some favourite of poseidon

Theocritus was a Greek poet of the 3rd century BC. Originally from Syracuse in Sicily, he seems to have settled in Alexandria in the second quarter of the century. His residence in the greatest cosmopolitan city of the Greek world is the background against which his collection of poetry, The Idylls, needs to be read. Although various types of poetry are represented there, it is best known for its 'bucolics', which present scenes of idealised rural life and are populated by shepherds, poets, and lovers. Idyll XXI is the story of two fishermen who are spending the night in a hut on the seashore, surrounded by their tackle:

Near them lay the instruments of their toilsome craft: baskets and rods, hooks and weedy baits, lines and weels and pots of woven rush, cords and oars and an aged skiff upon its props, a bit of matting beneath the head, their clothes, their cups - such was their sole resource, such their wealth.

Unable to sleep, they begin to talk and one of them, Asphalion, describes a dream he has just had in which he caught a fish. ('Dogs in their sleep dream of their quarry and I of fish.') On landing the creature, he found that its scales were made of gold and, becoming worried that it might be 'some favourite ... of Poseidon or a treasure of sea-green Amphitrite', vowed that, although he would keep the booty, he would never go fishing again. Now, on waking, he is afraid at having sworn such an oath, even in his sleep. His friend advises him not to worry but to apply himself to searching for marvellous fish in reality and not in dreams.

The poem is, in some ways, quite mysterious. The text we have is very corrupt and A.S.F. Gow, whose commentary is standard reading for students of The Idylls, talks about various sections as being 'unintelligible', 'uncertain', 'desperately corrupt', or 'in hopeless condition'. What is more, it is generally thought not to be by Theocritus at all, but to have been absorbed into his collection along with one or two similarly suspect poems. Gow is rather dismissive of it, pointing out that the story is constructed 'with a certain clumsiness' to illustrate a moral stated in the first few lines - a moral that is, in truth, pretty commonplace: 'poverty is the fosterer of industry'.

But, in spite of this, I find the story quite haunting, although I'm not at all sure what an Alexandrian audience might have made of it. A lot depends, I suppose, on what conceptualisation of dreaming one brings to the work. Gow, who published his commentary in 1950, recommends reading Walter Headlam's comments on dreams in Greek literature but there is no doubt something fresher to look at on the topic. And, anyway, we come to the poem with our own understandings of dreaming, which may well transform it in significant ways. I like the complicated state of Asphalion's feelings - delighted at his wealth, afraid of the gods, and even more afraid, on waking, at the reckless vows he made while in the otherworld of the dream.

This fish isn't made of gold but was used as a weight to measure out quantities of gold dust. It comes from West Africa and its date is uncertain, either nineteenth or twentieth century. Image from the Brooklyn Museum [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.