CHAPTER V
ARISTOTLE—THE FIRST “SCALE-READER”; THE FIRST TO DISCOVER THAT IN THE MUREX ITS YEARLY GROWTH IS INDICATED BY THE SHELL—SENSES OF FISH: EXPERIMENTS AS TO HEARING
“Aristotle hath his Oare in every Water”
If the passage quoted in my Introduction left any doubt that Plato was no admirer of fishing or fishermen, the following, from The Laws, VII. 823 (Jowett’s translation), is conclusive proof.
“And, now, let us address young men in the form of a prayer for their welfare: O Friends, may no desire of hunting in the sea, or of catching the creatures in the waters, ever take possession of you, either when you are awake, or when you are asleep, by hooks, with weels, which latter is a very lazy contrivance, and let no desire of catching men, or piracy by sea, enter into your souls.”
Then Plato adds: “Only the best of hunting is allowed at all, which is carried on by men with horses, dogs, and men’s own persons,” and is really hard exercise. “Fishing is not an occupation worthy of a man well born or well brought up, because it demands more of address and ruse than force, and is not for young people, like hunting, the occasion of healthy exercise.”[242]
When expressing astonishment at the variety and extent of Aristotle’s knowledge, one of the characters of Athenæus asks from what Proteus or Nereus he could have found out all he writes about fishes and other animals.[243] The curiosity of the questioner was natural. It is, however, probable that Aristotle, from living for several years close to the sea and from his intercourse with fishermen, had amassed a big fund of information about fishes and other aquatic animals.
His knowledge of the Mediterranean fishes not only exceeded that of any ancient writer, but also, if Belon, Rondolet, and Salviani be excepted, that of any writer before Risso and Cuvier. However true may be the criticism of Dr. Günther that Aristotle’s “ideas of specific distinction were as vague as those of the fishermen whose nomenclature he adopted,” the fact cannot be gainsaid that Aristotle was, and remains, a very great Naturalist as well as a very great Biologist.
To him[244] by right belongs the distinction, which (except incidentally in Mr. Lones’ work[245]) I have so far failed to find attributed to him, of being the first writer to note, certainly the first to point out, that its scales make possible a shrewd, in the case of the murex an exact, computation of the age of a fish.
If from lack of the microscope he did not in all particulars antedate, he certainly blazed the trail for the discovery of scale-reading at the close of the eighteenth century by the Dutch microscopist van Leeuwenhoek[246] and its rediscovery as regards the carp in 1899 by Hoffbauer,[247] the Gadidæ and Pleuronectidæ in 1900-03 by J. Stuart Thomson,[248] and the Salmonidæ about 1904 by H. W. Johnston and others.[249]
He tells us in The Natural History, I. 1, that “what the feather is in a bird, the scale is in a fish”; in III. 11,[250] that “the scales of fish become harder and thicker, and in those which are wasting or aging, become still harder”; in VIII. 30, that “the old fish are distinguishable by the size” (note this!) “and the hardness of their scales.”[251]
He then buttresses this discovery of annual growth of scale by another fact resulting from his observation that “the Murex lives for about six years, and the yearly increase is indicated by a distinct interval in the spiral convolution of the shell,”[252] or as Bohn renders the words, “its annual increase is seen in the divisions on the helix of its shell.”
In Leeuwenhoek we read that, in the examination by a rough self-made microscope of the scales of a large tame carp, he counted the component scale-layers lying one above the other, “as if glued together,” and found without exception that a new layer larger than the one of the preceding year is added. The carp, accidentally killed when forty years old, possessed forty such layers in each scale. He adds pathetically—anticipating perhaps Lytton’s—
“A Reformer, a creed by posterity learnt A century after its author is burnt”—
that “many people accused me of telling lies on the matter!”[253]
One cannot help being struck with acute astonishment that for over the 2000 years between Aristotle and Leeuwenhoek we obtain, with the exception[254] of nine words in Pliny (IX. 33), Senectutis indicium squamarum duritia, quæ non sunt omnibus similes, cribbed and condensed, as was often his wont, from Aristotle, little, if any, addition to our knowledge of scale-reading.
The ancient authors either ignore or are ignorant of it. Nowhere, not even in that close observer Oppian, that omnivorous reader Athenæus, that pleasant purloiner Ælian, do we read a single line on the subject. But our astonishment, even if we allow for absence of microscope, grows acuter, when we are met in the three most important Ichthyologists before the eighteenth century, Belon, Salviani, and Rondolet, with the same silence.
And this fate of silence apparently prevails even after Leeuwenhoek’s book; his discovery seems to have been lost or remained dormant in his pages till a score of years ago.
Had microscopes existed in his day, we may surely surmise that Aristotle would have perfected the system of scale-reading, and thus have come down to posterity with his title of “The Philosopher of the many Rings” better earned than by his foppish affection for jewellery.
In general opinion, the person most closely approaching the required Proteus or Nereus was his pupil and sometime friend, Alexander the Great. By placing at his disposal several thousand men to collect all kinds of animals and fishes from all parts of the then known world, he enabled him with the aid of the materials thus provided to produce his famous Natural History.
For this identification we have not a scrap of internal evidence, but merely the assertions of much later writers, such as Pliny, Athenæus (who adds that Philip gave him 800 talents to finish the History), and Ælian.[255]
Apart from want of intrinsic evidence, the fact that the geographical references and the fish mentioned in his Natural History nearly all cluster round Lesbos effectually precludes the idea of Alexander “Hagenbecking” for Aristotle.[256]
Internal evidence and reasons advanced by Professor D’Arcy Thompson[257] indicate that nearly all the animals and fishes with which Aristotle was practically acquainted belonged to Greece, Western Asia, and Sappho’s Lesbos (especially of the lagoon of Pyrrha), where he lived some four years just previous to his Macedonian trip, 343 b.c.
The fishes in his Natural History, mostly given without any attempt at classification or really adequate description, number at least one hundred and ten. He discusses in some instances the anatomical characteristics, food, breeding habits, migrations, and modes of capture. Of the hundred and ten only some fifty fish can be scientifically identified; of which, all save six come from the sea.
This figure of about one hundred and ten speaks wonders for his industry and knowledge. Even after the lapse of 1800 years separating him from the sixteenth century, the list of Mediterranean fishes compiled by Belon comprises but a hundred or so, and by Rondolet but some one hundred and sixty names. Risso, writing as late as 1810, furnishes no more than three hundred and fifteen, of which he asserts that eighty-eight had never been previously described.
Not unnaturally, this industry and this knowledge caused our author to be at Athens not only a stumbling-block unto the wise, but “a very wonder unto fools,” as the comedians said, who fastened on an occasional lapse, such as his theory that the whole race of shell fish generate without connection.
The Natural History nevertheless will always remain a monument of extraordinary diligence and mental vigour, especially when we bear in mind that he seemingly lacked any antiseptic preparation for the preservation of specimens. His pre-eminence of merit is indicated by the fact that of all the Greek and Latin authors he approximates nearest to some idea of zoological system.
And yet this father of science and this founder of logic makes a direct personal appeal to us as a man very human in his life and tastes. Epicurus, “that most truthful of men,”[258] alleges that, when young, Aristotle went the pace, and squandered his patrimony in good living and other pleasant delights. In addition to his love for jewellery and personal adornment we discover him as a great connoisseur of beautiful silver, of which he bequeathed over seventy rare bowls. He ranks in opsophagy as an epicure of the highest order.
It is curious to note that in Aristotle, who apparently was familiar with most, if not all, of the then existent methods, no mention, as far as I can recall, occurs of actual fishing, save his story of the fight and escape of a big Glanis.
He owed his knowledge largely to his intercourse with fishermen and his close acquaintance with the fish markets—a haunting of which in Mediterranean ports was, as in Naples it still is, productive of a liberal education from the numerous specimens displayed and the hundreds of vernacular names applied to them.
Contrast this with our British markets, where, despite our more favourable wealth of sea-harvest, the kinds on sale seldom exceed a score or so, and their vernacular names hardly reach half-a-hundred.
Granting, however, all the advantages accruing from such acquaintance[259] with fishers and fishmongers, it needed an Aristotle to produce a book of such keen observation and (generally) accurate conclusions as his Natural History: for be it remembered that this, when compared with the vast volume of his other works, is a mere by-product of his industry and intellect, thrown off probably in the few years of his banishment.
Little escaped his ken, or his pen.[260] At one moment he notes that neither hermaphroditism nor parthenogenesis are uncommon, at the next he deals with the senses in fish. The question whether fish do actually hear or do not hear, remains, comme les pauvres, always with us; it remains like Etna dormant for decades, suddenly to pour forth columns of print which lava-like scar the fair face of many a ream of paper.
Aristotle comes down flat-footed in his verdict: fishes (we read, IV. 8) in spite of having no visible auditory organs undoubtedly do hear; “for they are observed to run away from any loud noises like the rowing of a galley. Indeed some people dwelling near the sea affirm that of all living creatures the fish is the quickest of hearing.”
Space forbids my dwelling on the various theories as to whether the undoubted effect of their being disturbed by certain noises is attained by hearing proper, or by vibration acting on the surface part of the fish and communicating instantly with the internal ear.
Day’s summary of the question, still regarded after thirty years as fair and conclusive, even if attaching undue importance to the fontanelles, is as follows. “Hearing is developed in fish, and it is very remarkable how any diversity of opinion can exist as to their possessing this sense. The internal auditory apparatus is placed within the cranial cavity: its chief constituent parts are the labyrinth, which is composed of three semi-circular canals, and a vestibule, which latter expands into one or more sacs, where the ear bones or otoliths are lodged. A tympanum and tympanic cavity are absent. They possess fontanelles between the bones, forming the roof of the skull, which being closed by very thin bones or skin permit sounds from the surrounding water to be readily transmitted to the contiguous internal ears. But the chief mode in which hearing is carried on must be due to the surface of the fish being affected by vibration of the water, and the sounds are transmitted directly to the internal ear, or else by means of the air-bladder acting as a sounding drum.”[261]
It goes against the grain to differ with such a charmful and theme-ful author as Sir Herbert Maxwell. But his conclusion[262] that fish in Loch Ken were disturbed every time a shooting party half to three-quarters of a mile away discharged their guns cannot be reconciled with the experiments made by me in July 1918 to test the behaviour of trout, when guns were fired, not half a mile away, but quite close to them.
Three of us, all accustomed to watching fish, selected a narrow shallow burn in which the trout ran from fingerlings up to fish three or four years old. Each in turn fired the gun (an ordinary 12 bore C.F.), with the usual shooting charge of powder and No. 5 shot. At the first two trials only was the shot extracted, so as to eliminate any vibration set up by its striking the opposite bank. Two of us lying hidden in the grass observed from different spots.
The gun was fired eight feet, four feet, and three feet above the surface of the stream, which varied in breadth from eight to ten feet, and in depth from sixteen to nineteen inches. It was fired into the air and into the opposite bank (struck from four to two feet above the water) in a direct line above different fishes, lying either singly or in shoals from five to nine inches from the bottom in small pools or runs sixteen to nineteen inches deep. Care was taken to fire up stream, to prevent the trout being startled by the flash of the cartridge.
In no case did the trout take the very least notice, or give any sign of having heard the explosion or felt the concussion of the shot on the opposite bank, composed on three occasions of alluvial soil and on two of rock. Never once did a fish move or go down: in fact, in one of the experiments over a single well-grown trout, the fish was rising again to the natural fly in less than thirty seconds after the discharge of the gun.[263]
Aristotle almost certainly learnt dissection when young. His father belonged to the Asclepiads, an order of priest-physicians who are believed to have practised dissection and taught it to their children. The son’s extensive knowledge of the internal parts of mammals, birds, and fishes probably resulted from dissections. Mr. Lones names forty-nine animals and fishes which from the trustworthiness of the definite information imparted were (he holds) certainly dissected. Of these some five are fish.
To the question whether Aristotle ever dissected the human body, the answer after examining the evidence available must, I think, be in the negative, for three reasons. First: after describing the external parts of the human body he states that the internal parts are less known than those of animals, and that we must, in order to describe them, examine the corresponding parts of animals which are most nearly related to man.
Second: his many mistakes—such as in the position of the heart being above the lungs, the emptiness of the occiput, etc.—can hardly be casual slips made by one familiar with human dissection. The passage, however, in Nat. Hist., VII. 3, points distinctly to his having to some degree dissected the fœtus.
But this would not conflict with the third and weightiest reason, namely the strong repugnance felt by the Greeks to any mutilation of the body proper and any neglect of speedy burial. The sad appeal of the shade of the unburied Patroclus (Il., XXIII. 71 ff.): “Bury me with all speed that I pass the gates of Hades. Far off the spirits banish me, nor do the phantoms of men outworn suffer me to mingle with them beyond the river,” the fervent desire of some of Homer’s Heroes that funeral rites should promptly follow their death,[264] and the agony of Antigone, all these and other instances manifest Greek sentiment. So strong and widespread was this that human dissection would have certainly aroused intense bitterness and probably caused the perpetual banishment of the perpetrator. The suggestion, resting on no evidence, that Aristotle dissected the human body secretly can neither be proved, nor disproved.
The Japanese, till recently, also refrained from dissection of the human body. It was not till the arrival in 1873 of Professor W. Donitz to fill the Chair of Anatomy in the newly established Academy of Medicine in Tokyo that dissection first came to be employed. This new era of medical science started under the happiest circumstances, for frequent hangings, an aftermath of internal strife, provided ample material for its prosecution.[265]
CHAPTER VI
CHARACTERISTICS OF FISHERMEN IN GREECE AND ROME—POVERTY
“THE BADGE OF ALL OUR TRIBE”—DEITIES OF FISHING
“Laud to the Lord, who gives to this, to that denies his wishes, And dooms one toil and catch the prey, another eat the fishes.”[266]
This seems the most convenient, if not quite the chronological, place for examining the position and attributes of fishermen in the poems, epigrams, and eclogues of Greek literature.
Of the two oldest of fisherfolk epigrams or epitaphs, the first is attributed to Sappho, the second to Alcæus of Mitylene. In these rings insistent the same note of hard toil and poverty, which permeates the piscatory eclogues of Theocritus and his followers.
From Sappho “the sole woman of any age or any country who gained and still holds an unchallenged place in the first rank of the world’s poets”[267] comes down
“Meniscus, mourning for his only son, The toil-experienced fisher Pelagon, Has placed upon his tomb a net and oar, The badges of a painful life and poor.”[268]
I cherished high hope of finding in the recently discovered Fragments of Sappho in Part X. of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, or in the articles on them by Mr. J. M. Edmonds in the Classical Review of May 1914 and June 1916, a second fisher epigram, or at any rate an allusion to fishing. Alas! the Papyri yield some amatory, but no piscatory verses. Apparently neither Sappho nor Alcæus make any other reference to fishing.
The verses of Alcæus stress poverty even more strongly:
“The fisher Diotimus had at sea And shore the same abode of poverty— His trusty boat—and when his days were spent, Therein self-rowed, to ruthless Dis he went: For that which did through life his woes beguile, Supplied the old man with a funeral pile.”[269]
“From fragments of Greek Comedy it is evident that fishers were among the familiar characters on the stage, and were sometimes the protagonists.” Examination of the Old, Middle and New Comedians confirm Dr. Hall.[270]
In Epicharmus (b.c. 540-450) the reputed founder of Comedy in Sicily; in Sophron’s The Fisherman and the Clown, where the former naturally outwits the country boor; in Plato the comedian’s Phaon, where he may have ridiculed the legend of Sappho’s vain love for the Lesbian fisherman; in The Fishes by Archippus, where people were satirised under the names of fishes spelled in the same way as their own; or (to pass from Old to Middle Comedy) in The Fisher-Woman by Antiphanes (in the fragments of which, however, we are confronted by no Sex problem, by no Suffragettism[271]); and (of the New Comedy authors) in Menander’s The Fishermen (where we gather from Pollux that a fisher came on the stage fully equipped for fishing), in all these plays and many more appear fisher folk.[272]
Archippus’ drama deserves a moment’s notice, because in imitation of Aristophanes’ Birds the poet ventured on a chorus composed exclusively of Fishes. Extant fragments of the play (performed probably in 413 b.c.) tell of war being declared by the fish against their oppressors the Athenians, who were passionate opsophagists. The principal condition of the Peace Points—whether Fourteen or more our data do not determine—secured the prompt delivery to the Fishes of the head of their chief foe, Melanthios.
If the protocol of this Treaty had attracted the notice of President Wilson, who as a constitutional historian attaches importance to the “broadening down from precedent to precedent,” the demands of the Allies for the immediate surrender of our arch-enemy, the Kaiser, might have been more insistent and scarcely less successful.
And so from the first loci classici of fishing in Homer we journey on through the succeeding centuries. In nearly all we encounter fishing and fishermen in literature or play. In the third b.c. we reach the next locus classicus—“The Fisherman’s Dream,” Idyll XXI. of Theocritus.
“Theocritus is the creator of the literary piscatory, as he is also of the literary bucolic.” This dictum would, I think, be rendered more accurate by the substitution of modeller in place of creator. Theocritus, even if we allow for Stesichorus, Epicharmus, and Sophron, stands out the first, not to create but to gather, and by his genius reduce to regular literary shape, the existent poems and songs (Volkslieder) which formed the stock in trade of the Bucoliastæ in Cos, Sicily, and Magna Græcia.[273]
The influence of Theocritus on fishing literature in mime, epigram, or romance is writ large in the pages not only of Moschus, Leonidas of Tarentum, Alciphron, Plautus, Ovid, but also of Sannazaro in the fifteenth, of our Spenser[274] and his followers in the sixteenth and subsequent centuries, and even of Keats.[275]
This influence shows most widely in the more abundant literary bucolic. Virgil, for instance, admits his model in the opening lines of Eclogue IV.:
Sicelides Musæ, paulo maiora canamus ...
A recent writer straightly asserts that “without Theocritus the Bucolics (save the mark!) of Virgil could never have been conceived, or, if conceived, would have miscarried.”[276]
Whether or not the offspring of this parentage is not too savagely depreciated, we note with surprise that Virgil,
“Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word,”
a professed imitator of Theocritus, to whom fishermen were as familiar as the waters by which they lived and figured in many of his Idylls,[277] never mentions fishermen in his Bucolics.
His only (I believe) allusions to them—and the first is merely incidental to an account of the primitive Arts of Man, and how fishing as an Art came in only as the Golden Age went out—are in Georgic, I. 141-2, Atque alius latum funda iam verberat amnem | Alta petens, pelagoque alius trahit humida lina, and in the Æneid (XII. 517 ff.):
Et iuvenem exosum nequiquam bella Menœten, Arcada, piscosæ cui circum flumina Lernæ Ars fuerat, pauperque domus, nec nota potentum Munera, conductaque pater tellure serebat.[278]
Even in these four lines observe how insistently rings out the note of poverty!—the constant characteristic, the almost invariable badge, as we shall soon see, of every professional fisherman in Greek poems, plays, or writers from Homer down to the later Greek Romanticists,[279] or (as far as I know) in the epigrams from 700 b.c. to 500 a.d., of the Anthologia Palatina.[280]
“The figure of the weather-beaten fisher is a favourite one in the old poets, and we meet it constantly in Art; in Greek, and in Roman Art especially, it was a very favourite subject.”[281]
M. Campaux, Mr. Hall, and Herr Bunsmann confirm and amplify this sentence of Blümner’s. The thesis of Bunsmann—not easy to obtain, although published in 1910 at Münster in Westphalia—seems within its limited scope (he scarcely touches on the methods or craft of fishing) perhaps the best little treatise De Piscatorum in Græcorum atque Romanorum litteris usu.
He sets out to discover and formulate a list of the characteristics most frequently attributed to fishermen. He proceeds to establish each of the dozen selected by buttressing questions from Homer down to Sidonius.
Hospitality, Piety to the Gods and Dead, Shrewd (almost Pawky) Humour, Old Age, Toil and Poverty figure most prominently. I can only notice one or two of the passages cited in support of each characteristic, but the evidence adduced generally carries conviction.
On the Hospitality of fishermen, poor though it were, stress is laid by Greek and Roman writers.
Bunsmann’s citation of Petronius (Sat., 114) and Plutarch (Vita Pompeii, 73) as witnesses to credit is, however, far from happy, especially in the case of the former, who recounts that when the boat had been so battered as to be a-wash “procurrere piscatores parvulis expediti navigiis ad prædam rapiendam.” The lightning-like change of the fishermen, on realising that their intended victims were ready to defend themselves, from plunderers to helpers, and the non-denial to the shipwrecked folk of the use of their hut for eating some sea-sodden food, scarcely shine as exemplars of high Hospitality. No wonder the guests dragged out a “most miserable night.”
Tyrrhenus, the old deaf fisherman in The Ethiopian History (omitted by Bunsmann), embodies a far better instance of the characteristic Hospitality. His glad welcome and the surrender to his guests of “the cosier part of his dwelling” betoken Nature’s gentleman.[282]
A still better instance meets us in the Greek romance of Apollonius of Tyre[283] possibly an imitation of the Heliodorus idyll. The prince, sole survivor of a shipwreck, is found, fed, clad, and afterwards directed by an old fisherman to Pentapolis, where he wins a competition before the king. This romance, which survives in a Latin version of the sixth century, became in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries widely popular and translated into most European languages. To it, as the scenes and the characters prove, Shakespeare, or possibly Wilkins, must have owed much of his Pericles.
On the question whence originated their Piety to the Gods, whether it sprang from or was only influenced by the fact that their lives were passed amid the unknown but ever-present and awful forces of Nature identified with certain gods, or sprang rather from a gratitude proportioned to future benefits, Bunsmann is discreetly non-committal.
But of outward and visible signs of such Piety the Anthologia Palatina is eloquent. Their Piety towards the dead is strikingly attested by Hegesippus, the simplicity of whose style in his eight epigrams in Anth. Pal. betokens an early date. “The fishermen brought up from the sea in their net a half-eaten man, a most mournful relic of some voyage. They sought not for unholy gain, but him and the fishes too they buried under this light coat of sand.”[284]
Bunsmann furnishes two records of impiety among fishermen. The first occurs in the well-known Baiano procul a lacu recede of Martial (Epigr., IV. 30), where an impious poacher in the very act of landing his fish from the Emperor’s lake is stricken with blindness. The second, in Athen., VII. 18, and Ælian, XV. 23, where Epopeus, a fisherman of the island of Icarus, enraged by taking nothing but sacred or tabu Pompili, turned to with his son and devoured them, only themselves in turn to be devoured by a whale.[285]
But the impietas charged from Anth. Pal., VI. 24, is fantastic. The indictment has been drawn owing either to mistranslation of the passage or inability to appreciate the rather heavy-handed humour (frequent in the Greek and Roman writers of the time) of Lucilius, a conjectured author of the Epigram.
Heliodorus lays down at the portals of the temple of “the Syrian goddess” a votive offering of his fishing net worn out, not by catches of fish, but of seaweed “from the beaches of goodly havens.” This dedication, as fish were sacred to the goddess and in Syria were forbidden as a food, has been imputed as an affront to the deity, but quite incorrectly. Heliodorus in offering his net intended no disrespect, nor offended any law of the temple. Since its sole catch had been seaweed, his net could plead “pure from the prey of fishery.”
The point of the pleasantry is akin to the caustic defence offered on behalf of a Jewish portrait painter, “as none of the pictures are likenesses, he is guiltless of breaking the Second Commandment!”
Ovid’s pretty fancy to account for the Syrian abstention doubtless hangs together with the Greek conception of Atargatis and Aphrodite being one and the same. When the Giants revolted against the Gods, Venus fleeing with Cupid reaches, but is stayed by, the Euphrates: thither, Palæstinæ margine aquæ, in answer to her piteous plaints to heaven above and earth below, two fish approach and convey mother and child safely across the flood.[286]
“Inde nefas ducunt genus hoc imponere mensis Nec violant timidi piscibus ora Syri.” Fasti, II. 473-4.
But other books, other legends! for the same author (in Met., V. 331) tells us that in the battle Venus changes herself into a fish.
Ktesias gives another account.[287] Derceto by the wiles of Aphrodite “fell in love with a beautiful young man and was brought to bed of a daughter: being ashamed of what she had done, she slew the young man, exposed in the desert the child (who, fed with milk and then with cheese by pilfering pigeons, grew up to become the famous Semiramis) and then cast herself into the lake at Ascalon and was transformed into a fish—whence it came to pass that at this very day the Syrians eat no fishes, but adore them as gods” (Booth’s Trans.).
Of the instances of calliditas or shrewd wit of fishermen, the story (supra) of the fisher lads’ answer to Homer and the following from Alciphron (I. 16) must suffice, although from Æsop, etc., many others can be gleaned. The whole passage is far too long for quotation, but the final retort of the fisher, whose request for a battered disused boat has been selfishly refused by its owner, furnishes, according to a German critic, “a perfect gem of the Art of the Sophist, and sounds itself like an insoluble riddle.”
To enable the reader to form his own judgment on this particular instance of calliditas, I subjoin the retort: οὐκ ᾔτησά σε ἃ ἕχεις ἀλλ’ ἃ μὴ ἓχεις ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐ βούλει ἃ μὴ ἓχεις ἕτερον ἕχειν, ἕχε ἃ μὴ ἓχεις, “I didn’t ask you for what you have, but for what you haven’t. Since, however, you don’t wish another to have what you haven’t, what you haven’t you can have!”
But apart from this and similar instances of calliditas, the mood of piscatory poetry is generally serious or melancholy, and in keeping with the surroundings; we look in vain for the sunny warmth of Sicilian meadows, where youths pipe and sing gaily.
Like their modern brethren fishermen offered, before setting sail or after returning safe from dangers encountered, gifts to the gods of their craft, of whom first came Poseidon or Neptune, usually represented with a trident[288]; second, Hermes or Mercury, the most venerated, because of his wily cunning and ready ruses[289]; third, Pan, a son of Mercury, who taught him all his craft,[290] and fourth, Priapus.[291]
It is with a start of surprise that one finds Priapus, far more notorious as the god of propagation and fecundity, among the gods of fisherfolk. Can this be accounted for by some subtle, but inverse connection between the belief in India that the Fish was the symbol of Fecundation, and the God of Fecundation in Greece? Some support for this may lie in the statement of de Gubernatis, that as in the East the fish was a phallic symbol, so now pesce in the Neapolitan dialect means the phallus itself.
His lineage, either the son of Hermes, or his grandson, for among the many putative fathers of Priapus was Pan, may account for the inclusion of Priapus. To Priapus, arriving how he may at goddom, offerings were more freely made than to any other except Hermes.[292]
In addition to these four flourished minor gods. Goddesses too of Fishing (such as Artemis[293]), of rivers, of springs, and of the fish therein found devotees. First and foremost, ranked Aphrodite or Venus:
“But she Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea, And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds, and the viewless ways, And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.”
To her, seemingly, as many offerings, as many prayers were made as to any god.
Whether she can be identified or not with Atargatis, through Derceto or Astarte, matters little here.[294] But the image of the goddess, as described by Lucian,[295] “In Phœnicia, I saw the image of Derceto, a strange sight truly! For she had the half of a woman, and from the thighs downwards a fish’s tail,” corresponds closely with an image of Ascalon,[296] “having the face of a woman, but all the rest of the body a fish.”
ARTEMIS WITH A LARGE FISH IN FRONT OF HER DRESS.
From Ephemeris Archélogique, Pl. 10.
When in addition we find this same image at Ascalon stated by Herodotus (II. 115) to be that “of the heavenly Aphrodite,” the identification of the Greek-Roman goddess appears, at any rate, to have gained wide acceptance. Doubtless Horace had this,[297] or perhaps some fish-tailed Egyptian goddess, in mind when he penned his famous comparison for an incoherent simile: “Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne.”
Coins of Hierapolis in Cyrrhestica often show Atargatis riding on a lion or enthroned between two lions,[298] sometimes with the legend ΘΕΑΣ ΣΥΡΙΑΣ, ‘of the Syrian goddess.’ Strabo (XVI. 27, p. 748) tells us that this city worshipped the Syrian goddess Atargatis, who (Ibid., p. 785) according to Ktesias the historian was called also Derceto.[299]
Another reason for abstention from fish, apart from their sacredness to the goddess, we owe to Antipater of Tarsus.[300] Gatis, queen of Syria, developed such a passion for fish that she issued a proclamation forbidding their being eaten without her being invited (ἄτερ Γάτιδος). Hence the common people thought her name was Atargatis and abstained wholly from fish.
Mnaseas[301] assigns to her the deserved and not inappropriate fate of being thrown into her own lake near Ascalon and devoured by fishes.[302] But against this legend must be placed the fact that Atargatis, in common with many Asian deities and cults translated westward, found sanctuary and high veneration, in her case at Delos.[303]
Theocritus in the fragment on Berenice recommends the sacrifice of a certain fish to a goddess. “And if any man that hath his livelihood from the salt sea, and whose nets serve him for ploughs, prays for wealth and luck in fishing, let him sacrifice, at midnight, to this goddess, the sacred fish that men call ‘silver white,’ for that it is brightest of sheen of all; then let the fisher set his nets, and he shall draw them full from the sea.”[304]
If Apollonius of Tyana had been compelled to commend a beauteous fish for sacrifice—an act which his Pythagorean tenets forbade—he must have plumped for the Peacock fish.
Whether he were, teste Hieroclas, as great a sage, as remarkable a worker of miracles, as potent an exorcist as Jesus of Nazareth, or merely, in the words of Eusebius, a rank charlatan, whose magic, “if he possessed any,” was the gift of the powers of evil with whom he lived in league is no question to be considered here. Apollonius, at any rate, stands out, not only as one of the most interesting and most discussed personalities of the third century, but also as one of the most travelled.
During his fifty odd Wanderjahre many men had he known, and many cities had he seen of Asia and Africa. In the Hyphasis river of India there exist (we learn from his Life by Philostratus, III. 1) Peacock fish (sacred to Aphrodite) to which, if colour or “silver sheen” insure full creels, the Theocritean certainly must yield place, for “their fins are blue, their scales beautifully dappled, their tails, which fold or spread at will, of golden hue!”
But dominant over all other characteristics stands the inevitable and insistent connection of fishermen with Old Age, Toil, and Poverty. Everywhere, in every author, does this note strike loudest; nowhere, have I come across a young fisherman, except Virgil’s Menœtes.
These characteristics find their place not only in Greek and Latin literature from and before the “sleepless chase” of Sophocles (Ajax, 880) to the last Romanticist,[305] but also in the statuary, pictures, frescoes, mosaics of Greek and Roman Art. Numerous examples can be cited from the museums of Naples, Rome, Paris, and London sustaining the contention that all real fishermen were ever depicted old and careworn.[306]
The fishing boys and women of the Amorini at Pompeii and elsewhere may be adduced as vitiating this statement: but these, it must be borne in mind, are merely artistic representations of Anglers and of dalliance, not of real fishermen toiling for their livelihood. So, too, in the Greek representations where boys, not Putti or Amorini, figure as fishing, it will be found that they are helpers or “fish-boys” of the working fisherman.[307]
The explanations why fishermen are so rendered vary. Perhaps the truest, certainly the concisest, is Alciphron’s, τρέφει γὰρ οὐδέν’ ἡ θάλαττα—the sea feeds no one. According to Bunsmann, fishermen are always represented as old and poor and worn, because their delineators desired by painting the career as blackly as possible to excite sympathy. For this purpose old age and poverty and heavy toil, which appeal unto all, stood ready as their most effective strokes.
According to Hall, the fisher, a common character in all Greek literature, was in early times described with simple truth. Only later, when imitation took the place of originality, did conventionalism render him always as aged, pathetic, superstitious, wretchedly poor, yet patient and content.[308]
Whatever be the reason, Greek fishermen, whether we read of them in the Epigrams or in the fragments of lost works, all come down as old, patient, half-starved through dint of toil by day and night, sea-worn. Their horny hands grasp better a trident than hold the delicate pastoral reeds. They play no tunes, they dance no dances, they sing no songs save some rowing chant, as they tug at the oars when homeward bound.
THE HAPPY FISHERMAN,
ATTRIBUTED TO THE ARTIST CHACHRYLION.
From P. Hartwig’s Die griechischen Meisterschalen, p. 57, pl. 5.
Meniscus and Diotimus (in Sappho and Alcæus) are aged, lonely, and miserably poor. They are not “white-limbed” like Daphnis in The Herdsman’s Offering. They play no flute, nor carry the apples of Love.
So too the circumstances, the life, the recreations of the Shepherd of the Pastoral Idyll of Theocritus are as far removed as can be from those of the Fisherman of the Piscatory Idyll by the same author. The locus is the same. The characters dwell near each other, but how dissimilar their lots!
CHAPTER VII
THEOCRITUS—THE GREEK EPIGRAMMATISTS
But to return to our second locus classicus, ‘The Fisherman’s Dream’ of Theocritus.[309] The whole Idyll (XXI.), an exquisite piece of word painting, deserves careful reading as a study of the piscatory genre, but room can only be found for part of it here.[310]
“’Tis poverty alone, Diophantus, that awakens the arts; Poverty, the very teacher of labour. Nay, not even sleep is permitted by weary cares to men that live by toil, and if, for a little while, one closes his eyes in the night, cares throng about him and suddenly disquiet his slumber.
“Two fishers, on a time, two old men, together lay down and slept—they had strown the dry sea-moss for a bed in their wattled cabin, and there they lay against the leafy wall. Beside them were strewn the instruments of their toilsome hands, the fishing creels, the rods of reed, the hooks, the sails bedraggled with sea-spoil, the lines, the weels, the lobster pots woven of rushes, the seines, two oars, and an old coble upon props. Beneath their heads was a scanty matting, their clothes, their sailor’s caps. Here was all their toil, here all their wealth. The threshold had never a door, nor a watch-dog; all things, all to them seemed superfluity, for poverty was their sentinel. They had no neighbour by them, but ever against their cabin floated up the sea.
“The chariot of the moon had not yet reached the mid-point of her course, but their familiar toil awakened the fishermen; from their eyelids they cast out slumber, and roused their souls with speech.”
Asphalion, after complaining that even the nights in summer are too long—for “already have I seen ten thousand dreams, and the dawn is not yet”—is somewhat comforted by the thought that thus “we have time to idle in, for what could a man find to do lying on a leafy bed beside the waves and slumbering not? Nay, the ass is among the thorns, the lantern in the town hall, for they say it is always sleepless.”[311]
Then he begs his friend to interpret to him the dream he has just dreamt.
“As I was sleeping late, amid the labours of the salt sea, (and truly not too full fed, for we supped early, if thou dost remember, and did not overtax our bellies), I saw myself busy on a rock, and there I sat and watched the fishes and kept spinning the bait with the rods.
“And one of the fishes nibbled, a fat one; for, in sleep, dogs dream of bread, and of fish dream I.[312] Well, he was tightly hooked, and the blood was running, and the rod I grasped was bent with his struggle.
“So with both hands I strained, and had a sore tussle for the monster. How was I ever to land so big a fish with hooks all too slim? Then, just to remind him he was hooked, I gently pricked him, pricked, and slackened; and as he did not run, I took in line.[313]
“My toil was ended with the sight of my prize. I drew up a golden fish, lo, you! a fish all plated thick with gold. Then fear took hold of me lest he might be some fish beloved of Poseidon, or perchance some jewel of the sea-grey Amphitrite. Gently I unhooked him, lest even the hooks should retain some of the gold of his mouth. Then I dragged him ashore with the ropes,[314] and swore that never again would I set foot on sea, but abide on land and lord it over the gold.
“This was what awakened me, but for the rest set thy mind to it, my friend, for I am in dismay about the oath I swore.”
The Friend: “Nay, never fear, thou art no more sworn than thou hast found the golden fish[315] of thy vision: dreams are but lies. But if thou wilt search these waters, wide awake and not asleep, there is some hope in thy slumbers: seek the fish of flesh, lest thou die of famine with all thy dreams of gold!”
The influence of Theocritus, though becoming less natural and rendered more conventional by the pretty conceits of the later Alexandrian period,[316] permeates the literature of Greece and Rome for many centuries. In none, perhaps, is this influence more marked than in his pupils Bion and Moschus, and in his younger contemporary, Leonidas of Tarentum.
Three fisher epigrams[317] by Leonidas suffice as evidence of this. The realism, the pathos, the detailed treatment, the subjects, lowly folk, all alike characterise the Sicilian.
In the first, the fisherman Diophantus on giving up his trade dedicates, according to custom, all the relics of his calling to the patron of his craft. The list of the implements, including a well-bent hook, long rod, and line of horse hair, here and in an epigram by Philippus of Thessalonica (which adds “the flint pregnant with fire, that sets alight the tinder”), corresponds in material and order of enumeration fairly closely with Asphalion’s in Theocritus.
Of the second I borrow a spirited translation of the last lines,
“Yet—not Arcturus, nor the blasts that blow Down-rushing, swept this aged man below: But like a lamp long burning, and whose light Flickers, self-spent, and is extinguished quite, In a rush hut he died:—to him this grave (No wife, no child he had) his brother fishers gave.”[318]
The third, which should be The Awful Warning, if any warning avail, to boys fishing in the middle of a burn and holding while changing their lure a fish in their teeth (who of us has not done this?), sets a picture of a more violent death, “for the slippery thing went wriggling down his narrow gullet,” and choked him on the spot.
The subjoined, somewhat loose, translation is from Blackwood’s Magazine, Vol. XXXVIII.[319]
“Parmis, the son of Callignotus—he Who trolled for fish the margin of the sea, Chief of his craft, whose keen perceptive search, The kichlé, scarus, bait-devouring perch, And such as love the hollow clefts, and those That in the caverns of the deep repose, Could not escape—is dead! Parmis had lured A Julis from its rocky haunts, secured Between his teeth the slippery pert, when, lo! It jerked into the gullet of its foe, Who fell beside his lines and hooks and rod, And the choked fisher sought his last abode. His dust lies here. Stranger, this humble grave An angler to a brother angler gave.”
Alciphron, judging from his extant letters, seems the most prolific of the later Piscatory writers. His tribute to the veracity of Sosias, “who is famous for the delicious sauce made of the fish which he entices,” reads in such deadly opposition to the common but false impression that fishermen rank next to mining engineers as the biggest liars in the world, that it must be quoted, if only on the principle of “An angler to a brother angler gave.”
“He is one of those who duly reverence Truth, and such an one would never even slip into Falsehood.”
Lest as an Angler I may be accused of “slipping into Falsehood” in my translation, I subjoin the Greek:
Ἔστι δὲ τῶν ἐπιεικῶς τὴι ἀλήθειαν τιμώντων, καὶ οὐκ ἄν ποτ’ ἐκεῖνος εἰς ψευδηγορίαν ὀλίσθοι.[320]
Lucian’s Dialogues of the Sea Gods, by their confidential chat, give witty expression to the author’s own scepticism towards mythology. “With their imitation of the earlier poets and their amœbean form they may be considered as connecting links between Theocritus and others of his group and the eclogues of marine mythology, sometimes classed as piscatory eclogues during the renaissance.”[321]
If any doubt be as to their being “links,” there can be none as to the charm of The Dialogues of (in Macaulay’s words) “the last great master of Attic eloquence, and Attic wit,” or (he has been perhaps equally well termed) “the first of the moderns.”
The Fisherman, by the same author, bears no relationship to the Mimes, or Idylls. It takes its title from a scene in which the author sits on a parapet of the Acropolis equipped with the rod of a Piræan fisherman. His bait of gold and figs attracts a swarm of brilliantly coloured fish, Salmo Cynicus,[322] Flat Sole Plateship, and other philosophers clad in scales.
The Romances, the last prose at times instinct with the genius of ancient Greece, bequeath us many fisherfolk. The famous pastoral Daphnis and Chloe, by Longus, introduces a pretty picture and illustrates the old contrast between the idyllic life of shepherds and the sordid lot of their fishing neighbours.
Daphnis sits with Chloe on a hill near the sea; “while at their meal, which, however, consisted more of kisses than of food, a fisher boat is seen proceeding along the coast.” The crew, carrying freshly caught fish to a rich man in the city, “dip their oars, doing what sailors usually do to beguile their toil—the boatswain sings a sea-song, and the rest join in chorus at stated intervals.”
As the boat reaches some hollow or crescent-shaped bay, the echo of their song floats up. This only incites Daphnis, who understands the echo, “to store up some of the strains in his memory that he may play them on his pipes, but Chloe, who wots not that such things can be, turns in pretty bewilderment to the boat, to the sea, and to the woods.”
The Aethiopica, by Heliodorus of Emesa, has been termed, perhaps with exaggeration, the most elaborate picture of a piscatory kind in ancient Greek. The influence of Theocritus is strongly suggested by the imagery incidental to the description of the cabin, the tackle, and the boat, as well as by the delineation of the character of Tyrrhenus, aged, sea-worn, wretchedly poor, yet content with his lot and hospitable to the stranger.[323]
Agathias gives us one of the very few, perhaps the only, fisher epigram with a love motive. “A fisherman was employed in catching fish. Him did a damsel of property see, and was affected in her heart with desire, and made him the partner of her bed. But he, after a life of poverty, took on himself the swell of all kinds of high bearing, and Fortune with a smile was standing by, and said to Venus,—‘This is not your contest, but mine.’”[324]
Lastly it is of interest to note that one of the few Greek poetesses concerned herself with a love-tale of the sea. Hedyle, who came of a poetic stock (for she was daughter of Moschine the iambist and mother of Hedylus the epigrammatist), penned a poem on Glaucus’ love for Scylla. In it she told how the love-sick swain would repair to the cavern of his mistress—
“Bearing a gift of love, a mazy shell, Fresh from the Erythrean rock, and with it too The offspring, yet unfledged, of Alcyon, To win the obdurate maid. He gave in vain. Even the lone Siren on the neighbouring isle Pitied the lover’s tears.”[325]
CHAPTER VIII
THE TWO PLINYS—MARTIAL—WAS THE ROD JOINTED?
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!
“Than which no more in deed, or dream!”
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:
“Hoc petit, esse sui nec magni ruris arator, Sordidaque in parvis otia rebus amat.”
For in this same epigram and many others the poet is fain
“Ante focum plenas explicuisse plagas, Et piscem tremula salientem ducere seta.”
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,
“Aut crescente levis traheretur harundine præda, Pinguis et implicitas virga teneret aves.” Ep., IX., 54, 3.
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.
“Non tantum calamis, sed cantu fallitur ales, Callida dum tacita crescit harundo manu.”
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]
THE FOWLER.
From
Brit. Mus. Cat. of Lamps,
Pl. 24, Fig. 686.
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,
“Could I a trout, now, with my angle get, Or cover a young partridge with my net.”
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.”
“Hæc laqueo volucres, hæc captat harundine pisces Cum tenues hamos abdidit ante cibus.”
“’Tis Hope, that taketh birds with the Snare, fish with the Rod with fine Hooks well hidden in the bait.”
CHAPTER IX
THE FIRST MENTION OF A FLY
The first mention of fishing with a fly occurs apparently in Martial’s lines, “Namque quis nescit, | Avidum vorata decipi scarum musca?” which have been translated:—
“Who has not seen the scarus rise, Decoyed, and killed by fraudful flies?”[348]
These lines are of surpassing interest. In them we may possess the very first mention of a fishing fly, whether natural or artificial, in all the records written or depicted of the whole world.
If the reference be to an artificial fly, it certainly antedates by some two centuries the passage of Ælian (XV. 1), which has hitherto been universally acclaimed the first mention of such a fly. If on the other hand the reference be to a natural fly, it antedates by the same period of time the first mention of the natural fly, or rather winged insect (κώνωψ), to be found also in Ælian (XIV. 22).
And here, pray, observe the cold calm of the classical commentator! This passage, which, as I have said, may be the very first historical document testifying to the use of the fly, the very first tiny beginning of the immense literature consecrated to the fly, the very first starting point in the fly fisher’s journey of sore travail to farther knowledge, this passage so pregnant of possibilities and so provocative of comment, has never, I believe, been suggested by any editor as possibly the locus classicus of fly fishing, far prior to the generally adopted passage of Ælian.
Even if we make great allowance for the wrath of the literary angler at the careless indifference with which these lines appear from his standpoint to be treated, the comments by the editors of Martial must be classed, in other respects also, as unsatisfactory and jejune.
Paley and Stone, for instance, confine themselves to telling us that “scarus is some unknown but highly prized fish, which was caught by an inferior one used as bait.” That is all! nothing more! Their “unknown” stamps their indifference, or ichthyic ignorance.[349] Further, they never even hint that in this passage commentators have suggested two readings, musco—‘moss,’ and musca—‘fly.’ They simply adopt musco without hinting at any difficulty arising from such adoption.
Friedländer adopts musca. His only note consists of, “Vorato—musco wollte Brodæus lesen wegen der von Athenæus, VII., p. 319 f., aus Aristoteles angeführten Stelle[350] ...”
The majority of editors[351] prefer, and probably rightly, the reading musca for many reasons, the chief being that all the manuscripts of Martial without a single exception give musca. The upholders of musco, in their endeavour to enforce that mere conjecture by quoting from Athenæus, “The Scarus flourishes on his food of seaweed,”[352] and supporting it by Pliny,[353] “The Scarus is said to be the only fish that ruminates and is herbivorous” (and here note that as Pliny—like Athenæus—was taking his information from Arist., N. H., VIII. 2, he should have translated φυκίοις by algis, not by herbis), make the mistake of translating φυκίον by muscus. They ignore, moreover, Oppian, II. 649, φέρβονται δ’ ἢ χλωρὸν ἁλὸς μνίον, κ.τ.λ. Φυκίον is, while muscus is not and never has been, algæ or true seaweed; muscus is ‘moss.’[354]
Nor do these Olympian editors, who sit beside their proof-sheets, and whose notes are ever hurled far below them in the valley, condescend to explain to us poor gropers after light how moss to a sea-fish like the Scarus can be of value as food.
Most fishermen will tell you that fresh-water fish do eat moss; that they themselves have seen them in the act of eating such moss on the Thames; that roach in especial are particularly fond of this moss, which is used in summer months as a bait with great success; this moss they call by various names, ‘silk weed,’ ‘flannel weed,’ ‘blanket weed,’ and ‘crow-silk.’ Now all these so-called mosses are not mosses at all, but belong to the family Confervæ, which are fresh-water green algæ: so even in rivers we find that moss is not used as bait.[355]
That not only the Scari but other fish, e.g. the Melanuri, feed on seaweed and that they are taken by baits composed of seaweed, many writers besides Athenæus and Pliny duly record. Theocritus (Id., XXI. 10) speaks of “baits of seaweed.” Oppian,[356] describing the manner of catching the salpæ by baiting a place with stones covered with seaweed, states that when the fish have gathered round this in numbers, “then prepares he (the fisher) the snare of the weel.” Ælian[357] asserts that among the marine plants, on which he says fish feed, are Βρύα ... καὶ φυκία ἄλλα, the difference between which seems according to Aristotle merely one of size.
If a poll of writers on Fishing and of practical Pisciculturists were taken to-day, a large majority would vote that sea-fish do not eat seaweed, but feed on the larvæ, and other minute insects in or on the various algæ or seaweeds. But against this opinion is arrayed the authority of Darwin and Wallace, who state that various species of Scarus do browse, and do graze on seaweed, and some of them exclusively on coral.[358]
The Skaros (according to Aristotle) was the only fish which seemed to ruminate,[359] whose food was seaweed,[360] and teeth, set in deep saw-edged jaws, were not sharp and interlocking, like those of all other fish, but resembled those of a parrot, as its beak resembled that of a parrot.[361]
From the seeming to ruminate of Aristotle we reach in later writers like Oppian, I. 134 ff., and Ovid, Hal., 119, the positive assertion that the scarus did ruminate.[362]
Is it not possible, if a mere angler may hazard a suggestion on scientific points, that the belief of modern writers and pisciculturists is not far out, and that while some of the Scari do browse and graze exclusively on coral, and some sometimes on seaweed, they do this to obtain as food only the minute larvæ, which their so-called rumination helps them to separate from the seaweed or coral?[363]
A second very practical argument against the reading musco suggests itself. Let us allow that some sea fish do eat not only algæ but moss: even then, why should our Scarus “be deceived” by the small amount possible of attachment to a little hook, of seaweed or moss or their larvæ? This is infinitesimal when compared with the greater masses, giving immeasurably ampler supply of larvæ, growing in the sea.
Were it not for the incitement or excitement caused by the fly’s movements or novelty, hardly a salmon, I venture to think, would rise to a fly; but to our scarus, since algæ and moss (if the latter exist in the sea of sufficient length) are familiar growths and constantly set in motion by the action of the water, both these incitements are surely lacking.
Even if neither of these arguments carries weight, the objection brought forward by Gilbert appears to me to put the reading musco out of court: “Suppose Martial knew what Athenæus and others state as regards this peculiar habit of the scarus, surely this was not the place, where the Scarus is introduced only as a representative of all fish, to air his knowledge—least of all in words such as ‘quis nescit.’”
In conclusion, if musca be the right reading, we can, I think, definitely assert:
A. That this passage contains the very earliest mention of a fly being used for the taking of fish:
B. That from Martial’s employment of it as an illustration, and from his not drawing attention to the novelty or oddness of such use, and especially from the words “quis nescit,” which imply a general knowledge, fly fishing had been long invented, and was a method common among anglers:
C. That this solitary passage is inconclusive as to whether the fly was simply a natural one attached to a hook, and used perhaps as now in dapping,[364] or an artificial one.
To my mind, however, the scale dips deeply in favour of the artificial fly for the following reasons.
1. The trend and purpose of the whole passage, especially when we note carefully the preceding verse and a half, “Odi dolosas munerum et malas artes. | Imitantur hamos dona,” is to inveigh against fraudful gifts, typical of which fraudful flies are singled out—in fact, against all presents which are not what they appear. Mr. A. B. Cook writes: “I quite agree with your view that the passage gains much, if all three lines are made to refer to an artificial fly with a hook concealed in it. Indeed, that is pretty obviously the meaning.”
2. The difficulty which the ancients would have experienced in impaling, etc., on one of their hooks a natural fly would have been greater than dressing an artificial one. The smallest hook in the Greek-Roman Collection at the British Museum (found at Amathus in Cyprus 1894) measures over ¼ in. breadth at the bend.[365] If we allow that owing to oxidation the metal may have coarsened and swollen, the task of impaling, and further of fastening a natural fly securely enough to withstand the buffets of even wavelets of the sea (for N.B. the Scarus is marine) must verily have demanded τὸν δημιοεργόν, “a craftsman of the people, welcome over all the wide earth.”[366]
For these reasons the kudos of the first mention of an artificial fly belongs, in my opinion, to Martial rather than to Ælian.