Book 1
Imperial Oppian Greek- The tribes of the deep and the far-scattered ranks of fish of every kind, the swimming race of Amphitrite, I will declare, Antoninus, supreme power upon the earth; all that the billowy flood holds, and where each has its pasture, their watery weddings and watery broods, the life of fishes, their enmities and their loves, their counsels too, and the cunning, many-sided craft of the gainful art of the sea, all that men have devised against the unspeaking fish; they sail the dim sea with daring heart, and have looked upon depths not to be looked upon, and by their arts portioned out the measures of the brine, men more than mortal. The mountain boar and the bear the hunter sees, and watches them as they meet him in the open, to strike from afar and master at close quarters; and both upon firm earth the beast and the man do battle, while the hounds, companions and leaders, mark out the quarry and guide on their masters to the very lair, and follow near as helpers. For these no winter brings such fear, nor does the heat of harvest breed fever; for many are the hunters' refuges, shady thickets and ridges and caves of self-roofing rock; and many silver rivers stretch along the hills, ever-flowing stewards, a cure for thirst and for bathing; and beside the green-bordered streams the lowly grasses lie, a soft couch to take calm sleep after toil, and to eat the seasonable supper of the country woodland, the many things that grow upon the hills. Delight attends the chase more than the sweat. And those who arm destruction against the birds— for them too the prey is easy and within sight: some they plunder from the nest as they slumber, in secret; some they draw down with lime-bearing reeds; and others fall of themselves into the long-woven snares, in want of a resting-place, and meet a joyless lodging. But for the toil-enduring fishermen the contests are uncertain, and hope, unstable, fawns upon the mind like a dream; for they do not strive upon the unmoving land, but ever with the cold and uncontrollably raging water are they thrown together, which even to look upon from land brings dread, and to test with the eyes alone; on small timbers, servants of the storm-winds, wandering, and ever holding their spirit among the surges, ever they watch the violet cloud, and ever they tremble at the darkening path of the brine; no shelter from the roving winds, no defence against the rains, no guard against the harvest fire do they carry. And besides, the grim, ill-seen terrors of the grim deep, the sea-monsters, they shudder at, that meet them whenever they cross the sanctuary of the under-sea; no pack of hounds leads the sea-road for the harpooners; for the tracks are invisible to swimmers, nor do they see where the fish, meeting them, will come near for the catch—for it travels by no single road; in feeble hairs and the bent lips of bronze, in reeds and lines they have their strength. Yet you lack nothing of delight, if you should wish to take your pleasure, and sweet is the royal sport of the chase. A ship, well-bolted, well-benched, exceeding light, the young men drive with hurrying oars, beating the back of the sea; and the best steersman at the stern brings the steady, faultless ship to a wide sea-room, purpling and calm; there, the countless tribes of feasting fishes are fed, which the servants ever tend, fattening them with abundant food, a most ready chorus for the chase for you, blessed one, and for your great-glorying son, the flocks of the hunt. For straightway from your hand you send into the sea the well-twisted line, and swiftly the fish, meeting it, takes the bronze barb upon its jaw, and quickly is drawn from the king's hand, not unwilling, and your heart is gladdened, lord of the earth; for great is the delight to eyes and to mind, to behold the fish, fettered, quivering and writhing. But be gracious to me, you who are king over the sea's pathway, the wide-ruling son of Cronos, the earth-holder, and Sea herself, and you dwellers in the loud-roaring sea, gods, vouchsafe me to tell of your herds and sea-nurtured tribes; and may you, lady Goddess, guide each thing aright, and to the father and the son of the all-ruling king prepare these welcome gifts of your song. Countless indeed and beyond reckoning are the tribes that move swimming in the depths of the sea; these no man could name with exactness, for none has reached the sea's furthest bound; but only to about three hundred fathoms do men know and have looked upon Amphitrite. Much—for boundless and immeasurably deep is the sea— lies hidden, things no mortal man could tell of, unseen as they are; small is the mind of men, and small their strength. For I do not think the brine of the all-mothering earth nurtures fewer herds or lesser tribes; but whether the breed be matched in both, or whether one outstrips the other, the gods know clearly, and we with the thoughts of men may take our measure. For fishes their kind and their habits and their path in the brine are appointed, nor are the pastures the same for all the swimming tribes: some graze along the low-lying shores, feeding on the sand and what grows in the sands— the hippus, the swift cuckoo-fish, the yellow erythrini, the citharus, the red mullet, and the feeble melanuri, the schools of horse-mackerel, the sole and the broad-tailed slender ribbon-fish, and the mormyrus, that nimble fish, the mackerel and carp and those that love the shores. Others again in the mud and the shallows of the sea are fed: the rays and the monstrous broods of the ox-ray, the troublesome sting-ray and the cramp-fish, truly named, the turbot and the cod and the gurnards and the works of the hake, the lizard-fish and the weevers and all that are bred in the mud. And along the leek-green sand, beneath the green herbage, the sprats and the goat-fish and the silver-fish graze, the picarel and the blenny and the sea-bream, and both kinds of bogue, and all to whom it is dear to feed about the seaweed. The grey mullets again, and the cephali, the most righteous race of the brine, the bass and the bold-hearted bonito and the chremetes, the pelamyds, the conger-eels, and the one they call the slippery one, ever dwell in the sea that neighbours the rivers or the lagoons, where sweet water gives the brine a rest, and a great muddy outpouring is mingled in, drawn down by the eddies from the land; there they feed on the lovely fare and grow fat in the sweet brine. The bass too does not stay outside the very rivers, but swims up from the sea into the river-mouths; and the eels from the rivers come down to the flats of the sea. The sea-girt rocks are of many kinds: some are soaked with weed, and much moss grows about them; these the perch and the rainbow-wrasse and the channus feed about, the saupe among them, with mottled backs, the slender thrushes and the wrasses, those that the fishermen have named with the name of a soft-minded man. Other rocks, low-lying, near the sandy sea, are scaly crags, which the cirrhis and the sow-fish and the basilisks, and among them the millers and the rosy tribes of the mullet, haunt. And other rocks, green-fronted with grass upon their wet brows, hold the sargue as a dweller, and the maigre, the chalceus and the corvina, named for its dusky hue, and the parrot-wrasse, which alone among all the voiceless fish utters a wet babbling, and alone sends its food back again up its mouth, to feast on it a second time, chewing the cud like sheep. And all the rocks that are thick with cockles or with limpets, where there are chambers and lairs for the fish to enter, there the braize abide and the shameless wild-braize, the cercurus and the gluttons and the loathsome morays and the lizard-fish and the late-dying race of the orphos, which more than all linger longest upon the land alive, and even when cut still gasp beneath the iron. Others abide deep down beneath the waves in their dens—the sheep-fish and the hepatus and the prepontes, mighty and great in growth, but sluggishly they wind their ways; therefore they never leave their gully, but there in ambush wait by their cranny for whatever may draw near, bringing unseen doom upon the weaker fish; among them is the hake also, who beyond all cowers at the harvest Dog-star's bitter onset, and stays sunk in his dark recess, nor before comes forth, for as long a time as the fierce star blows. There is a fish that haunts the wave-washed rocks, yellow to look upon, in form like to the mullets, which some of men call the adonis, and others have named the exocoetus, because outside the sea it makes its bed, and alone passes onto the dry land, of all that have gills, those folds of the mouth, on either side. For when calm lulls the works of the bright sea to rest, then, borne in upon the rushing breakers, it stretches itself upon the rocks and takes calm sleep. But it dreads the race of sea-birds, who are its foes; and if it spies one drawing near, it leaps like a dancer, that the swell of the sea, rolling it onward, may save it from the crags. And some feed both among the rocks and in the sands— the gilthead, named for its splendour, and the weevers, the snub-nosed grey-fish and the valiant dentex, the darting scorpion-fish, a twofold race, and both kinds of the long sphyraenae, and with them the slender needle-fish; and there is the charax, and the light tumblers, the gobies; and there is the grievous race of the sea-mice, who beyond all are bold among the swimmers, and stand against men, though they are not so great; relying chiefly on a hard hide and on the close-set teeth within, they fight with fishes and with men more mighty than themselves. Others have their roaming in the measureless seas, far from the dry land, nor are they comrades of the shores— the tunnies, darting, in fishes pre-eminent in onset, swiftest of all, and the sword-fish, truly named, and the monstrous race of the orcynus, and the premades and the cybeae, the coliae and the cudgel-fish and the broods of the dolphin-fish. Among these too is the beauty-fish, well-named, a sacred fish; and among them dwells the pilot-fish, which the sailors revere, and have given it the name of the convoy of ships; for, rejoicing exceedingly in the ships that run through the wet, they follow as convoys, fellow-voyagers, one here, another there, leaping all about the well-benched chariot of the sea, on both its sides and about the stern-rudders of the steering-oars, and others gather about the prow; nor would you say their voyaging was of their own will, but under a bond, fast bound, as it were, to the well-bolted planks, drawn against their will, led on by necessity. So great a love gathers the swarm to the hollow ships. As when a city-bearing king, or some man that has won the prize, his head crowned with fresh garlands, the boys and the youths and the men attending lead up into his house, and ever throng about him, until he passes over the well-fenced threshold of his halls; so these ever follow the swift-faring ships, so long as no fear of land drives them; but when they mark the dry land, and greatly loathe the firm-set field, again they set off all together and, as from a starting-post, all leap away, and no longer follow the ships. This is a true sign for sailors that land is near, when they see them leaving their fellow-voyagers. Pilot-fish, honoured in seafaring, by you a man divines that gentle breezes of the winds will come; for in fair weather you set out, and fair-weather signs you show. And in the open sea likewise the ship-holder is your companion; it is long to look upon, a cubit in length, dusky in hue, and its form is like the eels', and the sharp mouth of its head bends downward and is curved, like to the point of a rounded hook. A marvel of the slippery ship-holder the sailors have noted; yet no man, hearing it, would believe it in his heart; for ever the mind of untried men is hard to convince, nor will they trust even what is true: a ship straining under the rush of a violent wind, running with sails spread through the measures of the brine, the fish, gaping a little, holds back from below, forcing it wholly under the keel; no longer does it cleave the wave even when it strives, but stands fast and firm, as though shut up within unbuffeted harbours. And all its sails fall slack about the forestays, the ropes groan, the yard-arm bows, driven by the gust, and upon the stern all the helm-ropes the steersman lets go, urging on the path of the brine; but she neither minds the rudders nor obeys the winds, nor is driven by the waves, but fixed fast she stays against her will, and even in her haste is fettered, rooted to the mouth of a worthless fish; and the sailors tremble, beholding the unseen bonds of the sea, and gaze upon a wonder like a dream. As when in the thickets a hunter, watching a swift-running deer, with the tip of an arrow strikes its limb and binds it from its course beneath the feathered shaft; and the deer, for all its haste, fixed by constraining pains, against its will awaits the bold hunter; such a fetter the nimble fish, meeting her, casts about the ship; and from such deeds it won its name. The chalcides too and the shads and the bream are borne in shoals, now along one sea-path, now another, whether about the rocks or in the open, or they run along the long shores, ever changing their strange road like wanderers. The pastures of the anthiae are chiefly in the deep rocks, their kindred; but they are not ever at home there, but stray everywhere, where their jaw, where their belly and ravenous, insatiable love of food may bid; for beyond all others a greedy frenzy drives them, though they have a toothless space beneath the mouth. Four great-bulked tribes of the anthiae graze: the yellow and the white, and the third blood-dark; others they call the fair-eyed and the auloposes, because for these, coiling above in a circle, a dark, encompassing brow is set as a crown. Two, fencing their fitted limbs with hard shells, swim in the bosoms of the sea— the spike-shelled crawfish and the lobster; and these both dwell among the rocks and feed among the rocks. The lobster, beyond all telling, hides in its heart a love for its own chamber unspeakable, nor ever leaves it willingly, but if any by force has dragged it and, carrying it far elsewhere, lets it go again into the sea, yet it, not long after, returns to its own gully, hastening, nor will it choose another, strange recess, nor sets itself upon another rock, but seeks out both the home it left and its haunts and the pasture of that brine which nourished it, and did not loathe the sea from which the sea-faring hunters made it a stranger. So then even for swimming things their own home and the sea of their fathers and the place of their hearth, where they were born, drops sweet gladness into the heart; nor is fatherland sweetest of all to ephemeral mortals only; nor is there anything more grievous and more wretched than for one whom necessity makes spend a painful, city-exiled life far from his country, a stranger among aliens, dragging the yoke of dishonour. In that kindred are the crabs also, the wanderers, and the pastures of the prawns and the shameless tribes of the pagurus, who too have a portion numbered among the amphibious. All those whose legs are set beneath a shell slough off the older shell, and another beneath rises up from the nethermost flesh; and the paguri, when they perceive the force of the breaking case, crave everywhere, hungering for food, that the parting of the shell may come more easily when they are full; and when the broken fence has slipped away, they at first are stretched out upon the sands just so, mindful neither of food nor of aught else, thinking themselves to be among the dead, and no longer to breathe warm breath, and they tremble in their thin new-grown hide; but afterwards, gathering their wits again, taking a little courage, they feed upon the sand; till then they have a helpless spirit, faint, until about their limbs the new covering grows hard. As a physician tending a disease-burdened man in the first days keeps him fasting from food, blunting the fierce force of the malady, but then offers him a little nourishment as he sickens, until he purges all the ruin and the limb-gnawing miseries and the pains; so they spring up in their new-grown cases, fearing to escape the evil dooms of disease. Other crawling things dwell in the sea's channels— the crooked octopus and the cordylus, and the centipede-fish, hateful to fishermen, and the osmylus; and these too are amphibious; and once a country man, a tiller of the soil, busy with planting near the sea, saw an osmylus or an octopus twined about the fruitful boughs, eating the sweet fruit of the plants. And like portion to these crawling things has the crafty cuttlefish; and other shell-skinned tribes are in the waves, many among the rocks, and some feed in the sands— the nerites and the race of trumpet-shells and the purple-fish themselves, the whelks and the mussels and—truly named—the razor-shell, the dewy oysters and the jagged sea-urchins; these, if a man cut them even small in pieces and into the sea cast them, grow together again and live again and feed. But the hermit-crabs themselves have no shell grown from birth, but naked and uncovered and feeble are they born, and they contrive themselves acquired houses, casting a borrowed covering about their soft limbs; for when they spy a shell left orphaned just so, its dweller departed and its hearth deserted, they dive within and, beneath alien cases, sitting, they dwell, and the dwelling they have won; with it they crawl, and within carry the fence about, whether the nerites left the covering or the whelk or the trumpet-shell; but the entrances of trumpet-shells they love most, because they are wide to abide in and light to carry. But when, growing, the hermit-crab has filled the recess where it dwells within, it no longer keeps that house, but leaving it seeks a wider hollow of a shell to cast about it. And often about a snug little shell among the hermit-crabs a struggle and great strife arises, and, driving the other out, the stronger casts about herself the fitting house she has won. There is a fish covered with a hollow shell, in form like the octopuses, which they call the nautilus, famed for its own seafaring; it dwells in the sands, and rises to the top of the water face down, that the sea may not fill it; but when it has floated up over the billows of Amphitrite, straightway turning over it sails, like a man skilled with the boat: two feet above, like cables, it raises up, and between flows, like a sail, a thin membrane, and is stretched out to the wind; while below two, touching the brine, like to the steering-oars, are pilots and guide the house and the ship and the fish. But when it dreads an evil near at hand, no longer to the winds does it flee entrusting itself, but draws in all its tackle, sails and rudders, and at once takes in the wave within, and, weighed down, is dragged under by the rush of the water. Ah, whoever first found out the ships, the chariots of the sea, whether some immortal contrived it, or some man, daring, first prayed to cross the wave, surely, looking upon that voyaging, he fashioned the timber-fitted work in the likeness of the fish's deed: some things he spread to the breezes from the forestays, and others behind as steering-tackle for the ships. The sea-monsters, mighty-limbed, prodigious, the wonders of the deep, laden with irresistible strength, a terror to all eyes that look on them, ever armed with deadly madness, many of them are turned about in the wide-pathed seas, there where the unmarked watch-posts of Poseidon are, and few come near the breakers, only such as the shores bear, heavy-roaring, and that do not leave the brine; of these are the chill lion and the grim hammerhead, the deadly leopards and the spouting physaloi; and there is the black, furious race of the tunnies, and there the blood-red saw-fish, and the ill-met gapings of the cruel lamna, and the maltha, named not for any soft feeblenesses, the troublesome rams and the abominable burden of the hyena, and the shameless, ravening dog-sharks; and among the dog-sharks the breed is threefold: one, wild, in the seas is numbered among the deadly monsters; other tribes, two, whirl among the mightiest fishes in the deep mud: one, by the black spines, are named, fitly, the spined; another, together with them, are called dog-fish; and of the dog-fish there are diverse tribes, the pups and the smooth ones and the prickly; and among them the angel-sharks and the foxes and the spotted ones; and like deeds they all have, and feed their fare among one another. The dolphins delight in the loud-resounding shores and dwell in the seas, and never is the sea without dolphins; for about them Poseidon shows great love; because, when he sought the dark-eyed maiden, daughter of Nereus, Amphitrite, who fled from his bed, the dolphins, marking her, in the halls of Ocean hidden, brought him word; and straightway the dark-haired god seized the maiden, refusing him, and subdued her. And her he made his consort, queen of the sea, and he blessed his kindly servants for their message, and in his own domain gave them surpassing honour. There are among the pitiless monsters some that even outside the brine come forth upon the life-giving dry land; long upon the shores and the fields beside the sea the eels mingle, and the shielded turtle, and the deadly castor-beasts, of grievous mourning, who upon the shingle pour out an ill-boding, mournful cry to men; and whoever takes into his ears that painful voice and hears the wail of that loathsome clamour, he shall not be far from death soon, but for him that most dreadful voice prophesies ruin and doom. Yes, and they say the shameless whale of the sea comes out onto the dry land and warms itself in the sun. The seals by night ever leave the sea, and often by day, among the rocks and the sands, quiet they abide and take their sleep out of the water. Father Zeus, in you are all things and from you are they rooted; whether you dwell in the highest house of the upper air, or everywhere—for to a mortal it is impossible to tell. With what love did you separate and scatter apart the gleaming upper air and the lower air and the streaming water and the all-mothering earth, each from the other, yet all in one another, under the bond of unbreakable concord you bound them, and by necessity pressed them, unshaken, under a common yoke; for neither is the upper air without the lower, nor the air without water, nor again is water made without earth, but in one another they grow, and all go one road, and unwind one cycle of exchange. Therefore also they are hostages to common broods, the amphibious; and some come up upon the land from the sea, while others again through the air mingle with Amphitrite—the light gulls and the wailing tribes of the halcyons, and the mighty sea-eagles, the ravishers, and all else that fishes and sets upon the watery hunt. And again the air they cleave, sea-creatures though they are, the flying-squids and the race of sea-hawks and the deep-sea swallow; these, when they fear a stronger fish near at hand, leap up out of the sea and fly through the air. But some both far and high let go their wing— the squids, which you might think a bird and not a fish to look upon, when in shoals they rush to fly; and beneath them the swallows have their path; and the hawks hover close above the very brine, just grazing the surface of the sea, so much that, to look upon, both are alike to swimmers and to fliers. These are, as it were, the cities among fishes, and these the companies that are sundered apart of the sea-roving breed. Of them some stray together in crowds, the nimble tribes, like flocks or armies, those that are called gregarious; others again in rows; and some are like ambush-bands or companies of ten; and one goes alone, apart from the rest, setting off in solitude; and others pass two by two; and some abide there in their own chambers. In winter all of them dread exceedingly the eddies of the storm-winds, dread the swell of the ill-sounding sea itself; for beyond all others the fishy broods shudder at their own dear sea when it rages; then some, having heaped up the sand with their fins, cower beneath it, helpless; others, beneath the rocks huddling together, dive in shoals; and some flee to the deepest seas, down to the inmost abyss; for those neither roll over too much, nor by the winds are they whirled up from the bottom, nor does any blast rush through to the sea's lowest root; and the great depth keeps from them the chilling pains and the harsh onset of winter. But when the flowery seasons of spring upon the earth laugh with their purple, and the sea breathes again, growing fair after winter, and grows calm, heaving gently, then the fishes from this side and that come thronging in all haste, rejoicing, near the land. As when, having fled the cloud of all-destroying war, a happy city, dear to the immortals, which long the all-bronze storm of foes flooded over, late ceasing at last and breathing again from the strife, gladly rejoices and in the labours of peace delights, sweet labours, and feasts in fair weather, filled with men and with the dance-beat of women; so they, having gladly fled the grievous toils and the shivering of the sea, exulting over the brine, leaping, rush about like dancers. And in spring the sweet sting of compelling Aphrodite and weddings come to their prime, and the loves of one another for all, both those that throng the life-giving earth and those in the bosoms of the air and those that range the loud-roaring sea. And in spring most of all the race of the swimmers do the goddesses of birth, the Eileithyiae, release from the heavy pangs of egg-bearing. For the females, in want of brood and of birth, press their slender bellies upon the sands; for not easily do they part, but the eggs are held fast together within the womb, grown confusedly into one; and how should they bear them all at once? Straitened by pains, they hardly bring forth their brood. So the Fates have given no easy birth to fishes either, nor are pangs for earthly women alone, but everywhere the Eileithyiae are burdensome. Of the males, again, some bringing dooms upon the fish, feasters, hasten and draw near to the breakers; others run on ahead, pursued behind by the female herds, since, drawn by the love of mating, they hasten after the males with uncontrollable rush. There some, rubbing their bellies upon one another, shed the liquid seed behind, and the females, eager with desire, with greedy mouths gulp it down; by such a wedding are they filled with spawn. This is the most common law among fishes; but some too have beds and chambers and wives apart, set separately, having mated; for great among fishes is Aphrodite, and Frenzy and Jealousy, that heavy god, and all that hot Love begets, when he stirs riotous revel in the heart. And many, parting, for the sake of the bed do battle, like suitors, who about a bride gather in numbers and, well-matched, contend in wealth and splendour; but these things fishes have not, but strength and jaws and the jagged fence of teeth within— with these they strive and arm themselves for the wedding; and whoever wins the throw among them, with victory at once finds the wedding. And some take their delight in many wedded mates—the race of the sargues and the dusky merle; others love and cherish a single bedfellow, the canthari and the Aetnaean fish, and rejoice not in many. But not like the eels, nor like the turtles, nor like the octopuses, is the manner of wedding, nor like the black moray's, but they have a way of mating turned aside from the bed: for the eels, poured coil within coil into one another, turn their wet bodies in thick array, twining together, and from them there drips, like to foam, an ichor, and it is hidden in the sands; and the mud receiving it conceives, and brings forth the coils of eels. Such too is the birth of the slippery congers. But the turtles greatly fear and loathe their wedding; for to them it is not desirable, as to others, the delight of the bed, but they have far more pain; for very hard is the goad in the males toward love, an unyielding bone, whetted for the joyless bed. Therefore they fight, and with their curving teeth tear one another, when they meet at close quarters, the females shunning the rough wedding, the males longing, willing, for the bed of the unwilling, until by force one, victorious, yokes her in compelled love, like a captive, the prize of war. Like the deeds of the bed are those of land dogs and of sea-turtles; like too those of seals; for very long each pair behind are joined together, fastened as by a bond. But the octopus has deadly weddings, and bitter ruin goes with it, a common end of death and of the bed; for it does not before abstain from love, nor cease, before its strength fails from its weakening limbs, and itself, falling helpless in the sands, perishes; for all devour it, whoever come near, the cowardly hermit-crabs and the crabs and other fishes, which before it itself easily devoured as it crept upon them; beneath them, alive though it still be, lying just so, in no way defending itself, it is carved up, until it dies. By such a joyless love-doom does it perish. And likewise the female too, labouring with birth-pangs, perishes; for not for them, as for others, do the eggs leap out separately, but, fastened to one another in clusters, hardly do they pass through the narrow channel. Therefore the octopuses never live beyond the measure of a single year; for they ever waste away with most dreadful weddings and most dreadful births. And about the moray a tale goes, not unclear, how a serpent weds her, and she comes out of the sea herself, eagerly, longing, to the longing partner of the wedding. Indeed the bitter viper, sharpened within by fiery madness, raves toward love and is drawn near the shore, and quickly spies a hollow rock, and there spits out its deadly venom, and all the bitter rancour of its teeth it spews forth, its fierce wrath, the treasure of ruin, that gentle and serene it may come to the wedding. Standing then upon the shore it hisses its own tune, calling for love; and swiftly the black moray hears the cry and rushes, faster than an arrow. She from the sea strains forth, while he from the land steps upon the grey breakers of the sea; and both, eager to meet one another, fall together, and the bride, panting, took the viper's head into her gaping mouth; and rejoicing in the wedding, she goes back again to the sea, to her haunts, while him the land draws by his coil, and again he laps up the chill venom he had let go before and drained from his teeth. But if he does not find that rancour again, which a wayfarer, seeing him truly, washed away with rushing water, then in vexation he flings his body about, until he takes the lot of a wretched, unlooked-for death, ashamed that, weaponless in the arms he had trusted, he, a serpent, was; and on the rock he destroyed both his body and himself by the venom. The dolphins make their wedding even as men do, and brace their members all like to men's; nor is the male's passage ever visible, but within it is hidden, and is drawn out for the bed's need. Such are the loves among fishes, and such the beds. Different fishes long for the bed in different seasons, and bring forth their kind: to some it is summer, to some winter, to some spring, or waning autumn shows their birth. And most in a single year labour with one brood, the most of them; but the bass is burdened twice by the Eileithyiae; and the red mullets are named for their threefold births; the scorpion-fish again bears its barb at four travails; and to the carps alone are five broods; and of the hake alone they say none has ever marked the kind, but this even now remains unseen among men. And when, full of the spring-time spawn, the egg-laying fishes are, some, each in his own place, abide quietly in their own homes; but many, gathering, set forth on a common road to the Euxine Sea, that there they may bear their young. For that gulf is sweeter than all Amphitrite, watered by boundless and fair-flowing rivers, and soft and sandy are its sheltering bays; and in it are well-grown pastures and waveless shores and hollow rocks and muddy clefts and shady headlands and all that is dearest to fishes; and in it neither any monster hostile nor any plague destructive to the swimmers is bred, nor any of those that are foes to the smaller fishes, the coils of octopuses, nor lobsters nor crabs; few are the dolphins, and feebler even they than the monster breed, and harmless they range about. Therefore to the fishes that water is exceedingly welcome, and greatly they hasten to go there. And they set forth all together in companies, one here, another there, gathering into one, and one is the road for all of them, the convoy and the rush and again the home-returning surge. The dappled swarms accomplish the Thracian Bosporus and the Bebrycian sea besides, and the strait mouth of the Pontus, crossing the long course of Amphitrite. As when from the Ethiopians and the streams of Egypt the high-flying choir of clamorous cranes comes, fleeing the snowy crag of Atlas and the winter and the feeble broods of the puny Pygmies; and as they fly in rows their wide swarms shadow the air and hold an unbroken furrow; so then the myriad-tribed ranks of the sea cleave the great wave of the Euxine; and the sea grows full, shuddering thick, lashed with their fins, until, hastening, they rest from their long expedition and from birth. But when the measure of autumn passes by, they bethink them of return, since, colder than other seas, winter drives hard upon that eddying brine; for it is not deep, and is easily buffeted by the winds, which beat upon it, overweening and deadly. Therefore, shunning the Amazonian lagoon, again with their young they are borne back homeward, and scatter over the sea, where each shall feed. But all that are called soft-fleshed, those whose make of limbs is bloodless and boneless, and all the tribes that are covered with close scales, or with horny plates fenced about—these, like the others, have care of egg-bearing pangs; but from the ravenous dog-shark and the eagle-ray and all the tribes that are called cartilaginous, and from the fish-feeding kings, the dolphins, and the ox-eyed seal, straightway the young from birth come forth in the likeness of their parents. And indeed all that dwell in the sea that are live-bearing love and tend their offspring, but nothing more godlike than the dolphins has been made; for in truth they were once men and dwelt in cities together with mortals, but by the will of Dionysus they exchanged the land for the sea and put on the form of fishes; yet even now the righteous spirit of men within them preserves the human mind and human deeds. For when the twofold brood of their travail comes to the light, straightway, as soon as they are born, about their own mother they swim and frolic and dart within her teeth and linger beneath the mother's mouth; and she with loving-kindness holds herself up and about her young turns gladdening and exceedingly exulting. And she offers her breast to both, one to each, to suck the sweet milk; for the god gave her both milk and a nature of breasts like to women's. So then for a while she has care of such nursing; but when they come to their strength, straightway for them the mother goes down as a guide upon the road of the chase at their desire, and teaches them the hunting of fish, nor before stands far from her young, nor leaves them, until their limbs have grown to fullness and to strength, but ever near, overseeing keepers, they follow. Such a wonder you might marvel at in your heart, and lovely delight, when sailing you behold in a temperate breeze, watching, or in a calm, the comely herds of the dolphins, the darling of the brine; for in front, in throngs, like boys, the young go, the new brood, like those of a dance, changing the manifold, intricately-wheeling circle; and behind, great and pre-eminent, not apart from their young, come the guardian host, even as to the tender feeding lambs the shepherds follow in spring. As when from the works of the Muses the children go in throngs, and behind them as overseers near follow the elders, censors of modesty and of mind and of sense; for fitting old age makes a man righteous; so then the dolphins too, parents to their young, follow, lest any unkind thing should meet them. Yes, and the seal too tends her offspring no worse; for she also has breasts, and in her breasts are streams of milk; but for her not amid the waves but upon the dry land is the labour of the womb released as she comes up, the timely pang; and she abides all twelve days with her young there upon the dry land; but on the thirteenth, with the dawn, holding her new-grown cubs in her arms, she dives into the sea, glorying in her young, as though showing them their fatherland. As when a woman in a foreign land, having borne a child, gladly comes to her own country and her own home, carrying the child all day long in her arms, showing him the house, her mother's haunt, and fondly embraces him, an insatiable delight; and he, though understanding not each thing, gazes about, at the hall and all the haunts of his parents; so then that sea-beast too brings her own brood to the sea and shows them the works of the deep. Gods, then, not in men alone are children dearest, and sweeter than the light and than life, but also in birds and pitiless beasts and flesh-eating fishes a helpless, self-taught, keen longing for offspring is bred; and for their young to die and to fill up all wretched misery they are ready, not unwilling, eager. Already one upon the hills has marked a deep-roaring lion, the hunter, standing over his young, fighting for his own kind; nor does he reck of the thick stones that fly, nor of the javelin, but just so keeps his fearless courage and might, though stricken and torn by every cast; nor before he dies does he draw back, but over his young, half-dead, he strides on, and he cares not for death so much as that he may not see his young by the hunters shut up in their own self-made den, the den of beasts. Already by the whelp-nursing bed of a new-littered bitch a shepherd, drawing near, even if he was a friend before, has withdrawn, fearing the mother's baying wrath, how she guards her young, nor knows any shame, but is dreadful for all to approach. As about their stolen calves the cows, in grief, not far from the wailings of women, groan their lamentations, and afflict the very herdsmen; and a man has heard the unceasing wail of the ospray at dawn about her young, or of the shrill-voiced nightingale, or has come near in spring to the swallows mourning their young, which men cruel or serpents have stolen from them out of the nest. Among fishes, again, the dolphin is foremost in love of its young; yet others too tend their kind. A marvel is this of the sea-roving dog-shark: by her follow her new-sprung young, and to them the mother is a shield; but when they are afraid—and boundless are the terrors in the sea—then she takes her young within her flanks, into the very entrance, the very road, whence they slipped at their birth; and such a labour, suffering it though she does, she gladly endures, and again pours her young beneath into her bowels, and lets them out again, when they breathe free of fear. Such defence too the angel-shark provides for her young, but for her there is no entering the belly, as for the dog-sharks, but in her sides are clefts on either hand beneath the fins, like the jaws of other fishes, in which she shelters the terror of her frightened young. Others again receive their frightened young through the mouth and rescue them, as into a house or a den; even so the glaucus, who beyond all loves its young of all that are egg-layers among the fishes; for he abides, sitting by, until they are born, the young beneath the eggs, and ever swims beside them; and when he sees them in fear of a stronger fish, gaping he takes them in through his mouth, until the terror withdraws, and then again he spits them forth from his throat. But than the tunny I think no fish more lawless, nor one gone further in evil-mindedness, dwells in the brine; for when she has borne her eggs, and fled the heavy pang, she herself, who bore them, devours all she can find, pitiless, who eats her own young, still ignorant of flight, nor does any pity for her own birth come over her. There are some that neither by weddings are begotten nor by births are born, self-completed and self-made broods, the oysters all, which are bred in the very mud; of these there is neither any female kind, nor in exchange any males, but all are of one stock and all alike. So too the feeble nation of the puny anchovy springs from no blood and from no parents; for when from the clouds the mind of Zeus draws up the rain violent over the sea and beyond restraint, at once all the sea, mingled with eddies and back-blowing gusts, hisses and foams and stands swelling up, and they, in unmarked and unseen weddings, all together both came to be and were nourished and appeared, in myriads, feeble, a hoary race; and from their birth they are called by name, fitly, the spawn-of-foam. Others spring from the muddy surge; for when in the eddies and the back-flowings of the sea the all-confused refuse is churned up by the wind rushing on, then all the dank mud gathers together into one going, and when the calm is spread, forthwith the sand and the unspeakable refuse of the sea rot, and from them spring up creatures past telling, like to maggots. There is no other race made feebler than the wretched anchovy; and to all the swimmers it is good fare; and they lick each other's bodies, one another's; and this is their food and their living; but when these throng the sea all together, seeking out either a shadowed rock or the recesses of the sea and a refuge in the deep, then all the grey-green Amphitrite turns white. As when the swift might of the evening Zephyr shadows the wide threshing-floor with snowflakes, and nothing of the dark earth shows beneath to look upon, but all is white, covered with snow ever-falling; so then, filled full with the boundless shoals, the silvery threshing-floor of Poseidon appears all white.