Ichthyophagoi ( grc, Ἰχθυοφάγοι, "fish-eaters") and

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

Ichthyophagi is the name given by ancient geographers to several ethnically unrelated coast-dwelling peoples in different parts of the world. *

Herodotus Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria (Italy). He is known fo ...

(book i. c. 200) mentions three tribes of the

Babylonia Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c ...

ns who were solely fish-eaters, and in book iii. c. 19 refers to Ichthyophagi in Aethiopia.

Diodorus Siculus Diodorus Siculus, or Diodorus of Sicily ( grc-gre, Διόδωρος ; 1st century BC), was an ancient Greek historian. He is known for writing the monumental universal history '' Bibliotheca historica'', in forty books, fifteen of which ...

and

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called " Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-sighted that he could s ...

also referred to them all along the African coast of the Red Sea in their descriptions of Aethiopia. *

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importanc ...

speaks of fish-eaters in the

Persian Gulf The Persian Gulf ( fa, خلیج فارس, translit=xalij-e fârs, lit=Gulf of Fars, ), sometimes called the ( ar, اَلْخَلِيْجُ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī), is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. The bo ...

coasts, coast of the Red Sea, on the west coast of

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

and on the coast of the Far East near the harbour of Cattigara. * Pliny relates the existence of such people on the islands in the

. *According to

Arrian Arrian of Nicomedia (; Greek: ''Arrianos''; la, Lucius Flavius Arrianus; ) was a Greek historian, public servant, military commander and philosopher of the Roman period. ''The Anabasis of Alexander'' by Arrian is considered the best ...

, Nearchus mentions such a race as inhabiting the barren shores of the Gwadar and Pasni districts in Makrān. During the homeward march of

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...

, his admiral, Nearchus led a fleet in

Arabian Sea The Arabian Sea ( ar, اَلْبَحرْ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Bahr al-ˁArabī) is a region of the northern Indian Ocean bounded on the north by Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channe ...

along the Makrān coast and recorded that the area was dry and mountainous, inhabited by the ''Ichthyophagoi'' or ''Fish-Eaters''.Arrian, ''Indica''
29:
"Sailing thence they sailed without stop all night andday, and after a voyage of eleven hundred stades they got past the country of the Fish-eaters, where they had been much distressed by want of food. They did not moor near shore, for there was a long line of surf, but at anchor, in the open. The length of the voyage along the coast of the Fish-eaters is a little above ten thousand stades. These Fish-eaters live on fish; and hence their name; only a few of them fish, for only a few have proper boats and have any skill in the art of catching fish; but for the most part it is the receding tide which provides their catch. Some have made nets also for this kind of fishing; most of them about two stades in length. They make the nets from the bark of the date-palm, twisting the bark like twine. And when the sea recedes and the earth is left, where the earth remains dry it has no fish, as a rule; but where there are hollows, some of the water remains, and in this a large number of fish, mostly small, but some large ones too. They throw their nets over these and so catch them. They eat them raw, just as they take them from the water, that is, the more tender kinds; the larger ones, which are tougher, they dry in the sun till they are quite sere and then pound them and make a flour and bread of them; others even make cakes of this flour. Even their flocks are fed on the fish, dried; for the country has no meadows and produces no grass. They collect also in many places crabs and oysters and shell-fish. There are natural salts in the country; from these they make oil. Those of them who inhabit the desert parts of their country, treeless as it is and with no cultivated parts, find all their sustenance in the fishing but a few of them sow part of their district, using the corn as a relish to the fish, for the fish form their bread. The richest among them have built huts; they collect the bones of any large fish which the sea casts up, and use them in place of beams. Doors they make from any flat bones which they can pick up. But the greater part of them, and the poorer sort, have huts made from the fishes' backbones." * Pausanias locates them on the western (African) coast of the

Red Sea The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; ...

. *They are a people group identified on the 4th century Peutinger Map, as a people of the Baluchistan coast. The existence of such tribes was confirmed by Sir Richard F Burton (''El-Medinah'', p. 144). *It is the name Laskaris Kananos used for the

Icelanders Icelanders ( is, Íslendingar) are a North Germanic ethnic group and nation who are native to the island country of Iceland and speak Icelandic. Icelanders established the country of Iceland in mid 930 AD when the Althing (Parliament) met f ...

in the 15th century.Mikhail Bibikov
"Byzantine sources for the history of Balticum and Scandinavia"
in Ivo Volt and Janika Päll (eds.) ''Acta Societatis Morgensternianae II: Byzantino-Nordica 2004'' (Tartu University Press, 2005), pp. 12–28.

References

*R. Bloch, «Ichthyophagoi», in ''Der Neue Pauly. Altertum''. Stuttgart-Weimar, Verlag J. B. Metzler, vol. 5, 1998, p. 883. *O. Longo, «Un viaggio fra i mangiatori di pesci (dal Periplo di Nearco)», ''Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Patavina di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, Memorie della Classe di Scienze morali Lettere ed Arti'', XCVIII, parte III, 1986, p. 153-57. *O. Longo, «I mangiatori di pesce: regime alimentare e quadro culturale», ''Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici'', 18, 1987, p. 9-56. *O. Nalesini, «Roman and Chinese Perception of a "Marginal" Coastal Population: Ptolemy's Far Eastern Ichthyophágoi», in ''The Prehistory of Asia and Oceania'', Edited by G. Afanas’ev, S. Cleuziou, J. R. Lukacs and M. Tosi, Forlì, ABACO, 1996, p. 197-204. *Oscar Nalesini, "History and use of an ethnonym: Ichthyophágoi", in ''Connected Hinterlands: Proceedings of Red Sea Project IV held at the University of Southampton September 2008'', edited by L. Blue, J. Cooper, R. Thomas and J. Whitewright. Oxford, Archaeopress, 2009, pp. 9–18. *J. Tkač, «Ichthyophagoi», in ''Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft'', neue Bearbeitung von G. Wissowa, Stuttgart, IX, 1916, coll. 2524–31. *H. Treidler, «Ichthyophagen», in ''Der Kleine Pauly'', München, Beck’sche Verlag, vol. II, 1979, coll. 1333–34.

External links

*
The origins of the name on Livius.org
Balochistan Ancient peoples Persian Gulf Legendary tribes in Greco-Roman historiography {{Asia-ethno-group-stub

See also

References

External links