[346] Possibly in the time of Aristophanes,

In the seventh century b.c. the Chinese mention the Ch’ih Kan or the “glutinous line for catching birds.” Cf. Apuleius, Met., XI. 8.

[347] The epitaph in Corpus Inscript. Lat., ii. 2335, is of interest:

Cf. Carm. Lat. Epig., no. 412.

[348] Ep., V. 18, 7 f.

[349] See infra, p. 155, note 6.

[350] See infra, p. 155, note 5.

[351] Schneidewin, Ed. I., 1842, and Ed. II., 1852, reads musca, as does Lindsay, 1903. Paley and Stone (1888) musco; W. Gilbert (Leipzig, 1886 and 1896) reads musca, and in his apparatus criticus remarks “vorata d. sc. musca cum libris Scrin. Schn. Glb.—vorato d. sc. musco Brodæus Schn.”

[352] VII. 113. χαίρει δὲ (sc. ὁ σκάρος) τῇ τῶν φυκίων τροφῇ διὸ καὶ τούτοις θηρεύεται, κ.τ.λ. Athenæus mentions Aristotle as his source.

The references by ichthyologists to the bait used for catching the Scarus seem infrequent: I at least have only come across the following. “The fishing requires some experience: fishermen allege that there is necessary un individu vivant pour amorcer les autres, yet here we call to mind what Ælian and Oppian say as to the great number of fish attracted by following a female attached to the line.” See Cuvier and Valenciennes, H. N. des Poissons, vol. XIV., p. 150, Paris, 1839.

[353] IX. 29. Scarus solus piscium dicitur ruminare herbisque vesci, non aliis piscibus. See also Oppian, II. 645-650.

[354] The Oxford Dict. gives, “Alga, a seaweed: in plural, one of the great divisions of the Cryptogamic plants including seaweeds, and kindred fresh-water plants, and a few ærial species,” and “Moss, any of the small herbaceous Cryptogamous plants constituting the class Musci, some of which form the characteristic vegetation of bogs, while others grow in crowded masses covering the surface of the ground, stones, trees, etc.” As “applied to seaweed rare”, I might venture to add either poetical, as in Tennyson’s Mermaid, “in hueless moss under the sea,” or loose and unscientific.

[355] Compare J. Britten and R. Holland, Dict. of English Plant Names (London, 1884), III. 576. Wright in his Dialect Dictionary, “Crow-silk, Confervæ, and other Algæ, especially C. rivularis.”

[356] Oppian, III. 421. Τῆμος ὲπεντύνει κύυρτου δόλον. These were traps of wickerwork, resembling our lobster pots or weels, in which the fish were caught as they flocked to suck at the seaweed, with which the stones (placed inside the traps to sink them) were covered. Cf. Ælian, XII. 43, who states that for this sort of fishing fishermen made use of φύκους θαλασσίου.

[357] N. H., XIII., 3. Cf. also ibid., I, 2.

[358] Voyage of the Beagle, ch. 20: “Two species of fish of the genus scarus, which are common here (Keeling Island), exclusively feed on coral.” Sir R. Owen, “The anterior teeth are soldered together and adapted to the habits and exigences of a tribe of fishes which browse on the lithophytes, that clothe the bottom of the sea, just as ruminant quadrupeds crop the herbage of the dry land.”

[359] N. H., II. 17: μόνος ἰχθὺς δοκεῖ μηρυκάζειν. Cf., however, N. H., IX. 50.

[360] VIII. 2, 13.

[361] Arist., N. H., II. 13. Pliny, XI. 61. “Piscium omnibus (dentes) serrati, præter scarum: huic uni aquatilium plani.”

[362] In VII. 113, we again find Athenæus misrepresenting Aristotle.

[363] “This idea of rumination,” according to Mr. Lones, op. cit., p. 237, “by the parrot wrasse (Scarus cretensis), which is clearly the Skaros of the Ancients, probably arose from its grazing or cropping off marine plants, and grinding them down, assisted by its having a strongly walled stomach” (cf. the functions of the gizzard of a fowl) with which, out of the myriads of fishes, the scarus and his tribe alone are endowed. On p. 162, “The stomach of a skaros is without a cæcum, and appears to be of far simpler form than that of most fishes.”

A trout often appears to ruminate, working its jaws quietly for a considerable time—perhaps this is merely to settle its last mouthful comfortably and to its liking. According to Banfield, in Dunk and other islands off Northern Australia, a fish, very similar to only even more brilliant in hues than the Pseudoscarus rivulatus, is able by the strength of its teeth (some sixty or seventy, set incisorlike) to pull from the rocks limpets (its chief food), which when steadfast can resist a pulling force of nearly 2000 times their own weight! It swallows molluscs and cockles whole, and by its wonderful gizzard grinds them fine. See Confessions of a Beachcomber (London, 1913), p. 156.

[364] “Dapping,” to which I miss allusion even in Dr. Turrell’s excellent Ancient Angling Authors, is so often regarded as a more or less modern method that, even at the risk of a portentous note, I must record my reasons for differing in toto from this view. Walton certainly employed it in the seventeenth century. Pursuing the device further back, it is distinctly enjoined in the earliest fishing treatise in English, the earlier version of The Boke of St. Albans (i.e. a MS. of about 1450 printed from a MS. in the possession of A. Denison, Esq., with Preface and Glossary by T. Satchell, London, 1883), and seems, although not clearly described, surely specified as follows: In “How many maner of Anglynges that ther bene ... The IIIIth with a mener for the troute with owte plumbe or floote the same maner of Roche and Darse with a lyne of I or II herys batyd with a flye. The Vth is with a dubbed hooke for the troute and graylyng....” This passage draws a decided distinction between baiting with a fly and a dubbed hook, or artificial fly. But no lead (plumbe) or float was to be used, therefore the method intended seems without doubt “dapping,” which warrants, to my mind, the assumption that this device is as old as the earliest instructions in English. This older form of the Treatise seems, it is true, to have differed slightly from the version used for The Boke of St. Albans in 1496. T. Satchell held that they both had a common origin in the “bokes of credence,” which are mentioned in the latter, and may, he suggests, have been French, but of this I am doubtful, principally because the French and English traditions appear to me to have marked points of difference.

[365] The two smallest perfect hooks scale about No. 10 and No. 11 respectively in the old, and 5 and 4 in the new numbering. They are considerably smaller than the Kahun (XII Dynasty) hook, which Petrie believes to be the smallest known in ancient Egypt. Cf. his Tools and Weapons (London, 1917), p. 37 f. But the Kahun hooks scale Nos. 9 and 6 respectively.

[366] Od., XVII. 383 and 386.

[367] “Il est peu de poissons et même d’animaux qui aient été, pour les premiers peuples civilisés de l’Europe, l’objet de plus de recherches, d’attention, et d’éloges que le Scare” (Lacépède). On the family of the Labridæ (of which the Scarus forms a genus) the same author asserts that Nature has not conferred either strength or power, but they have received as their share of her favours, agreeable proportions, great activity of fin, and adornment with all the colours of the rainbow. Of the two cousins of the Scarus, the Turdus and the Julis, his eulogy can not be omitted: “Le feu du diamant, du rubis, de la topaz, de l’émeraude, du saphir, de l’améthyste, du grenat scintille sur leures écailles polies: et brille sur leure surface en gouttes, en croissants, en raies, en bandes, en anneaux, en ceintures, en zones, en ondes; il se mêle à l’éclat de l’or et d’argent qui y resplendit sur de grandes places, les teintes obscures, les aires pâles, et pour ainsi dire décolorées.” Nicander of Thyatira (cp. Athen. 7, 113) states that there were two kinds of Scarus, one αἰόλος of many diverse colours, the other ὀνίας of a dull grey tint.

[368] Pliny, IX. 79.

[369] See J. B. Du Halde, Description géographique ... de l’Empire de la Chine.... (Paris, 1735), vol. i. p. 36.

[370] Petron., Sat., 93, 2.

[371] Archestratus is constantly quoted and always praised by Athenæus as “excellent,” “experienced,” etc. Archestratus the Syracusan in his work—variously termed “Gastronomy,” “Hedypathy,” “Deipnology,” “Cookery”—begins his epic poem, “Here to all Greece I open wisdom’s store”! (Yonge’s trans.). From delivering his precepts in the style and with the gravity of the old gnomic poets, Archestratus was dubbed “the Hesiod or Theognis of opsophagists.” The comic poets have many a gibe at him, e.g. Dionysius of Sinope sums up the author of Gastronomy, τὰ πολλὰ δ’ ἠγνόηκε, κοὐδὲ ἒν λέγει (Thesmophorus, frag. I. 26, Meineke)! Before publishing this work, the author travelled far and wide to make himself master of every dish that could be served at table. Known to us almost entirely as a supreme bon vivant, and as the earliest (except Terpsion) and certainly greatest Mrs. Glasse of the Greeks, his accuracy of description of the various fishes used for the table was so consistent, that we find even so high an authority as Aristotle making use of it in his Natural History. Archestratus in his travels concerned himself not at all as to the manners or morals of the countries visited, “as it is impossible to change these,” and held little or no intercourse with any but those, e.g. chefs, who could advance the pleasures of taste. Whatever the cause, whether too many sauces or too little nutritive food, he was so small and lean that the scales are supposed to have returned his weight as not even one obol! (Cf. Hayward, The Art of Dining). Hayward himself must have appreciated the limitation of guests, which Archestratus imposes for a proper dinner

The sentiment, if not the number, coincides with the Latin proverb—“Septem convivium, novem convicium.”

[372] I follow Wilamowitz in σκᾶρ for σκῶρ, the usual reading, partly because Epicharmus being a Dorian would use the Doric form, partly because being a comedian he is probably playing on the words σκᾶρ and σκάρος.

[373] Hedyphagetica (frag. 529, Baehrens). Suidas states that the Persians termed an exquisite dish Διὸς ἐγκέφαλον.

[374] Another reading is adesus. Cf. Xenocrates, de Alimento ex Aquatilibus, c. 14, of the scarus, which was fresh-caught and not vivarium-kept, being πολλοῖς ἐγκάτοις εὔστομος.

[375] See Liddell and Scott.

[376] VI. 718 (Kühn).

[377] Athen., VIII. 51.

[378] Cf. Oppian, I. 590.

[379] Ælian, XVI. 19, writes that these sea-hares were so poisonous, that if a man touched one thrown up on the shore with his hand, he shortly died, unless medicine was at once administered. So poisonous indeed are they, that “if you touch them with but your walking stick, there is the same danger which contact with a lizard evokes,” which in II. 5 is described τέθνηκεν ὁ κύριος τῆς λύγου! Nero, to “mak siccar” (like Kirkpatrick with the Red Comyn), employed the sea-hare as a dainty for friends whose deaths he earnestly desired. Cf. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, VI. 32.

[380] Nonnius, always the alert defender of his favourite fish, ingeniously suggests that the scarus of Pythagoras was not our famous scarus, because as this fish, even during the Augustan period, was extremely rare in Italian waters, there seems little necessity for its being banned by the “Hyperborean Apollo of the Crotoniates” in b.c. 540-510. Numa, apparently influenced by Pythagorean precepts, forbade (according to Cassius Hemina, Pliny, XXXII. 10) all scaleless fish being offered to the gods. Festus, p. 253, a. 20, however, states that in such offerings it was allowable to present all fish with scales, except the Scarus, which was sacrificiable, and most acceptable to the god of the peasants, Hercules, whose “swinish gluttony | Crams and blasphemes his feeder.” For squaram, Müller suggests scarum, while Lindsay prints squatum, the skate.

[381] Mayhoff would read inertior.

[382] Ælian, I. 2.

[383] Aristotle and Pliny, supra; Oppian, I. 135-7; Ælian, II. 54.

[384] Aristotle (according to Athen., VIII. 3) states that the scarus and sea-hog are the only fishes that have any kind of voice, but in reality he (IV. 9) mentions five others, among which is the cuckoo-fish, who “whistle and grunt” (see Pliny, XI. 112; Oppian, I. 134-5). Athenæus errs, for Aristotle (N. H., IV. 9, 8) asserts that the Dolphin when out of the water “groans and cries”; while Pliny (IX. 7) says of the Dolphin, “Pro voce gemitus humano similis.” Aristotle expressly differentiates between the five mentioned fish and the Dolphin—for the former possess no lungs, windpipe, or pharynx, and so can produce no voice, only “sound,” while “the dolphin has a voice and therefore utters vocal and vowel sounds, for it is furnished with a lung and a windpipe.”

[385] Someone may throw at me the sentence of Seleucus of Tarsus, who in the only English translation of Athenæus (by C. D. Yonge) is made to say (VII. 113), “The Scarus is the only fish which never sleeps.” If Yonge had been faithful to the text (Schweighäuser’s) which he expressly states he had adopted, he would have omitted the οὐ, because it is in brackets and the editor expressly puts against it the note “Deest vulgo negativa particula,” and his accompanying Latin translation is “unum hunc ex omnibus piscibus dormire.” Kaibel (Leipzig, 1887) also brackets the οὐ, while Dindorf (1827) has no οὐ, bracketed or other.

[386] Aristotle, N. H., II. 13; Pliny, XI. 61. Another instance of the carelessness of Athenæus—induced perhaps by his omnivorous reading—is to be found in the first line of VII. 113, “The Scarus, Aristotle says, has sharp or jagged teeth,” whereas a reference to N. H., II. 13, discloses that all fish except the scarus have sharp or jagged teeth, a statement which is confirmed by Rondolet.

[387] Cf. Opp., IV. 40-64; Pliny, XXXII. 5; and Ovid, Hal., 9 ff.

[388] Ælian, N. H., 12, 42.

[389] Pliny, XXXII. 8.

[390] Ep., 3, 13.

[391] Cf. Suetonius, Augustus, c. 83.

[392] The Anatomy of Melancholy (London, 1806), I. 406. If Burton, “that universal plunderer” has cribbed from Dame Juliana Berners her eloquent eulogy on the secondary pleasures of angling, this book, in turn, till its resurrection in the eighteenth century was ruthlessly pillaged without acknowledgment. Warton, Milton, 2nd edition, p. 94, suggests that Milton seems to have borrowed the subject of L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, together with some thoughts and expressions, from a poem prefixed to the book, while a writer in The Angler’s Note Book, March 31, 1880, believes that “Walton probably drew the inspiration of his Angler’s song from the wonderful storehouse of this quaint and original author.”

[393] τὸ γὰρ ἀγεννὲς καὶ ἀμήχανον ὅλως καὶ ἀπάνουργον αὐτῶν αἰσχρὸν καὶ ἄζηλον καὶ ἀνελεύθερον τὴν ἄγραν πεποίηκε. Holland’s Translation, published in 1657, if only on account of its quaint turns is preferable to another published in the last century.

[394] Milton wrote (1646) a Latin Ode on sending a book to the Bodleian, in which he addresses Roüsius as,

[395] Two years after this was written, I find that Mr. G. W. Bethune in his edition of The Complete Angler (New York, 1891), p. 6, notes the Aristotimus point, but goes no farther in defence of Plutarch.

[396] De Sol. Anim., 24. (Holland’s Translation.)

[397] London, 1700. Dr. Turrell, op. cit., p. 157, believes Whitney to have been the first to recommend the use of the floating fly—not for the purpose of circumventing the wily trout, but to prevent the fly being gobbled by the minnows.

[398] Cf. R. B. Marston, Walton and some Earlier Writers on Angling, 1894, an informative and yet delightful volume.

[399] As to the various Guyets, see 6th series, III. 87, 5th series, V. 352, and Lawrence B. Philip’s Dict. of Biog. Reference, which gives “Martial Guyet, French poet and translator, 17th century.”

[400] The False One, Act I., Scene 2.

[401] Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act II. Sc. 5. Weigall, The Life and Times of Cleopatra, pp. 245-6, makes the locus the harbour of Alexandria, not the Nile, and the modus, Antony’s diver affixing fresh fish to his hook. Cleopatra, guessing Antony’s ruse, assembled next day a party of notables to applaud the angler, but instructed a slave to dive from the other side of the vessel and the instant the hook touched the water attach to it a pickled Pontic fish. Cleopatram “ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?”

[402] A century or so before Oppian, Demostratus, a Roman Senator, wrote also Ἁλιευτικά—a work on Fishing of twenty books—which, although often quoted by ancient writers, is now not extant. From the extracts given by Ælian (XIII. 21, XV. 4 and 19) we gather that Demostratus, who wrote in Greek, had even more than a Greek love of the marvellous and cared nothing for the sober scientific study of his subject. It is noteworthy that an alternative title of his work was λόγοι ἁλιευτικοί, or, say, Fishing Yarns.

[403] Suetonius, Augustus, c. 83, classes fishing as one of Octavian’s chief relaxations.

[404] W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur, ed. 3 (München, 1898), p. 629, decides for Marcus Aurelius.

[405] As there are 3506 hexameters, the reward was over 3506 guineas sterling, which, without allowing for the increase in value of money between the second century and the twentieth, contrasts remarkably with the fourpence halfpenny a volume of Martial. According to Suidas, however, Oppian received from the Emperor 20,000 staters, which would be a far larger reward than Octavia bestowed on Virgil for his Æneid. It has been suggested that this largesse was not paid on all the verses of the Halieutica, but only on those in which Oppian records the prowess and sport of the Emperor in “The Virginia Water” of the Cæsars—where we learn from Eutropius (VII. 14) that Nero fished with golden nets drawn by purple ropes. If so the total would be a mere fraction of either the 3506 guineas or of the 16,000 guineas. Great doubt exists as to whether or not there were two poets named Oppian; and if there were, to which does the anonymous Greek Life of Oppian refer, and which of the two was the author of Ixeutica, for possibly it was to the author of this poem that the Imperial payment of gold was made. See W. H. Drummond’s paper in Royal Irish Academy, 1818. Also A. Ausfeld, De Oppiano et scriptis sub eius nomine traditis, Gotha, 1876.

[406] Cf. Prof. E. Browne, Literary History of Persia, vol. II., pp. 128-138, and Sir Gore Ouseley’s Biographies of Persian Poets, for the various Firdausi versions.

[407] “De quibus Oppianus Cilix est, poeta doctissimus, 153 esse genera piscium, quæ omnia capta sunt ab Apostolis, et nihil remansit incaptum, dum et nobiles et ignobiles, divites et pauperes, et omne genus hominum de mari hujus sæculi extrahitur ad salutem.” Comment. in Ezechiel. Cf. Ritter, op. cit., p. 376.

[408] N. H., XXXII. 53.

[409] The great objection to this translation, owing probably to the difficulty of expressing—certainly of compressing—the “intractable” subject matter in the rhymed verse adopted by the translators, is its weary verbiage: for instance, one passage of three lines in the translation needs twelve, and another of nine needs thirty! Diaper was the author of Nereides, or Sea-Eclogues.

[410] N. C. Apostolides, La Pêche en Grèce (Athènes, 1907), p. 31. The selection of Aristotle as the prototype of philosophical inveighers against Tobacco by Thomas Corneille (Act I., Sc. 1, of Le Festin de Pierre),

is hardly happy, for, as the weed nicotine only reached Europe some nineteen centuries after the philosopher’s death, his “dise” equals rien!

[411] With δόναξ and κύρτος, cf. the πλεκτὸν ὕφασμα in Archestratus (frag. xv. 6). See pp. 147 and 176 ff. of Paulus Brandt’s Parodorum epicorum Græcorum et Archestrati Reliquiæ, Leipzig, 1888. Brandt argues that the expression describes a nassa, qua retis loco piscatores utebantur, and on the analogy of the Dalmatian fishermen (cf. Brehm, Thierleben, IV., vol. II. p. 533) who, when the sea is not quite calm, drop from the bow of the boat pebbles dipped in oil to make smooth the surface, and so more easily detect the fish, explains δονεῖν ψήφους in Frag. XV. line 8. Although Archestratus’s statement that the fish are not to be seen (oὐd’ ἐσιδεῖν ὄσσοισιν), except by those who resort to the πλεκτὸν ὕφασμα, and εἰώθασι δονεῖν ψήφους, gives some colour to Brandt’s ingenious identification, the lack of any mention of the essential factor in such a calming operation, the oil, seems to rule it out.

[412] IV. 640. Cf. Oppian, cyneg., 4, 140 ff. for a similar description.

[413] This method, originating from the curiosity of fish and their desire (in Shelley’s words) “to worship the delusive flame,” is especially successful in rivers at the spawning season. In the Rhodian Laws—a code for the government of mariners and fishermen originally promulgated by Tiberius—occurs a special proviso, re fishing by means of torches, forbidding fishermen to display lights at sea, lest thereby they should deceive other vessels. It has been suggested, prettily, but I fear not practically, that leistering was learnt from the hunting habit and natural endowments of the Halcyon or Kingfisher; just as to the brilliancy of its colours and splendour of its flash the fish are attracted, so to the brightness of the torches and the shimmer of their rays come the salmon, etc.

[414] Cicero, de Nat. deor., II. 50, 127.

[415] Perhaps the best prose description of the power of the Echineis is to be found in Cassiodorus, Var., I. 35. Pliny, XXXII. 1, solemnly asserts that the death of the Emperor Caligula was presaged by a Remora stopping his great galley, alone out of all the accompanying fleet, on his voyage to Antium. Not only did the Remora stop a ship, but according to Pliny, it could, from its power of checking the natural actions of the body under excitement, hasten or stay an accouchement as well as a lawsuit: hence plaintiffs seldom ventured into the fish market, because the mere sight of a Remora at such a juncture was most inauspicious! (Pliny, IX. 41, and XXXII. 1). Cf. Aristotle, H. A., 2. 14, “καὶ χρῶνταί τινες αὐτῷ πρὸς δίκας καὶ φίλτρα.” For an explanation of the myth of the Remora, see V. W. Ekman, “On Dead Water,” in the Reports of Nansen’s Polar Expedition, Christiania, 1904.

[416] For a profoundly interesting study of the extant portrait-busts of Socrates, see A. Hekler, Greek and Roman Portraits (London, 1912), p. xi. f., with plates 19, 20, 21.

[417] The Torpedo was one of the food fishes of the ancients, and is represented with other fish on several of the Campanian-ware fish plates to be seen at the British Museum, e.g. Cat. Vases, vol. iv., p. 121, F. 268, which shows the small well in the centre of the plate used for fish sauce.

[418] Anth. Pal., XI. 414.

[419] Athen., VII. 90.

[420] N. H., XXXII. 6.

[421] Oppian, V. 66 ff.

[422] Cf. Pliny, IX. 68; Ælian, II. 13; Plutarch, De Sol. Anim., 31. With this pilot fish must be mentioned that other, so famous in New Zealand waters, “Pelorus Jack.” A cetacean of the Dolphin tribe, he regularly met the coastal steamers between Wellington and Nelson. The old Maori chief, Kipa Hemi, claimed that this fish, Kai Kai-a-waro, was not only the embodiment of his tribal Mana and his family guardian angel, but had guided his ancestor eleven generations before in his exploring of Cook Sound, etc.

[423] See W. Smith, Dict. Gk.-Rom. Biog. and Myth., s.v. ‘Athenæus.’

[424] Athen., III. 46. From Faber, op. cit., p. 94, we learn that “the pinnotherus finds refuse in the shells of living bivalves, living on the small animalculæ contained in the constant stream of water, which flows in and out of these molluscs. The fancy of the ancients has attributed the status existing between the two species as arising from a friendly alliance, protection and board afforded on the one hand, and watching against and warning of the approach of an enemy on the other. These observations descend from so early a date that we find the pinna and the crab among the Egyptian hieroglyphs, bearing the interpretation of the duty of paterfamilias to provide for his offspring.”

[425] The rendering of passages from Athenæus (Deipn.) and from Pliny (N. H.) are usually Bohn’s.

[426] After Kipling.

[427] Περὶ Ζώων ἰδιότητος.

[428] See Smith’s Dict. Gk. and Rom. Biog. and Myth., s.v. ‘Ælian.’

[429] Perizonius has proved that Ælian transferred large portions of the Deipnosophistæ of Athenæus to his Varia Historia, a robbery which must have been committed almost in the lifetime of the pillaged author: that Ælian extended such transference to his Natural History also, his story of the Pinna, and others would seemingly demonstrate. Sir J. E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, ed. 2 (Cambridge, 1906), i. 336, goes so far as to say: “He is the author of seventeen books On Animals, mainly borrowed from Alexander of Myndos (first century a.d.).”

[430] Dr. W. J. Turrell, op. cit., XI., states that a Latin poem written by Richard de Fournival, about the thirteenth century, alludes incidentally to fishing, and from this it appears that the fly and the worm were among the lures then used by anglers, but does not state expressly whether Fournival’s fly was natural or artificial.