Written by Julia Schulz

Biography

Claudius Aelianus was a Roman moralist and literary stylist born between 165 and 170 CE¹ in Praeneste, near Rome.² Most of his biographical information is provided by the contemporary writer Philostratus in his work The Lives of the Sophists as well as in the 10^th century Souda lexicon. Aelian was a student of the sophist Pausanias of Caesarea who taught rhetoric at Rome in 190-197 CE.

Though Aelian was Roman, he spoke and wrote in Greek.³ One of his most well-known works is his collection On the Characteristics of Animals which he compiled in 17 volumes.⁴

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On the Characteristics of Animals

In this paragraph Aelian writes about animals, fishes in particular, that were considered sacred in Syene and Elephantine and about the part they played in the community’s consciousness:

“The inhabitants of Syene regard the Phagrus as sacred, and those who dwell in Elephantine, as it is called, the Maeotes. (This also is a species of fish.) And the reverence which both peoples pay to either kind has its origin in this: when the Nile is about to rise and overflow, these fish come swimming in advance, as though heralding the coming water, and gladden the anxious hearts of the Egyptians with fair hopes, being the first to realise the advent of the flood and foretelling it by some marvellous natural faculty. Moreover the aforesaid peoples are accustomed to add, concerning their respect for the fish, that they never eat one another.”⁵

The Maeotes and the Phagrus were both worshipped and rejected as food around Aswan because they signaled the incoming Nile flood. The latter was also associated with the Osiris myth because it is said to have fed upon Osiris’ phallus. There is no certain identification of the Phagrus but it could possibly be the elongate tigerfish also known as Hydrocyon forskalii (see fig. 1).⁶

Sources

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