however apparently disconnected. His tale of the _Pinna_ (III. 46), a bivalve shellfish, and the Pinnothere (a small crab who inhabits the shell of the _Pinna_) resembles many of the fables current among the West Indian negroes as regards the cleverness of the Crab. As soon as the small fish, on which the _Pinna_ subsists, have swum within the shell side, the Pinnothere nips the _Pinna_ as a signal to him to close his shell and secure them.