After Theocritus we reach the period which chronologically might perhaps be termed that of the Roman writers, although our two greatest authorities on Fish Lure and Lore wrote in Greek, some three to four centuries after Plautus (c. 254-184 b.c.) had produced his Rudens.

This, the first Latin play, I believe, introducing fishermen on the stage, re-echoes the Greek note of poverty and misery. In Act II., Sc. 2, Trachalio asks, “Shellfish-gatherers, and hook-fishers, hungry race of men, how fare ye?” and receives the answer, “Just as befits fishermen; with hunger, thirst, and expectation.” The wretchedness of their calling is made further manifest in Act II., Sc. 1.

Descriptions of fishermen are found in Latin adaptations of Greek plays. The Latin mimes, as did the Greek, often display fishermen as characters. The Latin references to actual fishing not only far outnumber the Greek, but also, unlike the Greek, which are almost solely concerned with sea fishing, frequently treat of river and lake fishing. Plautus, Cicero, Horace, Ovid,[326] Juvenal, Tibullus, Pliny the Elder and the Younger, Martial, and Ausonius, by no means conclude the list of our Roman authors.

It may be fairly asked, why I omit any special notice of so valuable and voluminous work as the Natural History of Pliny the Elder.

My reasons are three. First, my book contains numberless references to or quotations from it. Second, none of its thirty-seven Books presents any controversial questions of angling interest—such as “Where is to be found the first mention of the Rod, or Fly?”—questions which demand for Martial and Ælian a full discussion. Third, my notice of Aristotle, on the principle that the greater includes the less, renders any lengthy comment on Pliny almost superfluous.

The Natural History of the latter, at any rate as far as fish and fishing are concerned, for the most part repeats the Natural History of the former, except in such instances as the caudal losses caused by the enmity between the Lupus and the Mugil, and between the Conger and the Muræna, where it exactly reverses Aristotle’s statement.[327]

These and other instances, in addition to his words (IX. 88), “Nigidius auctor est,” and (X. 19) “Nigidius tradit,” led J. G. Schneider[328] to conclude that it is open to grave doubt, whether Pliny ever read Aristotle at all in the original Greek. The probabilities, indeed, point to his having used for his Natural History the translation into Latin of Aristotle, which Nigidius Figulus, a friend of Cicero’s and (according to Gellius) next to Varro the most learned of the Romans, published with additions apparently of his own.[329]

In Pliny the Younger, and Martial (perhaps Ovid in a lesser degree) one finds what among our classical writers seems the nearest approach to our English sportsman, delighting in his own place, however small, in the country, and in country pursuits. These writers, in spite of living half the year or more in Rome, fall within our conception of country sportsmen.

Most of the others seem more intent on bringing the scent of the hay before the footlights than on making us realise any real joy of fishing. They resemble more the week-enders of a fishing syndicate than the country gentleman living on his place or river.

Pliny the Younger possesses, in addition to his appreciation of the various joys of country life, a passionate yet exquisite feeling for beauty of scenery, especially for that round Lake Como, to which his letters recur again and again.

I cannot, however, conceive him much of a hunter, despite the abundant game which the Apennine or Laurentine coverts harboured, or much of a piscator, despite his notices of fishing on his favourite lake. A letter (Epist., I. 6) to Tacitus, who had apparently been chaffing him as a sportsman, frankly admits that although he has killed three boars his chief pleasure in the chase consists of sitting quietly beside the nets, to which the game was driven, wrapt in contemplation or jotting down on his tablets the ideas which the solitude and silence demanded by the sport were wont to produce.

As a fisherman he took his pleasure, if not sadly, for the most part vicariously. He joyed more, if I read him aright, in watching from one or other of his villas the boatmen toiling with their nets and lines than in a day’s fishing, an impression which seems confirmed by his appreciation of the joy of being able to angle from bed!

Thus we read in Epist., IX. 7: “On the shores of Como I have several villas, but two occupy me most ... That one feels no wave; this one breaks them. From that, you may look down upon the fishermen below; while from this, you may yourself fish, and lower your hook from your bedroom—almost from your very bed—just as from a little boat.”[330]

If the site of the present Villa Pliniana is that of the ancient Villa, as from Pliny’s description[331] of the close proximity of the spring (which even now preserves the unusual characteristics specified in his letter) we may safely conclude, the feat of throwing your hook from your bedroom is obviously of the easiest.

The mediæval writer, Paolo Giovio, dwells at length on the enormous fish to be seen 350 years ago in the depths of Lake Como, and states that trout of 100 lbs. and over were no uncommon objects.[332]

What a prospect of joyous, easeful sport is opened here! No tedious travel of days or weeks to Norway, Canada, or New Zealand; no sleepless roughing it under tent or shack; no diet of canned food; no being “bitten off in chunks” by mosquito or black fly. Think of it, O Angler of high hope, but of sore disappointment—of hard toil and weary waiting! Think of it! To wake, after sound slumber, in one’s own comfortable room: to seize the ready rod, and with one dexterous cast, “almost from your very bed,” to be fast in a hundred-pound trout!

Martial’s abiding love for his birthplace on the picturesque banks of the River Salo in Spain (the delights of which in Ep., XII. 18, and I. 49, he paints with happy enthusiasm to Rome-tied Juvenal and to Licinianus) probably accounts for Angling being mentioned more appreciatively by him than by any other Latin poet.

Angling was one of the favourite amusements of men like Martial, a yeoman (if I may differ from Prof. Mackail[333]) —to judge from the frequent references made to his own farm—or at any rate a close observer of the class, which in Ep. I. 55, he so well describes:

For in this same epigram and many others the poet is fain

To him these rank among the chief delights of country life, which life he, though an admirable flâneur, places higher than all else.

He ends his vivid sketch of it with the passionate burst—“Let not the man who loves not this life, love me, and let him go on with his city life—white as his own toga!”[334]

Martial’s charming picture of a Roman homestead, of its life, live-stock, of its pursuits, and of its fishing,[335] contrasts vividly with his fawning eulogies of Emperors, and his savage satire on foes. It must be confessed, however, that some of his prettiest appreciations of country life were written in or about the large villas with which his rich patrons had studded, too closely to be really rural, Baiæ and the Bay of Naples.

His pleasure in this part of the coast was increased by the nearness of the baths of Baiæ, and the Lacus Lucrinus, the home of the famous Roman oyster.

These oysters held, I think, the highest place in Martial’s gastronomic affections. Constant his references to them, frequent his assertions or assumptions that they excelled all other.[336] His well known lament for a beautiful little slave girl, who died when only six, employs as a term of highest praise Concha Lucrini delicatior stagni, rendered by Paley “more delicate” (in complexion) “than the mother-of-pearl in the shell of the Lucrine oyster.”[337]

Others hold that concha is meant for the oyster itself. One author, basing himself on the varying praises of the particular beauties of the child, rhapsodises thus: “Oysters[338] so tender, so juicy, so succulent, so delicious, that the poet could find no fitter comparison for a charming young girl!” But in the words of Jeffrey of the Edinburgh Review, “This will never do.” To twist the verse into a comparison of pleasure derived from the sense of taste rather than of beauty from the sense of sight passes the inadmissible, and unless Martial could eat, or in Charles Lamb’s word on a gift of game, “incorporate” the pretty child, reaches the ludicrous.

Martial shows up as a sportsman. Proud of a good day, he knows—and tells us—what it is to be “blank” (“ecce redit sporta piscator inani,” Ep., X. 37, 17). That he is no “River Hog” and quite eligible for some select club on the Test or Itchen appears from his throwing back into his native river any mullet which looked less than three pounds.[339]

The interest attaching to his Epigrams lies not only in the evidence they afford of his and his friends’ love for things piscatorial, but also in the probability that in them we meet with the first recorded mention of (a) a Jointed Rod, and (b) Fishing with a Fly. The former claim turns on the couplet,

For levis there are two other, though less well supported, readings, viz. vadis and velis. Is harundo (literally a ‘reed,’ then a ‘rod,’ but used impartially to describe both the weapon of the fowler and of the fisher) in these lines a fowler’s reed, or a fisher’s rod? The answer, if indeed any be possible, depends on the precise meaning to be attached to crescente, having regard to the context and the whole epigram.

Crescente, which some dictionaries, ignoring its use in a similar connection in Silius Italicus, VII. 674-77, “sublimem calamo sequitur crescente volucrem,” render jointed, can only here, I suggest, be properly translated by lengthening, or increasing. But whether this process of increasing was effected by real joints cannot be clearly ascertained.

In his solitary note on crescente Valpy (Delphin edition, 1823) vouchsafes the bald and not informative comment: “Vero mihi videtur intelligenda esse virga quæ crescat in locis palustribus.”

The following explanation is interesting, but to my mind indecisive, even though it claims the authority of “the old commentators.”[340] Crescente—“L’oiseleur caché sous un arbre rappelait les oiseaux en imitant leur chant: puis, quand les oiseaux étaient sur l’arbre, il allongeait le roseau enduit de glu, qu’il tenait à la main et les oiseaux venaient s’y prendre. Le poëte dit que le roseau croissait, parcequ’à mesure que l’oiseleur se hissait sur ses pieds, la baguette engluée semblait croître en effet. Telle est la manière dont les commentateurs anciens interprètent ce distique.”

Much again depends on whether we read vadis (shallows) or levis (swift); vadis would incline the balance heavily, but not absolutely, to the rod, not to the reed. We get no help from Friedländer, who contents himself with a mere reference to Martial, Ep., XIV. 218, quoted below.

Paley is of doubtful or little avail. He holds that harundo means the fowler’s reed. The implement was so contrived that a smaller reed, tipped with birdlime (viscum),[341] made from the cherries of the mistletoe, was suddenly protruded (perhaps blown) through a thicker reed against a bird on its perch, and that to this lengthening crescente refers. Cf. Ep., XIV. 218.

The fowler attracted the attention of the bird as he approached it, by imitating its note.[342]

Propertius refers to fowling (Vertumnus, V. 2, 33), and in Petronius (Sat., 109, 7) we find “volucres, quas textis harundinibus peritus artifex tetigit.”[343] Textis here, which Mr. Heseltine renders ‘jointed,’ would seem to show Paley’s suggestion, that the first cane was hollow, while the second was “protruded” through it, to be wrong.

Rich explains this method of fowling as follows. The sportsman first hung the cage with his call bird on the bough of a tree, under which, or at some convenient distance from it, he contrived to conceal himself. When a bird, attracted by the singing of its companion, perched on the branches, he quietly inserted his rod amongst the boughs until it reached his prey, which stuck to the lime and was thus drawn to the ground. When the tree was very high, the rod was made in separate joints, like our fishing rod, so that he could lengthen it out until it reached the object of his pursuit, whence it is termed crescens or texta.

If the example given by Rich (from a terra-cotta lamp) be faithfully rendered, the joints in the rod are easily discernible.[344]

But all question as to the existence of a jointed fowling rod is now settled past peradventure by Pl. 24, Fig. 686, in the Brit. Mus. Cat. of Gr. and Rom. Lamps, 1914. This shows an animal dressed in a hooded cloak, holding in his right hand a length of fowling rod, and in his left two spare lengths, trying to reach a tree on which sits a bird. Mr. Walters, the editor of the catalogue, kindly informs me that Fig. 686 can no longer be regarded as that of The Fox and the Grapes. Similar lamps shown in S. Loeschcke’s recent Lampen aus Vindonissa, e.g. Pl. 12, No. 473, confirm the evidence of the Brit. Mus. lamp in every detail.

Not a few editors, on the other hand, retain vadis in Martial’s epigram, instead of levis, as evidently did Hay, the Scotch poet, in translating the couplet,

Much can be said for the view that line three applies to fishing. So much, indeed, that were it not for one, apparently fatal, omission, we might confidently proclaim the first definite mention of a jointed rod. To this omission, conclusive to my mind of the meaning of harundo, I have so far found no allusion.

Let us suppose that the first line of the couplet does refer to fishing. The poet would like to give some birds or fish, or both, to his friend Carus, but bewails his inability to send anything better than some chickens. He does explain fully why he cannot send birds, but he omits entirely any reason, or even any hint, as to what prevents him sending fish. We are not allowed to imagine that the weather was too bad, for the whistling ploughman imitating the magpie in his call, the starlings, the linnets, all negative that.

The whole epigram seems to refer to fowling. The application, even if vadis for levis be adopted, would not necessarily be altered. Are there not wild duck and snipe to be caught in the shallows (vadis) as well as fish, and probably by other means than birdlime, though with the use of a rod?

If levis, or even vadis be read, two arguments lean heavily against harundo being the fisher’s Rod. The first, in a poem dealing entirely with birds this somewhat obscure reference to fish would be extremely abrupt; the second, the line following “harundine præda” runs, “Pinguis et” (not “aut” as before) “implicitas virga teneret aves,” “and (not or) the sticky reed-line,” etc.

Save for this omission and the trend of the whole context, a strong argument might be easily advanced for fishing in the apparent redundancy of harundo and virga. But these two words may refer to two different weapons of capture, or, what is more probable, to two different ways of catching birds—the first, by a long reed with a noose, and the second by a branch with birdlime.[345]

To conclude, whether harundo here be a weapon for capture of birds or of fish, it is now established beyond any doubt or contradiction that there was used in and probably long before Martial’s time[346] a Reed Rod, capable of extension, either by protruding a smaller cane through a larger one, or else, perhaps, by an action somewhat similar to a chimney-sweep’s, with jointed rods fastened together in the hand, when prolonging his brush.

If such a Reed Rod was found of service to the fowler for reaching a bird on a high branch, is it not extremely probable, is it not almost certain, that in spite of no express mention of such use the fisherman also employed a similar jointed rod for the purpose—common alike to his primitive predecessor and his more advanced successor—of getting the bait over any obstacles which lay between him and the water, and for increasing both the reach of his arm and the length of his throw?[347]

Whether the Rod of the piscator was similar to that of the aucupator or not, we do find these two pursuits, with but one verb for both, coupled in two of Tibullus’s beautiful lines on Hope (II. 6, 23). His Hope is very reminiscent of St. Paul’s Charity or Love, which “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth.”

“’Tis Hope, that taketh birds with the Snare, fish with the Rod with fine Hooks well hidden in the bait.”