Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists
C. D. Yonge, B.A., Ed.

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Then there is the hyces. Callimachus, in his epigrams, calls the hyces the sacred fish, in these lines—

And he does deem the sacred hyces god.

And Numenius, in his Art of Fishing, says—

The spar, or the gregarious hyces;
Or phagrus, ever wand'ring near the rocks.

And Timæus, in the thirteenth book of his Histories, speaking of the town in Sicily, (I mean the town of Hyccara,) says that this town derived its name from the circumstance of the first man who arrived at the place finding abundance of the fish called hyces, and those too in a breeding condition; and they, taking this for an omen, called the place Hyccarus. But Zenodotus says that the Cyrenæans call the hyces the erythrinus. But Hermippus of Smyrna, in his essay on Hipponax, when he speaks of the hyces, means the iulis; and says that it is very hard to catch; on which account Philetas says—

Nor was the hyces the last fish who fled.