Note 415 — Chapter XI

Perhaps the best prose description of the power of the Echineis is to be found in Cassiodorus, Var., I. 35. Pliny, XXXII. 1, solemnly asserts that the death of the Emperor Caligula was presaged by a Remora stopping his great galley, alone out of all the accompanying fleet, on his voyage to Antium. Not only did the Remora stop a ship, but according to Pliny, it could, from its power of checking the natural actions of the body under excitement, hasten or stay an accouchement as well as a lawsuit: hence plaintiffs seldom ventured into the fish market, because the mere sight of a Remora at such a juncture was most inauspicious! (Pliny, IX. 41, and XXXII. 1). Cf. Aristotle, H. A., 2. 14, “καὶ χρῶνταί τινες αὐτῷ πρὸς δίκας καὶ φίλτρα.” For an explanation of the myth of the Remora, see V. W. Ekman, “On Dead Water,” in the Reports of Nansen’s Polar Expedition, Christiania, 1904.