Sea Monsters Unmasked and Sea Fables Explained Part 12

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 19.--FIGURE OF AN OCTOPUS ON A GOLD ORNAMENT, FOUND BY DR. SCHLIEMANN AT MYCENae.]

That the octopus was a familiar object with the ancient Greeks, we know by the frequency with which its portrait is found on their coins, gems, and ornaments. Aldrovandus describes "very ancient coins" found at Syracuse and Tarentum bearing the figure of an octopus. He says the Syracusans had two coins, one of bronze, the other of gold, both of which had an octopus alone on one side. On the reverse of the bronze one was a veiled female face in profile, with the inscription [Greek: SURA].

I have one of these bronze Syracusan coins; it was kindly given to me, some years ago, by my friend, Dr. John Millar, F.L.S. The octopus is really well depicted. On the gold coin the female head was differently veiled, and at the back of the neck was a fish. The inscription on this coin was [Greek: SURAKOSIoN]. Goltzius was of the opinion that the head was that of Arethusa. The coins found at Tarentum had on one side a figure of Neptune seated on a dolphin, and holding an octopus in one hand and a trident in the other.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 20.--GOLDEN ORNAMENT IN FORM OF AN OCTOPUS, FOUND BY DR. SCHLIEMANN AT MYCENae.]

Lerne, or Lerna, the reputed home of the Hydra, was a port of Southern Greece, situated at the head of the Gulf of Nauplia, and between the existing towns of Argos and Tripolitza. Within a few miles of it was Mycenae; and it is remarkable that Dr. Schliemann, during his excavations there in 1876, found in a tomb a gold plate, or b.u.t.ton, two and a half inches in diameter (Fig. 19), on which is figured an octopus, the eight arms of which are converted into spirals, the head and the two eyes being distinctly visible. In another sepulchre he discovered fifty-three golden models of the octopus (Fig. 20), all exactly alike, and apparently cast in the same mould. The arms are very naturally carved.

By the kindness of Mr. Murray, his publisher, I am enabled to give ill.u.s.trations of these and two other handsome ornaments.

Having ascertained that the octopus was a familiar object in the very locality where the combat between Hercules and the Hydra is supposed to have taken place, let us compare the animal as it exists with the monstrous offspring of Typhon and Echidna.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

FIG. 21. FIG. 22.

FIGURES OF THE OCTOPUS ON GOLD ORNAMENTS FOUND BY DR. SCHLIEMANN AT MYCENae.]

It is a not uncommon occurrence that when an octopus is caught it is found to have one or more of its arms shorter than the rest, and showing marks of having been amputated, and of the formation of a new growth from the old cicatrix. Several such specimens were brought to the Brighton Aquarium whilst I had charge of its Natural History Department.

One of them was particularly interesting. Two of its arms had evidently been bitten off about four inches from the base: and out from the end of each healed stump (which in proportion to the length of the limb was as if a man's arm had been amputated halfway between the shoulder and the elbow), grew a slender little piece of newly-formed arm, about as large as a lady's stiletto, or a small b.u.t.ton-hook--in fact just the equivalent of worthy Captain Cuttle's iron hook, which did duty for his lost hand. It was an ill.u.s.trative example of the commencement of the repair and restoration of mutilated limbs.

This mutilation is so common in some localities, that Professor Steenstrup says[70] that almost every octopus he has examined has had one or two arms reproduced; and that he has seen females in which all the eight arms had been lost, but were more or less restored. He also mentions a male in which this was the case as to seven of its arms. He adds that whilst the _Octopoda_ possess the power of reproducing with great facility and rapidity their arms, which are exposed to so many enemies, the _Decapoda_--the _Sepiidae_ and Squids--appear to be incapable of thus repairing and replacing accidental injuries. This is entirely in accord with my own observations.

[70] Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. August, 1857.

This reparative power is possessed by some other animals, of which the starfishes and crustacea are the most familiar instances. In the case of the lobster or crab, however, the only joint from which new growth can start is that connected with the body, so that if a limb be injured in any part, the whole of it must be got rid of, and the animal has, therefore, the power of casting it off at will. The octopus, on the contrary, is incapable of voluntary dismemberment, but reproduces the lost portion of an injured arm, as an out-growth from the old stump.

The ancients were well acquainted with this reparative faculty of the octopus: but of course the simple fact was insufficient for an imaginative people: and they therefore embellished it with some fancies of their own. There lingers still amongst the fishermen of the Mediterranean a very old belief that the octopus when pushed by hunger will gnaw and devour portions of its arms. Aristotle knew of this belief, and positively contradicted it; but a fallacy once planted is hard to eradicate. You may cut it down, and apparently destroy it, root and branch, but its seeds are scattered abroad, and spring up elsewhere, and in unexpected places. Accordingly, we find Oppian, more than five centuries later, disseminating the same old notion, and comparing this habit of the animal with that of the bear obtaining nutriment from his paws by sucking them during his hybernation.

"When wintry skies o'er the black ocean frown, And clouds hang low with ripen'd storms o'ergrown, Close in the shelter of some vaulted cave The soft-skinn'd prekes[71] their porous bodies save.

But forc'd by want, while rougher seas they dread, On their own feet, necessitous, are fed.

But when returning spring serenes the skies, Nature the growing parts anew supplies.

Again on breezy sands the roamers creep, Twine to the rocks, or paddle in the deep.

Doubtless the G.o.d whose will commands the seas, Whom liquid worlds and wat'ry natives please, Has taught the fish by tedious wants opprest Life to preserve and be himself the feast."

[71] The octopus is still called the "preke" in some parts of England, notably in Suss.e.x. The translation of Oppian's 'Halieutics,' from which this pa.s.sage and others are quoted is that by Messrs. Jones and Diaper, of Baliol College, Oxford, and was published in 1722.

The fact is, that the larger predatory fishes regard an octopus as very acceptable food, and there is no better bait for many of them than a portion of one of its arms. Some of the cetacea also are very fond of them, and whalers have often reported that when a "fish" (as they call it) is struck it disgorges the contents of its stomach, amongst which they have noticed parts of the arms of cuttles which, judging from the size of their limbs, must have been very large specimens. The food of the sperm whale consists largely of the gregarious squids, and the presence in spermaceti of their undigested beaks is accepted as a test of its being genuine. That old fish-reptile, the Ichthyosaurus, also, preyed upon them; and portions of the h.o.r.n.y rings of their suckers were discovered in its coprolites by Dean Buckland. Amongst the worst enemies of the octopus is the conger. They are both rock-dwellers, and if the voracious fish come upon his cephalopod neighbour unseen, he makes a meal of him, or, failing to drag him from his hold, bites off as much of one or two of his arms as he can conveniently obtain. The conger, therefore, is generally the author of the injury which the octopus has been unfairly accused of inflicting on itself.

Continuing our comparison with the hydra, we have in the octopus an animal capable of quitting its rocky lurking-place in the sea, and going on a buccaneering expedition on dry land. Many incidents have been related in connection with this; but I can attest it from my own observation. I have seen an octopus travel over the floor of a room at a very fair rate of speed, toppling and sprawling along in its own ungainly fas.h.i.+on; and in May, 1873, we had one at the Brighton Aquarium which used regularly every night to quit its tank, and make its way along the wall to another tank at some distance from it, in which were some young lump-fishes. Day after day, one of these was missing, until, at last, the marauder was discovered. Many days elapsed, however, before he was detected, for after helping himself to, and devouring a young "lump-sucker," he demurely returned before daylight to his own quarters.

Of this habit of the octopus the ancients were, also, fully aware.

Aristotle wrote that it left the water and walked in stony places, and Pliny and aelian related tales of this animal stealing barrels of salt fish from the wharves, and crus.h.i.+ng their staves to get at the contents.

An octopus that could do this would be as formidable a predatory monster as the Lernean Hydra, which had the evil reputation of devouring the Peloponnesian cattle.

Whoever first described the counter-attack of the Hydra on Hercules must have had the octopus in his thoughts. "It twisted itself round one of his feet"--exactly that which an octopus would do.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 23.--HERCULES SLAYING THE LERNEAN HYDRA.

_From Smith's 'Cla.s.sical Dictionary.'_]

Finally, according to the legend, Hercules dipped his arrow-heads in the gall of the Hydra, and, from its poisonous nature, all the wounds he inflicted with them upon his enemies proved fatal. It is worthy of notice that the ancients attributed to the octopus the possession of a similarly venomous secretion. Thus Oppian writes:

"The crawling preke a deadly juice contains Injected poison fires the wounded veins."

The accompanying ill.u.s.tration (Fig. 23) of Hercules slaying the Hydra is taken from a marble tablet in the Vatican. It will be immediately seen how closely the Hydra, as there depicted, resembles an octopus. The body is elongated, but the eight necks with small heads on them bear about the same proportion to the body as the arms to the body of an octopus.

The Reverend James Spence, in his 'Polymetis,' published in 1755, gives a figure, almost the counterpart of this, copied from an antique gem, a carnelian, in the collection of the Grand Duke of Tuscany at Florence.

Only seven necks of the hydra are, however, there visible, and there are two coils in the elongated body. On the upper part are two spots which have been supposed to represent b.r.e.a.s.t.s. This was probably intended by the artificer; but that the idea originated from a duplication of the syphon tube is evident from the figures (Figs. 21, 22) of the octopus on the smaller gold ornaments found by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenae. In the same work is also an engraving from a picture in the Vatican Virgil, ent.i.tled 'The River, or Hateful Pa.s.sage into the Kingdom of Ades,'

wherein an octopus-hydra, of which only six heads and necks are shown, is one of the monsters called by the author "Terrors of the Imagination."

SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.

In the description given by Homer, in the twelfth book of the 'Odyssey,'

of the unfortunate nymph Scylla, transformed by the arts of Circe into a frightful monster, the same typical idea as in the case of the Hydra is perceptible. The lurking octopus, having its lair in the cranny of a rock, watching in ambush for pa.s.sing prey, seizing anything coming within its reach with one or more of its prehensile arms, even brandis.h.i.+ng these fear-inspiring weapons out of water in a threatening manner, and known in some localities to be dangerous to boats and their occupants, is transformed into a many-headed sea monster, seizing in its mouths, instead of by the adhesive suckers of its numerous arms, the helpless sailors from pa.s.sing vessels, and devouring them in the abysses of its cavernous den.

Circe, prophesying to Ulysses the dangers he had still to encounter, warned him especially of Scylla and Charybdis, within the power of one of whom he must fall in pa.s.sing through the narrow strait (between Italy and Sicily) where they had their horrid abode. Describing the lofty rock of Scylla, she tells him:

"Full in the centre of this rock displayed A yawning cavern casts a dreadful shade, Nor the fleet arrow from the tw.a.n.ging bow Sent with full force, could reach the depth below.

Wide to the west the horrid gulf extends, And the dire pa.s.sage down to h.e.l.l descends.

O fly the dreadful sight! expand thy sails, Ply the strong oar, and catch the nimble gales; Here Scylla bellows from her dire abodes; Tremendous pest! abhorred by man and G.o.ds!

Hideous her voice, and with less terrors roar The whelps of lions in the midnight hour.

Twelve feet deformed and foul the fiend dispreads; Six horrid necks she rears, and six terrific heads;

When stung with hunger she embroils the flood, The sea-dog and the dolphin are her food; She makes the huge leviathan her prey, And all the monsters of the wat'ry way; The swiftest racer of the azure plain Here fills her sails and spreads her oars in vain; Fell Scylla rises, in her fury roars, At once six mouths expands, at once six men devours."[72]

[72] Homer's 'Odyssey,' Pope's Translation, Book XII.

Circe then describes the perils of the whirling waters of Charybdis as still more dreadful; and, admonis.h.i.+ng Ulysses that once in her power all must perish, she advises him to choose the lesser of the two evils, and to

"shun the horrid gulf, by Scylla fly; 'Tis better six to lose than all to die."

Ulysses continues his voyage; and as his s.h.i.+p enters the ominous strait,

"Struck with despair, with trembling hearts we viewed The yawning dungeon, and the tumbling flood; When, lo! fierce Scylla stooped to seize her prey, Stretched her dire jaws, and swept six men away.

Chiefs of renown! loud echoing shrieks arise; I turn, and view them quivering in the skies; They call, and aid, with outstretched arms, implore, In vain they call! those arms are stretched no more.

As from some rock that overhangs the flood, The silent fisher casts th' insidious food; With fraudful care he waits the finny prize, And sudden lifts it quivering to the skies; So the foul monster lifts her prey on high, So pant the wretches, struggling in the sky; In the wide dungeon she devours her food, And the flesh trembles while she churns the blood."

THE "SPOUTING" OF WHALES.