PLUTARCH: THE CHARGE AGAINST HIM OF CONTEMNING FISHING QUITE
FALSE—CLEOPATRA’S FISHING—OPPIAN—THE TORPEDO FOR
GOUT—ATHENÆUS
Our next two authors, Plutarch (a little later than Martial) and Oppian
(_c._ 170 A.D.), both wrote in Greek.
Plutarch for centuries has been misrepresented and maligned as an
opponent and contemptuous disdainer of fishing, but quite inaccurately.
I am not of the class of writers who invest Nero with a halo, or
canonise Clytæmnestra. I am no Knight of the Round Table on a quest to
redeem lost characters, but I feel it a duty and a pleasure on behalf
of Plutarch to fling down the glove and challenge his traducers to a
duel _à outrance_.
Modern English writers,
“to the listening earth
Repeat the story,”
but not, like the Moon, the story of “the birth” of their error.
Inevitably in their pages crop up Burton’s words, “Plutarch, in his
book _De Sol. Anim._, speaks against all fishing as a filthy, base,
illiberal employment, having neither wit nor perspicacity in it, nor
worth the labour.”[392]
Holland translates the passage, “for the cowardice, blockishness,
stupidity, want of shifts and means in fishes, either offensive or
defensive, causes the taking of them to be dishonest, discommendable,
unlovely, and illiberal.” I subjoin the Greek so that each reader may
make his choice of or a translation of his own.[393]
These words do, it is true, occur in Plutarch’s _de Sol. Anim._, 9.
But the chapter merely gives a fanciful report of an imaginary debate
before a jury empanelled to determine whether land or water animals
are the more crafty. The words embody, not the opinion, matured or
other, of the author, but one of the charges in the opening speech of
Aristotimus, who appears on behalf of the superior sagacity of the
terrestrials as against the aquatics.
From a sentence in the mouth of a special pleader Plutarch has been
branded for centuries, at any rate since the time of Burton’s book
(1621), as the foe of fishing and the maligner of the craft. And with
as much reason you might make Plato responsible for an opinion alien to
his nature but advanced by one of his dialecticians, or saddle Father
Izaak with some heresy of Venator’s.
An attempt to account for so learned and on the whole so fair an author
as Burton being led into a charge, the inaccuracy of which even cursory
perusal of chapter nine evinces, may, if fishless, yet interest some
of my readers. One of the blemishes ascribed to the _Anatomy_ is the
burdening of the text with too profuse quotations, ransacked from not
only classical and patristic writers, but also (literally) from “Jews,
Turks, and Infidels.”
Making full allowance for Burton’s encyclopædic knowledge, whence,
and how, were these all amassed? Hearne, the Oxford historian, helps
towards an answer in his statement that Mr. John Rouse, of Bodley’s
Library, for many years provided his friend of Christ Church with
choice books and quotations. Is it too much to surmise that the
passages “provided” by the helpful service of Rouse[394]—a trait
fortunately still characteristic of his Bodley successors—included the
sentence of damnation, which, even if verified, was, from being torn
out of its context, certainly misunderstood and ill-digested?
One ought to be chary of attributing motives, much more so reasons;
but the only apparent reason for the numerous repetitions of Burton’s
slander must have been the line of least resistance or least exercise,
which deterred writer after writer from taking the trouble to consult
the original context and thus discovering by whom and how the words
were spoken. I have so far failed to find a single defender of Plutarch
on this count or any plea for reversal of a verdict based on evidence
wrongfully accepted.[395]
Indignation at the injustice of the charge waxes all the hotter, when
one remembers that the person indicted is the very self-same Plutarch
who stands out as our authority for much unique lore on fish, fishing,
and tackle. He, and no other, consoles the victims of an Emperor’s
decree of banishment by pointing out the happiness of their lot in
being far removed from the intrigues, the vices, the dust, the noise
of Rome to a fair Ægean island, where the sea breaks peacefully on the
rocks below, and—an additional assuagement—“where there is plenty of
fishing to be had!”
Could a man who contemned and denounced fishing so vigorously put into
the mouth even of the pleader for the superior craftiness of fish,
unless he himself had angled and possessed the true angling spirit,
the following sentences, as true and as useful to-day as when written
nineteen centuries ago?
“For the first and foremost, the cane of which the angle Rod is made,
fishers wish not to have big and thick, and yet they need such an
one as is tough and strong, for to pluck and hold the fishes, which
commonly do mightily fling and struggle when they be caught, but they
choose rather that which is small and slimmer, for fear lest if it
catch a broad shadow, it might move the doubt and suspicion that is
naturally in fishes.”
“Moreover, the line they make not with many water knots” (happy
anglers!), “but desire to have it as plain and even as possibly may
be, without any roughness, for that this giveth as it were some
denuntiation unto them of fraud and deceit. They take order likewise
that the hairs which reach to the hook should seem as white as possibly
they can devise, for the whiter they be the less are they seen in the
water for their conformity and likeness in colour to it.”[396]
We anglers seem of a verity “nae gleg at the uptak.” After some 1650
years we find John Whitney, in the preface to _The Genteel Recreation:
or the Pleasure of Angling_, ascribing with modesty as to personal
prowess, but quiet pride as to discovery, his success very largely to
the use of “fine Tackling” which in the poem (!) he further, if in
barbarous verse, enforces,
“Fineness in Angling’s th’ Anglers nearest Rule:
For Prudence must still regulate in all.”[397]
The sentence in his Preface is apposite to many a Preface, whether in
prose or verse. “As to the verse there is fault and folly enough, but
grant Poetical License, if in pleasing nobody I have pleased myself,
and that’s all the reward I desire,” for alas! to many of us writers
self-pleasing must be the sole reward of our desert, if not of _our_
desire.
Misrepresentation as a despiser of fishing and fishermen has clutched
another victim, Dr. Johnson, of all people! As Plutarch has been
branded for an opinion not his own, so Johnson has been held guilty
of the famous libel—“A worm at one end and a fool at the other.”
The popular belief is all false. According to Boswell, he was very
appreciative—an attitude not always Johnsonian—of Walton’s work.
Again, it was no other than he[398] who urged Moses Browne to bring
out in 1750 a new edition—the fifth and last was published in 1676—of
_The Compleat Angler_, of which his criticism, “a mighty pretty book,”
hardly indicates contempt for its subject, or author, whose life he
once meant writing.
On Voltaire also the Worm-Fool libel has also been saddled, but
wrongly. To another Frenchman, Martial Guyet, it has been attributed,
but not convincingly.
In _Notes and Queries_, 3rd series, X. 472, can be found the lines:
“Messieurs, je suis pêcheur, et pêcheur de la ligne,
J’en fait ici l’aveu. Ce cas semble peu digne
De vos graves esprits: car on l’a dit souvent
La ligne, avec sa canne, c’est un long instrument
Dont le plus mince bout tient un petit reptile,
Et dont l’autre est tenu par un grand imbécile!”
“These lines were written by Guyet, who if he were Martial Guyet died
nearly one hundred years before the great lexicographer was born.”[399]
Even before Guyet the libel seems to have become hackneyed, “_car on
l’a dit souvent_.”
Plutarch’s works figure so frequently in these pages that I will not
here specially dwell on or quote from them, except “once more the tale
to tell” of Antony and Cleopatra’s fishing as given in his _Life of
Antony_, 29, 2.
Antony (who “fishes, drinks, and wastes the lamps of night in revel”),
when with Cleopatra on the Nile had, of course, if Beaumont and
Fletcher’s lines hold, not been half as successful as his mistress:
“She was used to take delight, with her fair hand
To angle in the Nile, where the glad fish,
As if they knew who ’twas sought to deceive them,
Contended to be taken.”[400]
To shine in her eyes, he secretly commanded his diver to attach fish to
his hook. Cleopatra, becoming aware of the trick, signalled her diver
to go down (or as some others relate, bribed Antony’s own servants) to
affix to his hook, a _salted_ fish (τάριχος). This he promptly struck
and hauled out mid laughter and ridicule. “Leave,” cried Cleopatra,
“leave the fishing rod to us; your game is Cities, Provinces, and
Kingdoms.”[401]
Shakespeare makes Cleopatra’s diver attach the salted fish:
“_Cleo_: Give me mine angle, we’ll to the river: there,
My music playing far off, I will betray
Tawny finn’d fishes; my bended hook shall pierce
Their slimy jaws, and as I draw them up,
I’ll think them every one an Antony,
And say ‘Ah, ha! you’re caught.’
“_Charmian_: ’Twas merry when
You wager’d on your angling; when your diver
Did hang a salt-fish on his hook, which he
With fervency drew up.
“_Cleo_: That time!—O times!—
I laughed him out of patience, and that night
I laugh’d him into patience; and next morn,
Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed.”
We owe most of our knowledge as to the technical methods, the varying
minutiæ, and the numerous materials employed by the Greeks and Latins
in Fishing and Angling, to Oppian, to Ælian, Pliny the Elder, and
Plutarch.
“Bearing somewhat the same relationship to Eclogues of Fishermen that
Virgil’s Georgics do to those of Shepherds, were the Greek verse
treatises on fish and fishing. No fewer than six didactic Epics of the
sort were composed, but only that of Oppian is extant in complete
form.[402] It is written in hexameter, and combines material based on
observations with much extraordinary information gathered from floating
material. In the last part of the treatise, the accounts given of the
methods of capturing fish by men on various coasts lend a few pictures
akin to independent Idylls.”
“Most of the poem, however, is very like Pliny’s _Natural History_, put
into verse. These didactic poems, as a whole, have little relationship
with the Piscatory Eclogue, other than that implied in the fact that
they are written in verse and tell much about the practices of fishers.”
This grudging estimate of Oppian by Mr. Hall contrasts strangely with
the terms of highest eulogy which authors of all ages have bestowed
on him. Scaliger calls him “a divine and incomparable poet.” Sir
Thomas Browne bewails with wonder that “Oppian’s elegant lines are so
much neglected: surely we hereby reject one of the best epic poets.”
Scaliger remarks that no author makes more frequent use than Oppian of
similes, which he praises warmly for their strength and beauty, for
their brilliancy and effect.
In my humble opinion they occur far too frequently and regularly. If
we do not come across one at least in every hundred lines, the effect
is agreeable disappointment. The subjects of comparison, moreover, are
conventional and limited.
But Oppian’s poems were held in the very highest favour, not only
by our stingy stepmother, Posterity, but by his contemporaries. The
Emperor (whether he were Antoninus—of all the Emperors[403] perhaps the
keenest fisherman—Caracalla, or Severus is not clear, as Oppian’s exact
date is still unsettled[404]), on hearing the author recite his verses
revoked the decree of banishment on Oppian’s father (to Malta), and
paid the poet a golden _stater_, or more than a guinea a verse.[405]
With this very liberal payment by piece or verse-work may be contrasted
the treatment meted out to the great Persian poet Firdausi by the
Emperor Mahmud.
The most romantic of the versions of the story makes the latter promise
a _miskal_ (or something less than ¼ oz.) for every couplet of the
former’s epic, _Shah Nameh_. On the poem’s arrival at Court, joy
reigned till discovery that it contained some 60,000 couplets.
Aghast at the amount, Mahmud or his Chancellor of Exchequer took
advantage of some ambiguity in the terms and, despite the protests of
Firdausi that the largesse was promised in _gold_, made payment in
_silver_. It chanced that the treasure arrived while the author was in
the public baths at Tús; furious at the fraud, he gave 20,000 to the
bathkeeper, 20,000 to the refreshment seller, and 20,000 to the camel
driver who had brought the bags of bullion.
Many years after, the Emperor, either repenting him of his broken word
or moved by reports of the great poverty in which the poet had long
lived, dispatched the sum in _gold_, or, as some say, indigo. Alas! as
the convoy entered Tús by the Rudbar gate, by that of the Razan was
Firdausi being borne to his grave.[406]
At the death of Oppian in his thirtieth year, the citizens of his
native place in Cilicia erected a statue to his memory. It bore the
most laudatory of inscriptions, of which the last two lines have been
Englished—“All” (_i.e._ preceding poets)
“All the inspired him their chief allowed
And all to him their humbler laurels bowed,”
—to which halting and involved translation we at least neither bow
laurels nor doff hats.
The _Halieutica_ is divided into five books. The first two treat of
the natural history of fishes, the other three of the art of fishing.
Despite this proportion of space, fish rather than fishermen are the
heroes of the scenes. The work displays considerable knowledge of
zoology, coupled with absurd fables, which are adduced as grave matters
of fact.
In the fulness with which he enumerates the various kinds of fish,
and methods of fishing, the technique, the weapons, the materials
appropriate to each, Oppian stands pre-eminent among our authors. Nor
need we wonder at this fullness of treatment. He was wedded heart and
soul to all pertaining to fish, or fishing, which he calls the “lovely
art.”
The kinds of fish mentioned by this “poeta doctissimus”[407] number,
according to Bishop Hieronymus, one hundred and fifty-three. This
figure is verified by Ritter, who adds that “Pliny’s long list contains
only twenty-three more, _i.e._ one hundred and seventy-six in all,” a
total which hardly warrants the naturalist’s triumphal outburst, “In
the sea and in the ocean, vast as it is, there exists by Hercules!
nothing that is unknown to us, and a truly marvellous feat it is that
we are best acquainted with those things which Nature has concealed in
the deep.”[408]
From the only English translation of the _Halieutica_ (made in 1722
by Diaper and Jones, Fellows of Balliol) I take a few passages
illustrating the character and methods of Oppianic fishing.[409]
The latter at once arrest our attention by their modernity. They
are practically ours. Apostolides in his work describing fishing in
modern Greece states that “les quatre engins d’Oppien, les filets, les
hameçons, les harpons et les nasses,” with the addition of “les claies
de roseau, d’importation romaine sans doute,” are the weapons of Hellas
in the present day. The tricks of Oppian prevail in the Peloponnese:
to-day, as nearly two millenniums back, the _Scarus_ and the Mullet are
caught by using the female as decoy.
The procedure of taking the Octopus (which Aristotle pictures for us in
IV. 8), “when clinging so tightly to the rocks that it cannot be pulled
off, but remains attached, even when the knife is employed to sever it:
and yet if one employ fleabane (κόνυζα) to the creature, it drops off
at once,” remains the same in Greece to-day. Apostolides writes (p.
50), “Comme on voit, non seulement le procédé de pêche aux poulpes a
persisté jusqu’à nos jours, mais la plante (Conyse) qu’on emploie à cet
effet porte encore le même nom.”
But as Canning called into existence a new world to redress the balance
of power in the old, so too the Attic fisherman to dislodge the Octopus
has, Raleigh-like, imported to the aid of his old herb, American
tobacco.[410]
The devices for fishing, which in Oppian, I. 54-5, are—
“The slender-woven Net, Viminious Weel,[411]
The Taper Angle, Line and Barbed Steel
Are all the Tools his constant Toil employs,
On arms like this, the Fishing Swain relies,”
are amplified in III. 73 ff. in number and detail.
“y those who curious have their art defined,
Four sorts of fishers are distinct assigned.
The first in Hooks delight: here some prepare
The Angle’s Taper Length, and Twisted hair.
Others the tougher threads of flax entwine,
But firmer hands sustain the sturdy Line.
A third prevails by more compendious ways,
While numerous Hooks one common Line displays.”
We then pass to fishing by Nets, _Mazy Weel_, and Spears or Tridents.
A spirited passage, spoilt in the translation by superfluous verbiage,
sings of nocturnal fishing with spears and an attracting light. The
method probably obtained the world over, certainly in China, Rome, and
Greece, where Plato (_Soph._, 220 D.) classes it under the heading
πυρευτική next to Angling. In Scotland it prevailed extensively, if
illegally, as _Burning the Water_, or _Leistering_, a Norse term, and
practice which Thor himself did not disdain. A passage from a lost
comedy—_The Trident_—perhaps by Philippides, shows a fisher armed with
a three-pronged fork and horn-lantern off a-Tunnying.[412]
The lines ring as true to-day as when Oppian[413] penned them.
“Erected torches blaze around the Boat,
And dart their pitchy Rays ...
Admiring shoals the gaudy flames surround,
And meet the triple spear’s descending wound,”
while if fishing were legally permitted only to those who came up to
his ideal of what an angler _should_ be (III. 29-31),
“First be the Fisher’s limbs compact and sound,
With solid flesh, and well braced sinews bound,
Let due proportion every part commend,
Nor Leanness shrink too much, or Fat distend,”
rents the world over would speedily abate, and many a river would know
its tenant no more.
For reading “at lairge” Oppian is admirable. At one moment you are
enjoying a vivid and passably accurate account (III. 149 ff.) of how
the Cramp or Torpedo Fish (νάρκη), like Brer Fox, lies low in the sand
and the mud, but on a sudden “ejects his poisoned charms” with such
effect that soon
“On every joint an Icy Stiffness steals,
The flowing spirit binds and blood congeals.”[414]
A fish stupefied by the shock is likened (II. 81 ff.) unto a man who in
dreams tries to escape from the threatening phantoms, only to find his
knees bound and his limbs incapable of flight.
At another moment our poet (in I. 217 ff.) is reproving the incredulity
of those who doubt the fact that a sucker fish can stop a ship under
full sail, by sticking to its keel![415]
The peculiar powers of the Torpedo Fish command some comment. Ancient
authors galore, to whom, in the absence of the more powerful electric
Eel of Central America, the νάρκη must have appeared an amazing
creature, have written and differed about it. Aristotle had early noted
that it caught its prey by means of a stupefying apparatus in its
mouth, or rather at the back of its head. Claudian asks (_Carm. Min.
Corp._, XLIV. (XLVI.) 1 f.):
“Quis non indomitam miræ Torpedinis artem
Audiit et merito signatas nomine vires?”
[Illustration: CAMPANIAN FISH-PLATE WITH PATTERN OF TORPEDO FISH.
Note the small well in centre for sauces.
See n. 2, p. 181.]
Plato compares Socrates to the fish from his capability of electrifying
his audience in the strict, but not in the corrupt present-day sense of
the word, as some writers imagine. The comparison to the fish in _Meno_
80A illustrates the benumbing effect of the Socratic method on the
thought and talk (τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ τὸ στόμα ναρκῶ) of Meno (and others),
so that he was μεστὸς ἀπορίας, and reduced to silence (οὐκ ἔχω ὅ τι
ἀποκρίνωμαι).
If limited to the electric fire which flashed from his eyes, the
comparison is complimentary to the philosopher, but, if applied to
the whole face, is, even if true, quite the reverse. The thirty odd
busts still extant of Socrates hand down to us an ugly, flat face with
pig’s-eyes, all characteristic of the _Torpedo narke_.[416]
Ælian (IX. 14) indulges in wondrous stories gleaned from his mother
and _viris peritis_ of the permeation of the electric shock. Did one
but touch the net in which the fish was taken, lo! he was cramp-bound.
If some enquiring observer placed a pregnant torpedo in a vase of
sea-water, his fate, did but a drop fall on leg or arm, was similar,
but the fish, even though this virtue had gone out of her, in due
season became a mother!
According to Mr. Lones, Oppian, Ælian, to whom (V. 37) we owe the
specific for immunity when handling the fish, _viz._ “the liquor of
Cyrene,” Theophrastus, all exaggerate the powers of the Torpedo.
A most interesting account is given in Athenæus (VII. 95), who avers
that the shock was not produced by all parts of the fish’s body, but by
certain parts only, and that Diphilus of Laodicea had proved this by a
long series of experiments.[417] According to Galen and Dioscorides the
shock, whence or however obtained, relieved chronic headache, while a
contemporary of the latter recommends a person suffering from gout in
the feet to stand “bare-legged” on the shore, and apply the Torpedo.
As the German and Austrian watering places are still under a cloud,
we may yet see on the shores of Italy bands of gouty and passionate
pilgrims standing bare-legged, awaiting the cure of the νάρκη!
Complaints of gout are rife, even among our fish-affecting
epigrammatists. From Hedylus, a singer rather of wine than of fish, we
trace the lineage of the disease, “of Bacchus the limb-loosener, and
of Venus the limb-loosener, is sprung a daughter, a limb-loosener, the
Gout”![418]
As to spawning, every author from Herodotus down to Izaak Walton has
evolved various but mostly inaccurate theories. Oppian (I. 479 ff.)
lays down that, as the passion of Love overcomes fish, the bodies of
the male and female meet in the water and “exude mingled slime,” which
swallowed by the female produces conception. To this (I. 554 ff.)
he allows an exception in the case of the _murænæ_. These mate with
land serpents, “who for a time lay aside their venom”: a monstrous
connection which finds affirmation by Sostratus[419] and by Pliny.[420]
The touching charm of the passage[421] about the _Naucrates ductor_ or
pilot fish (whence its name of ἡγητήρ), which for some reason in more
modern times has transferred its affection and services from the whale
to the shark, compels quotation:
“Bold in the front the little pilot glides,
Averts each danger, every motion guides;
With grateful joy the willing whales attend,
Observe the leader and revere the friend;
True to the little chief obsequious roll,
And soothe in friendship’s charms their savage soul.
Between the distant eyeballs of the whale
The watchful pilot waves his faithful tail,
With signs expressive points the doubtful way,
The bulky tyrants doubt not to obey,
Implicit trust repose in him alone,
And hear and see with senses not their own;
To him the important reins of life resign,
And every self-preserving care decline.”[422]
Some of Oppian’s best bits contain animated portraits of sea-fights.
The combatants are as intensely personified as Homer’s Greeks and
Trojans in their hand-to-hand fight on the banks of the Scamander. But
unlike the Heroes, the belligerents of Oppian pull each other to pieces
without any responsibility on their part, or shock to moral sense on
ours:
“Unwise we blame the rage of warring fish
Who urged by hunger _must_ supply the wish;
While cruel man, to whom his ready food
Kind Earth affords, yet thirsts for human blood.”
In proportion as fish, which according to the earliest authors was
despised or disregarded, grew in favour with the Greeks, the frequency
of its mention in Greek literature increased apace.
The _Deipnosophistæ_ by Athenæus, to which belongs the distinction
of being one of the earliest collections of _Ana_, is a curious sort
of philosophers’ feast. It quotes from nearly every writer on nearly
every topic; it discusses almost every conceivable subject, especially
gastronomy. It weighs the qualities of all things edible. Comments on
fish, taken from plays, histories, treatises, etc., are plentifully, if
incongruously, scattered.[423]
Everything goes in this work; grammatical problems are mixed up with
gastronomic; the discursiveness of Athenæus races from grave to gay,
grim death to any story, however apparently disconnected.
His tale of the _Pinna_ (III. 46), a bivalve shellfish, and the
Pinnothere (a small crab who inhabits the shell of the _Pinna_)
resembles many of the fables current among the West Indian negroes as
regards the cleverness of the Crab. As soon as the small fish, on which
the _Pinna_ subsists, have swum within the shell side, the Pinnothere
nips the _Pinna_ as a signal to him to close his shell and secure them.
Plutarch (_De Sol. Anim._, 30) shows that the habit was not entirely
altruistic, for “this being done, they feed together upon the common
prey.” From the _Pinna_ which haunts the bottom of the sea. From the
_Pinna_ which haunts the bottom of the sea came ”the most transparent
pearls, very pure and very large.”[424]
The enormous industry of Athenæus, who (VIII. 15) speaking of the
materials he had amassed for this one book, casually states that he
himself “had read and made extracts from 800 plays of the Middle Comedy
_alone_,” and in it cites nearly 800 authors, and over 1200 separate
books, has undoubtedly preserved to us many valuable passages of the
ample literature and numerous plays in which fishermen once figured.
My many quotations from and references to his _Deipnosophistæ_ make it
unnecessary to deal with this author[425] at greater length.
FOOTNOTES:
[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,
“Aeternorum operum custos fidelis
Quæstorque gazæ nobilioris.”
[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_),
“Quoi qu’en dise Aristote, et sa digne cabale,
Le tabac est divin, il n’est rien qui l’égale,”
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.