AUSONIUS—SALMO, SALAR AND FARIO—FIRST MENTION OF THE PIKE
Ausonius (_c._ 310-_c._ 393 A.D.) is practically the last Latin
writer within my time-limit (A.D. 500) who has allusions of interest
to Fishing. In the fifth century, however, Sidonius, whose fishing
and hunting interest apparently equalled his diocesan—_his_ ‘Nolo
Episcopari’ was, if fruitless, at once exceptional and genuine, for the
see of Clermont had to be forced on his acceptance—tells us in a letter
and in his poems of the catching of fish, especially by night lines in
a lake on his wife’s property in the Auvergne.[440]
The tenth Idyll of Ausonius (“Ad Mosellam,” a great favourite with
Izaak Walton), ranks, according to Mackail, “the writer not merely as
the last or all but last of Latin, but also as the first of French
poets.” It demands mention, quite apart from the vividness of its
pictures, because it is the only fisher poem of any length in classical
Latin, and because in it occurs the first mention of the _Salar_ and
the _Fario_.
Of the _Salmo_ Pliny three hundred years previously was the first to
speak.[441] The Greeks knew not the Salmon: at any rate, no opsophagist
or other author notices the fish. Their silence is natural; the high
temperature of the water forbids its frequenting the Mediterranean or
its inflowing rivers.[442]
The length of the whole poem (483 lines) prevents entire quotation,
although the touch and movement all through display fully the instinct
and feeling for sport.
Pictures of the scenery along the banks of the Moselle are followed
by the enumeration and characterisation of the fish in its waters
rendered after the manner of the didactic epic. The poem furnishes a
lively description of the fishermen of the Moselle, made from actual
observation. Men in boats drag nets in midstream; men watch the corks
of little nets in shallower water; men perched on banks or on rocks
armed with rods scan the floats bobbing on the water, or jerk in the
prey. But we search for fly-fishing in vain.
“And now, where the bank gives easy access, a host of spoilers are
searching all the waters.[443] Alas! poor fish, ill sheltered by thine
inmost stream! One of them trails his wet lines far out in mid-river,
and sweeps off the shoals caught in his knotty seine; where the stream
glides with placid course, another spreads his drag-nets buoyed on
their cork-floats.
“A third, leaning over the waters beneath the rock, lowers the arching
top of his supple rod, as he casts the hooks sheathed in deadly baits.
The unwary rovers of the deep rush on them with gaping mouth—too late,
their wide jaws feel through and through the stings of the hidden
barb—they writhe—the surface tells the tale, and the rod ducks to the
jerky twitch of the quivering horse-hair. Enough—with one whizzing
stroke the boy snatches his prey slant-wise from the water; the blow
vibrates on the breeze, as when a lash snaps in the air with a crack,
and the wind whistles to the shock.
“The finny captives bound on the dry rocks, in terror at the sunlight’s
deadly rays; the force which stood to them in their native stream
languishes under our sky, and wastes their life in struggles to
respire.[444] Now, only a dull throb shudders through the feeble frame,
the sluggish tail flaps in the last throes, the jaws gape, but the
breath which they inhale returns from the gills in the gaspings of
death: as, when a breeze fans the fires of the forge, the linen valve
of the bellows plays against its beechen sides, now opening, and now
shutting, to admit or to confine the wind.
“Some fish have I seen who, in the last agony, gathered their forces,
sprang aloft, and plunged head foremost into the river beneath,
regaining the waters for which they had ceased to hope. Impatient of
this loss, the thoughtless boy dashes in after them from above and
strikes out in wild pursuit. Even thus Glaucus of Anthedon, the old man
of the Bœotian Sea, when, after tasting Circe’s deadly herbs, he ate of
the grass which dying fish had nibbled,[445] passes, a strange denizen,
into the Carpathian deep. Armed with hook and net, a fisherman in the
depths of that realm whose upper waters he had been wont to plunder,
Glaucus glided along, the pirate of those helpless tribes.”
Whether the _Salar_ and the _Fario_ of the Idyll are, or are not,
identical with the burn trout or salmon trout of modern days affords a
problem for ichthyologists, not for me.
Ausonius is the first to mention not only the _Salar_ and _Fario_[446]
but also our Pike—_Esox Lucius_.[447]
“Lucius obscuras ulva cænoque lacunas
Obsidet; hic nullos mensarum lectus ad usus
Fervet fumosis olido nidore popinis,”
which Badham has loosely translated:
“The wary luce, midst wrack and rushes hid,
The scourge and terror of the scaly brood,
Unknown at friendship’s hospitable board,
Smokes midst the smoking tavern’s coarsest food.”
The striking silence as to a fish so far-spread in his habitat and so
notable in his habits as _Esox lucius_ in all preceding Greek and Latin
literature must excuse a semi-excursus.
Cuvier writes: “We are necessarily astonished that the Ancients have
left us no document, so to speak, on a fish so abundant in Europe as
the Pike ... a fish which the Greeks must have known. The word _Esox_
occurs only once (Pliny, IX. 17) as an example of a large fish[448]
comparable to the Tunny in form. In spite of Hardouin, I do not see
that _Esox_ of the Rhine is the Pike, or believe with Ducange that it
is the Salmon. The name _Luccio_ or _Luzzo_, by which we still call the
Pike in this country, gives force to the supposition that the Latins of
the time of Ausonius called it _Lucius_.”[449]
The astonishment at the absence of all reference to the Pike would be
greatly increased, if the authors, or really Valenciennes, had lived to
read later writers. Parkyn (_op. cit._, p. 131) cites the fish among
those represented by the craftsmen of both Palæolithic and Neolithic
Art in the caves of France and Spain. G. de Mortillet (_op. cit._, p.
220) claims that the remains of Pike in the Palæolithic age occur not
infrequently. F. Keller (_op. cit._, vol. I. 537, 544) notes their
presence in Neolithic finds at Moosseedorf, etc. Meek, _Migration
of Fish_, p. 18 (London, 1917), states that the Pike “occupied the
European region in Oligocene and Miocene times, and that the remains of
Pike are found in the Pleistocene of Breslau.”
Attempts have been made to explain the absence of this fish previous to
Ausonius by identifying _Esox lucius_ with (A) the _Oxyrhynchus_, and
(B) the _Lupus_. These seem to me unsuccessful.[450]
Petrus Bellonius among the early writers upholds the first
identification. In his _Observations de Plusieurs Singularitëz_, Book
II. ch. 32 (published 1553), “Le fleuve du Nil nourrit plusieurs autres
poissons, lesquelz toutes fois ie ne veul specifier en ce lieu, sinon
entăt que le Brochet y est frequent, et que nous avons difficulté
de luy trouver une appellation antique, ie veul mŏstrer qu’il fut
ancieňement appellé Oxyrynchus.”
His effort breaks down for three reasons. First, Ælian says that the
_Oxyrhynchus_,—a fish supposed to have sprung from the blood of the
dead Osiris, or to be the _impiscation_ (if the word may be coined)
of Osiris—although caught in the Nile (X. 46, 1, 12.), dwells mainly,
or according to Plutarch, _de Iside et Osiride_, 7, altogether in the
sea, whereas our _Esox_ cannot endure sea-water. Second, the sharp
pointed form of beak (whence the name) cannot possibly represent
the broad goose-like mouthpiece of our Pike. Third, the size of the
_Oxyrhynchus_, often 8 cubits or 12 feet in length,[451] proscribes the
Pike.
Against the identification suggested by Franciscus Philadelphus
of _Esox lucius_ with _Lupus_ two reasons lean heavily: (A) the
etymological impossibility of λύκος (because of the wolflike nature of
the Pike[452]) changing into Lucius, and (B) the _Lupus_ is _always_ in
Greek called λάβραξ, never λύκος.[453]
The story of how the _Lupus_ comes to his death by the Prawn can be
read in Oppian[454] and in Ælian.[455] The fish, ever voracious, takes
the prawns into his mouth by the thousand; these, unable to resist or
retreat, jump about and puncture his throat and jaws so seriously that
he soon dies of poison and suffocation.
Pliny (IX. 17), it has been claimed, under the word _Esox_ intends
our _Esox lucius_; but Cuvier maintains, and rightly, that his _Esox_
signifies some very large fish, perhaps a Tunny.
Sulpicius Severus, a presbyter who lived in Aquitania (_c._ 365-425
A.D.) and penned an enthusiastic _Life of S. Martin of Tour_,[456]
writes: “ad primum jactum reti permodico immanem Esocem extraxit.” It
is not for me to discuss or decry this amazing statement of a very
small net holding this monstrous _Esox_. But as the growth of a Pike
under the most favourable circumstances is probably not more than 2
lbs. a year for twelve years when usually it lessens materially, I do
suggest that the adjective _immanem_ is hardly applicable (unless St.
Martin’s biographer, perhaps also a fisherman, has lapsed unconsciously
into a “fish story”) to a fish of about 20 or 30 lbs., and so would
seem to confirm Cuvier.[457]
Pike, Carp, and Grayling were not apparently indigenous in England.
They were introduced from the Continent at some undetermined date by
one of the earlier religious orders for the better keeping of Fast
Days, which as enjoined by the Church, even in Queen Elizabeth’s time,
amounted to no less than 145 in number.[458]
The Pike, though known in the thirteenth century, was very scarce. Its
price (as fixed by Edward I.) doubled that of the salmon, and exceeded
ten times over that of either the turbot or cod. Even as late as the
Reformation a large pike fetched as much as a February lamb, and a very
small pickerel more than a fat capon. This ratio of prices recalls the
rebuke administered by Cato the Censor to those prodigal Romans who
were willing to pay more for a dish of fish than for a whole ox.
In view of the necessity for fish on the fast days, which claimed
nearly half the year, the situation of twenty Sees (two Archbishoprics
and eighteen Bishoprics) out of twenty-seven on what were then salmon
rivers can hardly have been a geographical accident.
The Carp must also have been a scarce fish in Tudor England. Dame
Juliana Berners writes, “Ther be fewe in Englande.” Holinshed, _à
propos_ of its scarcity in the Thames, states, “It is not long since
that kind of fish is brought over into England.” Leonard Mascall,
however, in his _Book of Fishinge_ (1596), credits a Mr. Mascall of
Plumstead in Essex with the introduction of carp.
A hackneyed couplet, frequently quoted for the purpose of establishing
the date at which carp and pike were introduced, but so full of
mistakes as to be worthless, runs thus:
“Turkies, Carps, Hops, Pickerell, and Beer,
Came into England all in one year.”
Since another version brackets “Reformation, hops, bays, and beer,” the
year intended is obviously 1532.
A Pike, or rather the head of a fish so-called, served at supper is
said to have caused the end of Theodoric the Goth. In it he imagined
he saw the face and head of Symmachus, whom he had just put to death;
straightway he became so terror-stricken that within three days he had
joined his victim.
[Illustration: THE NAKED FISHERMAN OF THE VATICAN.]
FOOTNOTES:
[440] _Ep._, II. 2; _Carmina_, XIX. and XXI. Fortunately for Sidonius,
Clermont was in the Auvergne, so he could be at once _piscator_ and
_episcopus_.
[441] IX. 32. “In Aquitania salmo fluvialis marinis omnibus prefertur.”
To make this clear _piscibus_ should be understood after _omnibus_. The
salmon is the fish most frequently found in the débris of the French
caves, many of which are in Aquitania, so Palæolithic and Plinian man
at any rate ate tooth to tooth in their preference. See Introduction.
It is somewhat amazing, considering their opsophagy and the excellence
of the fish, that down to 500 A.D. no Greek, and no Latin writer,
except Pliny, Ausonius, and Sidonius, _Ep._ II. 2, mentions the
_Salmonidæ_. I cannot forgo Ausonius’s epithet—mouth-filling yet
appropriate—for us, who dwell in “this blessed Isle, this England,”
_Aquilonigenasque Britannos_.
[442] Salmon appear but infrequently in representations, but Plate 8
in C. W. King’s _Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire_,
London, 1879, shows in colours a mosaic dedicated to the god Nodons
by Flavius Senilis, an officer in command of the fleet stationed off
the Severn: this mosaic includes a number of _salmon_. King, _ib._
Plate 13, 2, is a diadem of beaten bronze representing a fisherman
with a pointed cap in the act of hooking with undoubtedly a _tight_
line a fine salmon: cf. A. B. Cook’s discussion of these finds in
_Folk-Lore_, 1906, XVI. 37 ff. Nodons was in fact, like Nuada, a fish
god, indeed a Celtic understudy for Neptune. If salmon figure little
in representations, they bulk large in laws, and in commissariats for
campaigns, _e.g._ 3000 dried salmon were ordered by Edw. II. in his war
with Bruce.
[443] From Professor R. C. Jebbs’ _Translation_, p. 176 (line 240 ff.).
[444] Cf. Plutarch, _Symp._, IV. 4. “The place where we live is to
fish no less than Hell: for no sooner come they unto it, but dead they
immediately be.” Holland’s _Translation_.
[445] For the story of Glaucus, see Æsch., _Frag._ 28; Paus., IX. 22, 6
and 7; Virgil, _Æn._, VI. 36; and Athen., VII. 47, 8. Ausonius follows
the version according to which Glaucus had been metamorphosed by Circe,
and then on tasting the herb regained his human form as the “Old Man of
the Sea.” Ovid, _Met._, XIII. 898 ff.
[446] _Mosella_, 88. “Purpureisque Salar stellatus tergora guttis,” and
_ibid._, 129 f., “Qui necdum Salmo, necdum Salar, ambiguusque Amborum
medio, sario, intercepte sub ævo.”
[447] _Mosella_, 122 ff. Polemius Silvius, _Index Dierum Festorum_,
more than half a century later, seems the second—such is the
infrequency of mention.
[448] C. Mayhoff here prints J. Hardouin’s conjecture _isox_, which was
based on Hesychius’ gloss, ἴσοξ ἰχθὺς ποιὸς κητώδης.
[449] Cuvier and Valenciennes _Histoire Naturelle des Poissons_, vol.
XVIII., pp. 279-80 (Paris, 1846). See Introduction. If the Pike be late
in literature, in heraldry it makes amends, for there is no earlier
example of fish borne in English heraldry than is afforded by the
Pike in the arms of the family of Lucy, or Lucius—a play on words not
confined to heraldry but to be found in Shakespeare, Puttenham, and
others. See Moule, _op. cit._, p. 49.
[450] For the attempt to identify the _Esox_ with the _Huso_ made by
a French writer, _apud Vincentium_, XVII. 53, and with the Salmon by
other writers, see J. G. Schneider, _op. cit._, pp. 24 and 126.
[451] Ælian, _N. H._, XVII. 32.
[452] The epigram on Pope Lucius III. (1181 to 1185 A.D.), who was
banished from Rome for his tyranny and exactions, is, both as a
comparison and a contrast, apt.
“Lucius est piscis rex atque tyrannus aquarum:
A quo discordat Lucius iste parum.
Devorat ille homines, his piscibus insidiatur:
Esurit hic semper, ille aliquando satur.
Amborum vitam si laus æquata notaret,
Plus rationis habet qui ratione caret.”
[453] Athen., VII. 86; “The λάβραξ has his name from his voracity,
λαβρότης” (cf. Opp., II. 130). It is said also in shrewdness he is
superior to other fish, being very ingenious in devising means to save
himself, wherefore Aristophanes the comedian writes:
“Labrax, the wisest of all fish that be.”
[454] _Op. cit._ II. 127 ff.
[455] _Op. cit._ I. 30.
[456] _De Virtute B. Martini_, III. 13.
[457] The biggest Pike ever caught in the United Kingdom seems to be
the 72-pounder mentioned by Colonel Thornton in his “Sporting Tour.”
Walton’s ring-decorated fish (see Gesner), three hundred years or so
old, was no doubt heavier, if it were genuine. At any rate a Pike of
40-50 lbs. is very exceptional.
[458] The value of the herring (_Clupea harengus_) was unknown to
the Greeks and Romans, and so remained generally till the Middle
Ages. “Ignorance, presumably of the real nature of the Cetaceans
betrayed our forefathers into breaking Lent, for under the impression
that the whale, porpoise, and seal were fish, they ate them on fast
days. High prices, moreover, were paid for such meats, and porpoise
pudding was a dish of State as late as the sixteenth century” (P.
Robinson, _Fisheries Exhibition Literature_, Pt. III. p. 42). Some
laxity may, I think, be pardoned, for the very name “porpoise” (in
Guernsey _pourpeis_)—derived apparently from _porc-peis_ (_porcum_ +
_piscem_)—implies that the creature was regarded as a “pig-fish.”