Note 222 — Chapter IV · THE DOLPHIN—HERODOTUS—THE ICHTHYOPHAGI—THE TUNNY

Very different was the behaviour of the first generation of Man (who according to Philo’s Translation of Sanchuniathon, quoted by Eusebius, præp. ev., I. 9, 5), “consecrated the plants shooting out of the earth, judged them gods, worshipped them, but yet lived upon them” (Cf. de Brosses, Culte des Dieux Fétiches). In Plutarch, Symp., VIII. 8. 4, Nestor states that “the priests of Poseidon never eat fish, for Poseidon is called the Generator; and the race of Hellen sacrificed to him as the first father, imagining, as likewise did the Syrians, that Man rose from a liquid substance, and therefore they worship a fish as of the same production and breeding as themselves, being in this matter more happy in their philosophy than Anaximander: for he says that fish and men were not produced in the same substance, but that men were first produced in fishes and, when they were grown up and able to fend for themselves, were thrown out and so lived on the land. Therefore, as fire devours its parents, that is the matter out of which it was first kindled, so Anaximander, asserting that fish were our common parents, condemneth our feeding upon them.” The belief in the descent of man from fish exists in the present day among the Ponapians of the Caroline Islands, and elsewhere (J. G. Frazer, Folk Lore in the Old Testament (London, 1918), i. 40). As regards the changes in our development which make the whole world kin, Empedocles, (Καθαρμοί, frag. 117, Diels) sings,