In time, as their coins indicate, fish became associated with various coast towns, which owed their prosperity to fishing. Good examples descend from Olbia, Carteia, and Cyzicus on the Propontis. The early electrum coinage of the last shows the badge of this or that magistrate invariably accompanied by a Tunny, the badge of the state.[691] Very remarkable[692] is an electrum _stater_ with a Tunny upright between two sacrificial fillets, which may signify that this tunny was closely connected with some deity or was itself of a sacro-sanct character. Even more remarkable is a coin of Abdera in Hispania Bætica. This carries on its obverse a laureat head of Tiberius: on its reverse a four-pillared temple, two of the columns of which are in the form of fish. This unique representation has never been fully explained.[693] It is surely a happy coincidence that on some mintages of Imperial date the fish occurs together with the head of some self-styled deities, such as that choice couple, Nero and Domitian. On sundry pieces struck by Nero, the octopus-like and predatory Sepia not inappropriately finds place; but monstrously incongruous seem the coins which associate the man-serving and man-saving Dolphin with the self-serving and man-slaying Domitian.[694] [Illustration: LAUREAT HEAD OF TIBERIUS AND TEMPLE WITH TWO COLUMNS IN SHAPE OF FISH, FROM A COIN OF ABDERA. From A. Heiss, Pl. 45, 9.] With the Jews, although its emblematic employment was scanty, the fish occasionally figured, _e.g._ as a sign of Judah. In the Talmud it appears more frequently, and as symbolic of some moral quality—_e.g._ of innocence.[695] In Japan the carp has been for centuries the emblem of the Samurai, because of its accredited power to withstand opposition and to swim against the current of the stream. On the advent of Christianity, numerous become the allusions in Patristic and other literature. From the repetition by Father after Father of _Aquæ vivæ piscis Christus_, of _piscatio duplex, Ecclesia præsens et futura_, and of similar sentences, the application approaches perilously near the commonplace. Nor was its scope morally limited. St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, and others allegorise fish and fishing in both good and bad senses. Thus, _piscis pia fides quæ vivit inter fluctus nec frangitur_; _piscis fides invisibilium_; _rete Christus_; _sagæna Ecclesia_; _Christus est piscis assus discipulis, serpens Judæis_, can be matched by _pisces immundi, peccatores_; _piscis maris, dæmones_; _piscator Diabolus_; _rete, deceptio Diaboli_; and _sagæna, cor mulieris_, which last, from a technical point of view, hardly stamps Bishop Humbertus as a proficient in our craft. From the identification—_Christus est piscis_[696]—is no long step to the symbolic use of the very letters which spell the Greek word for fish: thus from ΙΧΘΥΣ = I-ch-th-u-s, is established Ἰησοῦσ Χριστὸς θεοῦ υἱὸς σωτήρ, or “Jesus Christ, of God Son, Saviour.”