This small fish is said to have helped Octavian win the battle of Actium.
Posted by Michel Morvan on
According to a legend established since Antiquity , and widely disseminated in the work of Pliny the Elder , this small fish, by attaching itself to the Praetorian galley of Antony , kept it immobilized and gave the advantage to the army of Octavian, although less numerous and less well equipped.
The Echeneis , or Remora , literally " the fish that slows down the course of ships " has a suction disk on its head, which allows it to cling to its host to be transported. Its legend, echoed by Aristotle, grew over the centuries and attributed many supernatural powers to it, to the point that even Rabelais and Montaigne mentioned it in their works. The myth flourished as exploratory and commercial fleets developed. Then came the 17th century and the emergence of modern science , experimental and quantitative, freed from the authority of the Ancients and the Bible and guided by reason .
It was at this time that Gaspar Schott , a Jesuit mathematician and physicist, wrote in Latin his work La physique curieuse , in which he was interested in the anomalies or oddities of nature , among which he included "doubtful men": tritons , centaurs , sirens , cynocephali , etc.
From this Prévert-style bestiary, Isabelle Jouteur and Mathilde Gazeau have chosen to extract and translate, from Book X "Merveilles des animaux aquatiques", his critique of the legend of the Remora fish . The authors trace the approach of a scientist from this pivotal period , a supporter of a critical movement, who attempts to find a rational explanation for the supernatural powers attributed to fish by followers of occult philosophy . We then witness a physiological dissertation on fish, which lays the foundations of contemporary scientific reasoning .
Gaspar Schott, Curious Physics – Book X, “Wonders of Aquatic Animals” Physiological dissertation on the Echeneis or Remora. By Isabelle Jouteur and Mathilde Gazeau. Chartae neolatinae collection, directed by Béatrice Charlet-Mesdjian.
