CHAPTER XXIX

THE RING OF POLYCRATES

In accordance with my custom of ending the _Fishing_ of each nation by a story in which fish play directly or indirectly an important part, I searched for an Egyptian tale or legend. The serpent Apep in the Ra myth is merely a variant of similar beasts figuring in the Bel and Andromeda legends: his story, moreover, lacks the stir of battle of the former, or the human interest of the latter.[885] The absence of any such legend is due doubtless to the bad esteem in which fish were held by the priests, who in the early days, at any rate, wrote the history of the country.

As Maspero in his _Contes Populaires de l’ancienne Égypte_ (which by the by differs in _The Two Brothers_ from the account given by Plutarch) failed to provide provender, I perforce fall back on a story, which, if Ægean in _locale_, is Egyptian in effect, the tale of the ring of Polycrates.

This has been used by Cicero and other ancient writers to point the moral of calling no man happy until his death, and by modern to adorn many a tale of good luck, but since its historical importance has often been neglected, I venture to recall shortly what Herodotus sets forth.[886]

Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos, was so proverbial for a good fortune, which had never met with check or disaster, that Amasis, King of Egypt, fearing the effects of the φθόνος of the Gods on Polycrates and consequently on their newly-formed alliance, advised him to propitiate them by getting rid of one of his most valued possessions. Accordingly the Tyrant cast into the sea[887] his seal-ring of extraordinary beauty, which in a few days was found in the belly of a fish and restored to him.

This last shock of happy fortune was too much for Amasis, who broke off his alliance and thus left Polycrates free to aid Cambyses in his invasion and conquest of Egypt. It is fair to add, even at the expense of this pretty fish story, that Grote (IV. 323) holds that Polycrates himself broke off the Egyptian to effect the more powerful Persian alliance.

NOTE.—For kind advice at “parlous times” I am indebted to my friends, Dr. Alan H. Gardiner and Miss M. A. Murray. The latter has doubled the debt by reading my proofs.

FOOTNOTES:

[885] But as one of the earliest instances of imitative magic the story is notable. In the tale of Overthrowing Apep, based on the XXXIXth Chapter of _The Book of the Dead_, the priestly directions for destroying this enemy of Ra, or the Sun, run as follows: “Thou shalt say a prayer over a figure of Apep, which hath been drawn upon a sheet of papyrus, and over a wax figure of Apep upon which his name has been cut: and thou shalt lay them on the fire, so that it may consume the enemy of Ra.” Six figures in all, presumably “to mak siccar,” are to be placed on the fire at stated hours of the day and night. Cf. Theocritus, _Id._, II. 27 ff., where the slighted damsel prays, “Even as I melt this wax, with the god to aid, so speedily may he (her lover) by love be molten.”

[886] III. 40 ff.

[887] Some recent scholars have suggested that in the stories of Polycrates throwing his ring into the sea, and of Theseus proving his parentage by a like sacrifice, we should detect traces of an early custom, by which the maritime king married the sea-goddess—a custom perpetuated in the symbolical union between the Doges of Venice and the Adriatic. This ingenious hypothesis was first worked out by S. Reinach, “Le Mariage avec la mer,” in _Revue archéologique_ (1905), ii. 1 ff. (= _id. Cultes, Mythes, et Religions_, Paris, (1906), ii. 266 ff.).

ASSYRIAN FISHING

ASSYRIAN FISHING[888]