Among the Greeks and Latins aphrodisiacs and antaphrodisiacs, _i.e._ incentives to, or prophylactics against love, were accounted of potency, and meet with frequent mention. Each kingdom of Nature, animal, mineral, vegetable, piscine, was impressed to compass these purposes. The list submitted by Pliny—a weighty natural historian, mark you!—of those drawn from the first would be scouted by any modern Obeah or Ju-ju man, however powerful, as taxing too severely the credulity of his ignorant _clientèle_. Even Haitian superstition would reject its obvious absurdities. “The ashes of a spotted lizard”—here even the compiler is compelled to caution ‘si verum est’—“held in the left hand stimulate, but in the right kill desire,” ranks far from being the most incredible of the prescriptions.[723] The Ancients specialised not only in gods, but also in fishes which made, or made not, for passion. We, however, while enjoying a hundred sects, have brutally boiled down our aphrodisiacs to one, stout and oysters! The salacious properties of many fishes—inherited or acquired, according to ancient legends, from their mother or protectress, Aphrodite—furnish the theme of classical authors, grave and gay; _e.g._ of Epicharmus in _Hebe’s Wedding_—at wedding feasts fish were an absolute essential; of Varro,[724] _tunc nuptiæ videbant ostream Lucrinam_; of Plautus,[725] where at the marriage of Olympio the old man in love orders the purchase of stimulating fish. “Emito sepiolas, lopadas, loligunculas.” Even Pythagoras, according to Lilius Giraldus, believed that cupidity could be aroused, not by fish, which were apparently banned to his disciples, but by _Urtica marina_.[726] Pliny’s list of proved aphrodisiacs and antaphrodisiacs includes among the former “the eye-tooth of a crocodile attached to the arm,” and among the latter “the skin from the left side of the forehead of the hippopotamus attached fast to the body in lambskin.”[727] FOOTNOTES: [686] A. de Gubernatis, _Zoological Mythology_ (London, 1872), II. 329 ff. The latest luminary among the Solar Mythologists is L. Frobenius, _Sonnenkultus_, whose lengthy chapter in vol. I. on the world-wide Fish-Myth and its solar significance may be consulted by the leisurely. [687] Cf., however, “The Story of the Deluge,” in the _Catapatha Brāhmana_. [688] P. Robinson, _op. cit._ (p. 18), to which I owe much, here and elsewhere. [689] _Op. cit._, p. xi. [690] On _Iliad_, I. 206, cp. on XX. 71: διὰ τὸ δοκεῖν μανιῶν αἰτίαν εῑναι τισίν, ὡς οἶον εἰπεῖν τοῖς σεληνιαζομένοις. [691] _Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins_, Mysia, p. 18 ff. Nos. 1 ff. pl. 3, 8 ff. [692] _Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins_, Mysia, p. 18, No. 1, pl. 30. [693] A. Heiss, _op. cit._, pl. 45, 9. [694] See Cohen, _Monnaies Domitian_, Nos. 227, 229, 236, and Pitra, _op. cit._, pp. 508-512. Although writing some sixty years ago he enumerates no less than 156 illustrations from coins and representations of fish association.