"As, bearing death in the fallacious bait, From the bent angle sinks the leaden weight." The other translators do no better. Clarke, in his Latin, puts the lead into the horn. Plutarch (On the Comparative Craftiness of Water and Land Animals) says, that "some gather from it a practice of the ancients to use bull's hair in making fishing lines; xépas then signifying hair, whence иεрαobαι, to be shaved. But this is not so, for they used horse hair, the best that of stallions, as the hair of mares' tails is rendered brittle by their urine." A writer in a late magazine (see Gentleman's Mag., April and June, 1846) thinks that some kind of a float was made of the horn; a not very probable conjecture, when there are so many substances better for the purpose. Aristotle (in some work now lost) supposed, that the lower end of the line was armed with a small piece of hollow horn, which the fish had to swallow to get at the bait. Suidas, on the word nέpas, says that it was a "pipe of horn to guard the line from the teeth of the fish," which is no doubt nearest the truth, as there was no necessity for making the fish swallow it (see the Scholia on the passage, and Dammii Lexicon). A passage, having the same difficulty, occurs in the Odyssey, xii., 251-254,* which for want of a better translation I give rather closely thus: *There is a good imitation in the European Magazine, April, 1796. "On a rock's protruded side, Scooped and hollowed by the tide, As when the angler, his long rod in hand, And sinks the ox-horn deep among them there Here are three points settled, 1. The horn was distinct from the bait; 2. It was cast deep into the sea; 3. It could not have been otherwise than light, for it was suspended from the tip of a long (ɛрinnεi) rod; all of which confirmed our opinion already expressed as to what was meant by the stately old chronicler of heroic deeds in the grandiloquent periphrasis. He would not have omitted the sonorous ἀγραύλοιο βοὺς had he been speaking of a horn-spoon. While here we may cite for what they are worth some lines from the Paraleipomena (xi., 61–64) of Quintus Calaber (about 500 A.D.), where speaking of Cleon and Eurymachus, two heroes of Syma slain by Polydamas, he says, that they were Both skilled in all the angle's treachery, The word we have rendered by spear, is Tpiaivn or trident. The Smyrnæan imitator is true to the habits of the times he describes, as may be seen by another reference to the Odyssey (xii., 330), where godlike men, when pinched for a dinner, fished with crooked hooks, γναμπτοῖς ἀγκιστροῖσιν; * nay, they even dived for oysters, as we learn from the Iliad (xvi., 747), where Patroclus, having with a stone struck down the charioteer of Hector, who pitches in an unseemly Crooked fishing hooks" occur also in the Odyssey, iv., 369. fashion on the plain, scoffingly compares his fall to one diving for oysters: As divers plunge into the stormy main (I give a rough rhyme, as Pope despaired of getting the Billingsgate into English heroics.) These references are made with some particularity, because they show that (though according to Plato, Rep. iii., and others, the Homeric heroes never ate fish), legitimate angling with rod, hook, and armed line, was common in the Trojan age. In later times, fish of various kinds became the food most in demand by the Grecian palate, so much so that opor, their word originally for cooked food, or food eaten with bread (corresponding nearly to our word victuals), was used emphatically to mean fish. Athenæus abounds in anecdotes of fish-selling, fish-cooking, and fish-eating, telling us (viii., 81) that a rich gourmand (fish-eater was their word) looked sulkily in the morning, if the wind were not fair to bring the fishing-boats into the Piræus. The strictest laws were made to prevent the fish-mongers from cheating their customers: among which was one requiring them to stand (not sit) while offering their fish for sale (a "golden law," Alexis (Ath. vi., 8), terms it); and another, forbidding them to ask more than one price. We read also of a “Guide to the Fish-Market," published by one Lynceus of Samos. Fish, except the coarser kinds, were dear, for, at Corinth, if a man, not known to be honestly rich, was seen to buy fish often, he was held under the eye of the police, and punished, if he persevered in the extravagance (Athen. vi., 12). A curious instance of the luxury to which fish-eating was carried, is given in an account of a ship (or rather galley) built for Hiero of Syracuse, under the auspices of Archimedes; which it took six months' labor of innumerable workmen to get ready for launching, and six months more to finish and decorate. Besides a garden, a stable for ten horses, a Triclinium, Aphrodisium, &c., there was in the bow a fish-pond of two thousand cubic feet measurement, containing a great variety of living fish. A full account will be found in Athenæus (v. 40, et seq.) of this vessel, the original pattern, no doubt, of the ship of Dover, on board of which, a boy going aloft to set the main-royal, was a grey-headed man when he came down. We might multiply such curiosities to any extent, but those who wish more may go to Athenæus himself (bs. i., vii., viii.). Our concern is with catching fish; and we must leave the cooking of them to Mrs. Glasse, and the eating of them to her guests. It can scarcely be believed, that, in these circumstances, the taking of fish as a pastime was not known to the lovers of sport. Indeed, the earnestness with which Plato often declaims against young men practising it, because, he says, there is nothing in it "noble," or "daring," or "exercising skill," shows that there was a tendency to our gentle art, though the honey-lipped philosophy had not taste enough to feel its merits.* We have, however, no very ancient dis * Burton (Anat. of Mel., ii., 2, § 2) says that Plutarch speaks in his book De Soler. Anim. "against all fishing;" whereas Plutarch is only putting Plato's words into the mouth of Aristotimus; for which he is no more responsible than Walton for what Venator says. It is but justice, however, to the erudite foe of melancholy to add, that he takes up the defence of the angler manfully, thus: "But he that shall consider the variety of baits for all seasons, which our anglers have invented, peculiar lines, false flies, several sleights, &c., will say that it deserves like commendation with other diversions, and is to be preferred to many of them; because hawking and hunting are very laborious, much riding tinct traces of fishing, especially angling, as an amusement, unless we approve the doubtful title to a votive inscription by Leonidas of Tarentum, as given by Merivale (p. 129): "Three brothers dedicate, O Pan, to thee, Their nets, the emblems of their various toil, So may the treasures of the sea be giv'n To this; to those, the fruits of earth and heaven." Generally, the lot of a fisherman is described as one of extreme hardship, as in an epitaph by Sappho (Anth. Gr., vii., which I translate: Menischus, weeping for his Pelagon, Places above the ashes of his son, The fisher's curving net and well-worn oar, So Theocritus' (Idyll. xxi.), tells us of a fisherman dreaming of gold by his comrade's side, and thus describes their dwelling: "A straw-thatched shed, Leaves were their walls, and sea-weed was their bed. -hard by were laid Baskets, and all their implements of trade, Rods, hooks, and lines composed of stout horse-hairs,' (Fawkes.) and many dangers accompanying them, but this is still and quiet." He then quotes that fine, well-known passage from Juliana Berners: "Atte the leest hee hathe," &c. |