This book is dedicated to the analysis of a legend involving the echeneis or remora, a fish belonging to the Echeneidae family, ranging nowadays from thirty centimetres to one metre. These fish are also called “suckerfish” because of their suction disc with a pattern of parallel ridges, the haustellum, which enables them to adhere to a large object or fish and exert enormous pressure on their host. This suction disc allows them to travel on the back of other fish.
However, what interests the authors of the book is the role they are said to have played in the Battle of Actium against Octavius, the future emperor Augustus. According to Pliny Natural History XXXII I, remoras prevented Antony’s ships from moving during the Battle of Actium on 2nd September 31 BC: just as Antony was about to attack the opposing camp, his fleet suddenly found itself immobilised on the sea. Antony fled on another boat, abandoning his fleet which was sunk or burnt by Octavius. This battle, followed by the suicide of Antony and Cleopatra, and the victory of Octavius is considered to be the turning point between the Republic and the birth of a new political regime, the Principate, which became the Roman Empire. According to Pliny, the suckerfish were the cause of this setback: “Gales may blow and storms may rage; this fish rules their fury, restrains their mighty strength, and brings vessels to a stop, a thing no cables can do, nor yet anchors of unmanageable weight that have been cast. It checks their attacks and tames the madness of the Universe with no toil of its own, not by resistance, or in any way except by adhesion” (NH XXXII I.2). He also accused remoras of blocking the Emperor Gaius’ ship on its way back from Astura to Actium and attributed them other quasi-magical properties as the protection of pregnant women from premature birth (NH IX, 41). This book challenges these beliefs in the supernatural powers of fish and answers the following question: if the remora was not the agent responsible for the paralysis of Antony’s flagship, then what was?
Through a literary study of approximately fifteen texts dating from the fifth century BC to the seventh century AD, Isabelle Jouteur seeks to understand the context in which this legend was constructed and established, and how it was taken up and rewritten until the end of the modern era, when critical discourses started to appear. One of the key contributions of the book is its use of contemporary methodologies to solve the Actium enigma (with the help of Johan Fourdrinoy, specialist in fluid mechanics, and Germain Rousseau, physicist).
The first chapter analyses the various mentions of remoras in Graeco-Roman literature, as well as in magical texts, and differentiates them from other fish with similar properties. These mentions can be found in differents contexts, from treatises on natural history (such as those by Aristotle HA II, 14 , Aelian NA I, 36 and II, 17 , and Oppian, Halieutica v. 223-236, Pliny N.H. IX 41, 79) to an epic poem (Lucan, De Bello Civili), but also a fictional story (Nonnus, Dionysiaca XXI, 45-49 and XXXI, 365-366), an anecdote from Plutarch’s Symposiacs ( II, 7), and a didactic work (Ovid, Fasti II 575-579).
Jouteur highlights Pliny’s lack of critical distance in his account of the battle of Actium, where he suggests that remoras had special powers. His contemporary, Plutarch (Symposiacs, II, 7) on the contrary, seeks a rational explanation for the phenomenon: for him it was not the fish that slowed down the ship, but a mixture of algae and moss accumulated under the hull that slowed its progress and attracted the fish. Moreover, his biography of Antony (Plutarch, Life of Antony, B 65) makes no reference to remoras, only to the fact that Antony’s ships were immobilised. He does not seem to believe in the magical aspect of remoras.
This rationalism does not seem to have been followed. In fact, the second chapter explores the recovery of the legend and the perpetuation of the magical tradition in late antiquity. Among the three bishops who took up the story, (Basil of Caesarea Hexaemeron VII 68A, Ambrose of Milan Hexaemeron V 9, 24, and Isidore of Seville Etymologiae, XII, 6) the notion emerged that the exceptional powers of the fish simply reflected the omnipotence of God. Concurrently, a clear magical belief system emerged, straddling the line between folklore, superstition, science, and belief.
In the Middle Ages, (chapter 3), the legend underwent a process of consolidation and modification. Jouteur shows how the process of copying and collating diverse textual sources resulted in the generation of a textual chimera, a literary construct characterised by a fusion of disparate textual elements. The first illustrations of remoras do not look more realistic : fish appear too large in relation to the boats. (Cf. e.g. the manuscript of Jacob van Maerlant, Der Naturen Bloeme, (ca 1350) kept in The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, folio 114v. (However, the link given in the footnote 44, p. 106 does not correspond to the right image of echeneis, which can be found here; see here for other illustrations.
During the Renaissance, (chapter 4), the initial critical questioning of the story of the fish at Actium appears. By the end of the sixteenth century, the discourse on the echeneis had diversified into a multitude of sub-disciplines, encompassing annotated editions of ancient sources, fictional literature, travel accounts, first-hand accounts, and provisional explanations. Humanists began to question the reliability of the legend handed down by tradition, especially as two nautical events from the 16th century may have recalled the anecdote of the battle of Actium, by making reference to boats being delayed by the presence of a small fish. One of the accounts relating to the Venetian-Ottoman War does not directly mention remoras, but seems to re-enact the scenario of the Battle of Actium. During the Battle of Preveza the Venetian fleet encountered difficulties in the same Ambracian Gulf on September 28th, 1538. Against the Turkish rowing boats, the Venetian sailing boats seem to have been stopped by the lack of wind, in the same area as Antony’s boats sixteen centuries earlier.
Simultaneously, remoras made their appearance within the literary genre of emblems, a form of literature that combines text and image, with an explanation on the meaning of the image, given by a poet. Jouteur provides an account of several emblems (e.g. Andrea Alciato, Livret des emblems, 1536) that contributed to the popularisation and dissemination of the genre in Europe. The legend of the remora spread throughout Europe via a variety of other medias, and it was employed to reinterpret the behaviour of fish observed during the great sea crossing voyages of the early modern era.
The fifth chapter addresses the turning point that occurred during the Scientific Revolution, marking the decline of belief in traditional explanations for natural phenomena. From the seventeenth century until the advent of the Enlightenment, the myth of the fish that delayed boats was increasingly called into question due to the emergence of scientific explanations, such as the role of marine currents and the force of the swell. In the nineteenth century, natural history treatises no longer gave credence to the legend of remoras. Additionally, laboratory experiments were conducted to ascertain the adhesion capacity of the echeneis, which appeared to be utilized for catching fish and turtles. It has been demonstrated that they can support a weight of approximately 24 pounds, enabling the fishermen to pull in their prey firmly. But this is obviously not enough to stop a boat, and that’s the limit of the literary tradition.
The book ends with a sixth chapter devoted to contemporary approaches, bringing literary analysis to a close and turning to physical sciences. The chapter provides a synthesis of the research conducted over a 10-year period by a multidisciplinary team comprising specialists in fluid dynamics, mathematicians, oceanographers, and historians of antiquity. A series of experiments was conducted at the University of Poitiers by Fourdrinoy and Rousseau between 2013 and 2022. The authors review the strategies employed in ancient naval battles and consider the various working hypotheses, taking into account the dimensions of the vessels and their maintenance, the depth of the Ambracian Gulf, the density of the water and the wake of the boats. The demonstration is accompanied by bathymetric maps, resistance ratio maps and comparisons of boat wakes. It appears that the immobilisation of Antony’s boats was due to a phenomenon of wave resistance in a specific bathymetric context, influenced by the configuration of the Ambracian Gulf opposite Actium.The boat’s wake resembles the suction disc of remoras, which may explain why the phenomenon is attributed to these fish. It is therefore conceivable that the fish originally served as a descriptive tool rather than an explanatory narrative, which it has become through literary tradition.
In conclusion, this concise volume represents a scholarly synthesis of this legend, comprising an exhaustive examination of each text, with particular attention paid to the numerous early editions and relying on an extensive modern bibliography of over 130 titles. However, it is regrettable that extracts from Greek literature are not provided in full in the original Greek before being commented on (p. 14: Aristotle’s notice in HA II, 14 is only commented on; p.21, note 18: Aeschylus, Ag. II 149: the text is transliterated into the Latin alphabet, and a part of the text is missing compared to the translation). In the same way, it would have been beneficial to have Pliny’s complete Latin notice (NH XXXII, 1) and its translation at the beginning of the paragraph commenting on the battle of Actium, rather than having it in bits and pieces in the footnotes. This choice may have been made so that the book could reach a wider audience, but it leaves the researcher a little disappointed. Notwithstanding, the comprehensive approach taken will undoubtedly be of interest not only to philologists and historians, but also to those with a keen interest in scientific matters.
The text could also have benefited from illustrations, starting with a photograph of a remora. This absence may be due to the format of the book. Weblinks to illustrations are provided in the footnotes, as well as in the webography. However, it should be noted that the link mentioned on page 140, note 77, which can be found in the webography on page 232, is no longer operational and can be accessed here: Laurent van Hecht, “Mira fortitudo piscis,” Parvus Mundus, Frankfurt, 1670, p. 132. The facsimile of the initial book illustrated by the engraver Gérard de Jode can be found with a French transcription on the website of the Mateo Project (MAnnheimer TExte Online) of the University of Mannheim: Laurent van Hecht, “Mira fortitudo piscis,” Parvus Mundus, Antwerpen, 1579.
The book also includes a bibliography divided into sources (ancient studies and translations), critical studies and webography as well as an index of names. It would perhaps have been useful to have an index of ancient and modern sources, which would have made it possible for scholars to know precisely on which page the various passages are discussed. However, the aforementioned points of presentation are merely editorial details and do not detract from the value of the book, which will undoubtedly be a source of delight for its readers.