PART II
“Except to politicians, a decent definition is a help and a delight.”
Acting on this American dictum I start with two definitions, one of Fishing and Angling, the other of Angling. The first we owe to that past master of the art, Plato. Whether it come within the category of “delight or help,” or whether he can endorse the verdict of Theætetus as to its “satisfactory conclusion,” each reader must decide.
Plato, using the method of elimination and incidentally more than three pages of print, eventually arrives at the following definition of Fishing and Angling:[82] “Then, now you and I have come to an understanding, not only about the name of the Angler’s art, but about the definition of the thing itself. One half of all Art was acquisitive: one half of the acquisitive Art was conquest or taking by force: half of this again was hunting, and half of hunting was hunting animals: of this again the under half was fishing, and half of fishing was striking: a part of striking was fishing with a barb, and one half of this again (being the kind which strikes with a hook and draws the fish from below upwards) is the Art we have been seeking, and which from the nature of the operation is denoted Angling or drawing up.”
Theætetus: “The result has been quite satisfactorily brought out.”
In search of a more helpful definition I turn to the English Dictionaries. The N.E.D. (New English Dictionary, Oxford) gives Fishing—“to catch, or try to catch fish”—wide enough for all our purpose and for most of our performances! In their definitions of Angling, Angle, etc., the majority of dictionaries disagree, but unite in deriving Angle from the Aryan root, ANK = to bend, and establishing the fishing term as the cousin of the awkward angles of Euclid and of our youth. The N.E.D. in its definitions of ‘Angle’ (sb.), of ‘Angle’ (vb.), of ‘Angler,’ or of ‘Angling,’ does not even agree with itself.
Thus we find:
(A) “Angle (sb.), a fish hook: often in later use extended to the line, or tackle, to which it is fastened, and the Rod to which this is attached. See Book of St. Alban’s (title of ed. 2), Treatyse perteynynge to Hawkynge, Huntynge, and Fysshynge with an Angle.”
(B) “Angle (vb.), to use an angle: to fish with a hook and bait.”
(C) “Angler, one who fishes with a hook and line.”
(D) “Angling, the action or art of fishing with a rod.”[83]
If A, B, C, which all differ, are accurate, D can hardly be so. Further from A, B, C, we can deduce no correct definition of D.
Under D the N.E.D. imports as a necessary component part of angling the presence of a rod, but I venture to think on insufficient grounds. In the first quotation cited in support, “Fysshynge, callyd Anglynge with a rodde,” the word “rodde,” if D hold good, must be redundant or unnecessary. “Rodde” I hold to be an added word of limitation, or description, as in “Fysshynge with an Angle.”
But since the dictionaries do hardly help—to some, indeed, they smack of “the heinous crime of word-splitting”—and since the importance (apart from etymological reasons) of possessing an accurate and adequate definition presses, let us prostrate ourselves before another oracle, the Law. But here too success scarcely crowns our quest. The leading case, Barnard v. Roberts and Williams, yields, Delphic-like, little light or leading.[84]
The facts, briefly stated, were: Roberts and Williams laid in a private river two fishing lines; one end of the lines attached to two pieces of wood driven into the ground made fast the lines, the other end held hooks baited with worms, and a stone to keep the lines under water. “The lines were left by the men, who subsequently were found taking two fish off the hooks, and resetting the lines, of which the keepers deprived them. The charge (under s. 24 of the Larceny Act of 1861) ran of unlawfully, etc., taking fish otherwise than by angling. The Justices of Bangor refused to commit, on the ground that they were angling, and thus under the Act were protected from damages or penalty for such angling.”
On appeal both sides cited Izaak Walton and other authors; both quoted the N.E.D.—the appellant its definition of ‘Angling,’ i.e. fishing with a rod, and the respondent that of ‘Angle’ (vb.), i.e. to fish with hook and bait.
The three Judges, judge-like, disagreed in their reasons but agreed in allowing the appeal, and disagreeing in their conceptions of angling agreed in abstaining from any definition.
“In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed is king.” Mr. Justice Phillimore was the least non-positive. He even committed himself to the following: “He did not think that a rod must necessarily be part of an angler’s outfit, but only a hook and line. He thought the human element must be present, and that it was not sufficient when the tackle was set once and for all, and then left.”
It is obvious from the above that, while the dictionaries are but blind guides, the Law (if on this occasion not exactly “a hass”) fails to elucidate what exactly constitutes Angling.
Dr. Henry van Dyke, the author of Little Rivers and other fascinating books connected with fishing, suggests to me “Angling, the art of fishing by hand with a hook and line, with or without a rod.” I much prefer this to that of N.E.D., because of its greater accuracy and of its inclusion of that really skilful method, hand-lining. But for general convenience I adopt as the definition of Angling “The action, or art, of fishing with a Rod.”
My Fishing from the Earliest Times treats of the Old Stone Men, Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese, Jews, Greeks, and Romans. The amount of space allotted to the last two, compared with that occupied by some of the other nations, may suggest the immortal even if apocryphal chapter of “Snakes in Ireland.” “There are none.”
To any such criticisms I make answer that for nearly all our knowledge as to the methods and tackle of fishing and varieties of fish we are indebted to the Greeks and Romans, and in a smaller degree to the Egyptians and Chinese.
Reasons of date, data, and dearth of paper prevent my using in this book the material which I had collected on Indian, Persian, and Japanese Fishing.
As regards India, while fishing by net falls well within my adopted date (500 a.d.), that by hook and line—not necessarily Angling—gains entrance by a short head, or a mere century.
Fish (matsya, apparently derived from the root mad and signifying the inebriated) is down to c. 1000 b.c. only mentioned once[85] in the Rigveda, X. 68, 8. In the next period—that of the later Vedas and Brāhmanas—fish, but not methods of capture, find frequent mention.
The Net (jāla) is first referred to in the Atharvaveda (not later than 800 b.c.) but not in connection with fishing, while in the Yajurveda (c. 800 b.c.) names for fishermen and a hook—baḍiša—occur. The 139th Jātaka (c. 400 a.d.) contains the first allusion to fishing with a line and hook.
References in Sanskrit poetry to the iron hook and bait probably imply, though they fail to mention, the Rod. Passages in the epic Mahābhārata, V. 1106 (c. 200 a.d.), in Kāmandaki’s aphoristic poetry (c. 300-400 a.d.), in the Pancatantra, I. 208, “when women see a man caught in the bonds of love, they draw him like a fish that has followed the bait,” all suggest Angling.[86]
Fish legends, similes, stories—not always redounding to ichthyic wisdom—meet us fairly frequently. Manu[87] is saved from the Flood by a fish. Buddha[88] answers questions as to abstention from fish. Wondrous fish occur: e.g. the Kar, “which knows to the scratch of a needle’s point by how much the water in the Ocean shall increase, by how much it is diminishing.”[89]
Stories, such as the recovery by a fish of Šakuntalā’s ring and the consequent marriage of King Dushyanta; of Indra, the fearless slayer of the serpent, whose death for defiling the bed of Ahalyâ was compassed by fish;[90] of Adrikâ’s transformation into a fish and her conception in that form of a child by King Uparicaras;[91] of The Stupid and Two Clever Fishes;[92] of The Frog and The Two Fish,[93] all these make pleasant if varied reading. But when we come to methods of fishing, all variety vanishes. We are confronted with a damnable monotony, a toujours perdrix. It is almost Net, or Nothing.
This holds true of the piscine tales even in the Arabian Nights, e.g. The Fisherman and the Jinn, and The Fisherman and the ’Efreet. The latter, however, possesses an unique interest: the fisherman here, unlike his Greek and Roman poverty-stricken brethren, became by means of his miraculous fish, “the wealthiest of the people of his age, and his daughters continued to be the wives of princes”!
Evidence that fishing in India was of old and is now (the fishing caste, I am told, ranks low) not highly regarded can be deduced (inter alia) from its total omission in the Fourteen Sciences and the Sixty-four Arts, which the Vātsyặyana Kāma Sūtra (not later than the third century a.d.) promulgates for the education of children from five to sixteen. Among the requisite Sciences gymnastics, dancing, the playing of musical glasses, sword-stick, cock quail and ram fighting, teaching parrots and starlings to sing, all these find commendation, but fishing none!
As with India, so with Persia ancient and modern, toujours le filet! Very many of the earliest prose works in modern Persian came through the Pahlavi from the Sanskrit. Thus the three or four stories—occasionally but wrongly regarded as of Persian origin—about fish and fishing which are contained in the Anwār-i-Suhaili[94] can be traced to The Fables of Bidpai, or The Pancatantra,[95] translated from the Arabic version into Persian about 550 a.d.
In modern Persian (c. 1000 a.d.) poetry, lines allusive to fishing dot themselves sparsely:[96] even in them the Net bulks biggest. Hafiz (fourteenth century), however, gives us
“I have fallen into a Sea of Troubles, (presumably tears), So that my Beloved may catch me with a Hook” (a curl of hair).
A passage in Arabic furnished hope of finding Angling oases in the desert, but when in
“A fish whose jaw the gaff of Death had pierced,”
I found the word (saffūd) rendered gaff given by Richardson’s Persian-Arabic Dictionary as “a roasting spit, a poker for the fire,” my hope fled, for I quickly realised here an instance of anachronistic translation, or the employment of fishing terms appropriate to modern but inapplicable to ancient methods.[97]
I have come to the sad conclusion that the Persians ancient and modern care not in general for fishing or angling, although the Gulf, from which the ancient Sumerians garnered such splendid “harvest of the sea,” washes their shores, and from their mountains descend “fishful” streams. I have reached my conclusion for the following reasons:—
(A) There is no word in the language which properly expresses fish-hook. Arabic words, which strictly mean grappling hooks, have been adopted or adapted. In modern Arabic itself these words are not used for a fish-hook: bâlûgh, a foreign term, prevails.
(B) In Persian, Arabic, and Turkish[98] the expression to fish, literally translated, equals to hunt fish, and generally describes a man who makes his living by netting, and selling fish.
(C) There is no word for fishing-rod in Wollaston’s great English-Persian Dictionary.
(D) Proverbs are usually the offspring and embodiment of the life and occupations of a nation. In both ancient and modern Persian there is, as far as I know, but one proverb—and that rather contemptful—allusive to fish or fishing. It runs, “Thou shall not make a fish thine enemy,” which probably signifies that no foe, however unlikely to injure, can be despised.
(E) In the experiences related to me by the Rev. Dr. St. Clair Tisdall, and by the late Sir Frank Lascelles, Netting ousts Angling.
The former:[99] “’Though I have lived in Persia for many years and have travelled through it from Sea to Sea, from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian, I have never seen a fish-hook in a Persian’s hands. In the districts I know best, the Net is the only weapon.”
The second, when our Minister at Teheran, on his first holiday went a-fishing. Having caught on a likely stream before supper three or four half-pound trout (I think), he anticipated next day pleasant sport. With the very early morning came not Remorse, but the local Sheikh to do his reverence and to make the customary present. “As I have heard that His Great Excellency worked hard for a few fish last night, my tribesmen have netted the river for the length of a parasang, and I bring you plenty of fish.” Tableau! Hasty flight of Sir Frank to another river, with like results!
Reasons both of date and data prevent my including the Japanese, perhaps the most alert and adaptive sea-fishers in the world. As their history before 500 a.d. must apparently be classed as legendary, this nation eludes my chronological Net. Data on ancient fishing, if existing, are either unknown[100] or as being derived from China find place postea.[101]
I set the time limit of my book at roughly 500 a.d., so as to include the last classical or quasi-classical piscatory poems viz. those of Ausonius—notably ad Mosellam—in the fourth and of Sidonius in the fifth century.
This date seems, indeed, a pre-ordained halting-place for three reasons. First, the tackle of our day (though improved almost beyond recognition in rod, winch, artificial bait, etc.) is merely the lineal descendant of the Macedonian described by Ælian in the third century a.d. Second, between Ælian and Dame Juliana’s Boke no record, with two possible exceptions, of fishing with a fly exists. Third, and more important, we possess no real continuous link between the Angling literature of Rome down to the fifth century and that which sprang up after the invention of printing some thousand years later.
In the intervening centuries, it is true, books and manuscripts were written (mainly by monks) which treated more or less of fishing, but of Angling only incidentally.[102] They illustrate the customs of fishermen, the natural history of fish, the making and maintaining of vivaria or fish-ponds, rather than instruct or inform on practical Fishing.
The most notable would, could we trace it, be “an old MS. treatise on fishing, found among the remains of the valuable library belonging to the Abbey of St. Bertin, at St. Omer. A paper on this was read, a few years before 1855, at a society of antiquaries at Arras. From its style, the MS. was supposed to have been written about 1000 a.d., and to have been divided into twenty-two chapters. The author’s main object was to prove that fishers had been singularly favoured by Divine approbation; but appended to the MS. was a full list of all river fish, the baits used for taking them, and the suitable seasons for angling for each sort of fish.”
For the existence of this work, vanished now for over sixty years, we have only the authority of Robert Blakey.[103] But this, if it do pass muster with Dr. Turrell, fails to satisfy Westwood and Satchell, who describe his book on Angling as “a slipshod and negligent work, devoid of all utility, a farrago of quotations incorrectly given, and of so-called original passages, the vagueness and uncertainty of which rob them of all weight and value. Mr. Blakey’s volume, it is but fair to add, is redeemed from utter worthlessness by the excellent bibliographical catalogue appended to it by the publisher!”[104]
The Geoponika, whether written or redacted by Cassianus Bassus or Cassius Dionysius, or merely translated from a treatise by an ancient Carthaginian author, treats generally of agriculture. The twentieth book, however, deals with fish-ponds, fishing, and baits: unlike the Roman writers on vivaria, who tell us nothing as to the capture of the fish in them, the writer gives us instructive tips on baits.
One infallible recipe in chap. xviii. for collecting the fish—on the lines of Baiting the Swim—from its superstitious naïveté compels quotation: “Get three limpets, and having taken out the fish therein, inscribe on the shell the words, Ἰαώ Σαβαώθ, or ‘Jehovah, Lord of Hosts’; you will immediately see the fish come to the same place in a surprising manner.”[105] The two Greek words formed the so-called Gnostic formula and occur frequently on amulets, etc. The Geoponika adds immediately, “this name the Ichthyophagi use.”
About the fourteenth century a poem entitled De Vetula, attributed to R. de Fournival, got translated or imitated by Jean Lefevre. The fishing portion (68 lines) awakes our interest, as it shows that “more than six hundred years ago, and probably two hundred years before the date of The Boke of St. Albans, most of the modern modes of fishing were practised; for instance, the worm, the fly, the torch and spear, the night line, the eel-basket and fork,” etc.
This quotation from Westwood and Satchell might cause a casual reader to suppose that (α) from De Vetula, written only some two centuries before The Boke of St. Albans, we gain our first information “of these modes of fishing,” and (β) that these were “modern,” whereas Oppian had described them all, some thirteen hundred years before The Boke of St. Albans saw light.
With the exception of de Fournival and the elusive MS. of Dom Pichon,[106] which (written about 1420 but only rediscovered about 1853) probably stamps this monk as the first to practise artificial hatching, the Continent produced practically nothing till the appearance at Antwerp in 1492 of the first printed original book on Fishing, which as regards printing precedes The Boke of St. Albans.
This little Flemish work by an unknown author contains twenty-six chapters of a few lines, gives recipes for artificial baits, unguents, and pastes, and in the last two pages notes the periods when certain fish eat best. As its title sets out, it teaches “how one may catch birds and fish with one’s hands, and also otherwise.”[107]
The earliest description of fishing in the English language meets us in The Colloquy of Aelfric, a.d. 995, which Skeat first brought to notice and first “Englished” in The Oldest English Treatise on Fishing.[108] This takes the form of a short dialogue introduced into the Colloquy written by Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the purpose of teaching his pupils Latin, and therefore written in Anglo-Saxon with a Latin translation beneath. “It is arranged as a conversation between the master and his pupil; the latter in turns figuring as huntsman, fisherman, falconer.”
The length of the Colloquy, even of the fishing portion, prevents inclusion here, but the pupil’s objection to fishing in the sea, “because rowing is troublesome to me,” and to going a-whaling, “because I had rather catch a fish I can kill than one that can, with one stroke, kill both me and my comrades,” strikes me as well taken and pertinent.
A poem by Piers of Fulham, written about 1420 (the original MS. of which can be seen at Trinity College, Cambridge) claims next our notice. The author, judging from Hartshorne’s rendering, fully justifies the description of him as a somewhat pessimistic angler. He seems to have anticipated De Quincey’s “fishing is an unceasing expectation and a perpetual disappointment.” He fully appreciated its difficulties and disappointments, but clearly possessed some sportsmanlike instincts, as the following, among other, verses show[109]:—
“And ete the olde fishe, and leve the yonge, Though they moore towgh be uppon the tonge.”
A Latin book Dialogus creaturarum optime moralizatus was published in 1480; a translation about 1520 styles it The Dialogues of Creatures Moralysed. This very rare work, which I have found fully dealt with from an Angler’s point of view only by Dr. Turrell, furnishes the earliest known illustration of an angler fishing with a float.
Next in date, and last to be noticed here, comes the famous Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle, printed at Westminster by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496 as part of the second edition of The Boke of St. Albans. Whether, as has been commonly supposed, Dame Juliana Berners wrote it, or whether any such lady ever existed, are points of controversy, but that The Treatyse was not an immaculate conception, without parents or ancestors, can be reasonably proved by its reference to earlier writers on fishing, and to its “these ben the xii flies ye shall use” being introduced as a precept of practice rather than a revelation of invention.
If few the forbears of what some term “not only the first angling manual in England, but also the first practical work written in any language,” its vitality and its prolific progeny admit of no doubt. According to Mr. A. Lang (who accounts for the startling fact by the increased number of people able to read owing to the spread of education) no less than ten editions of The Boke were issued within four years of publication, while Dr. Turrell limits himself to fourteen undated editions between 1500 and 1596.
Whatever the number of the editions, the need for and the vitality of The Treatyse is demonstrated by the fact that for over a hundred years no new work on Angling was printed in England, and between it and The Compleat Angler—a space of over one hundred and fifty years—there occur but four books on the subject.[110] To its prolific progeny, the Bibliotheca Piscatoria bears witness[111] in its catalogue of some fifteen hundred authors and of countless books, MSS. etc.
We owe, it is said, this voluminous literature to the geographical position of England, which lends itself very favourably to the pursuit of all kinds of fishing. Can we, also, flatteringly add the other factor of Lacépède’s dictum, “Il y a cette différence entre la chasse et la pêche, que cette dernière convient aux peuples les plus civilisés?”
But the pursuit of fishing did not prevail in early England or Scotland. A passage in Bede (probably used by Henry of Huntingdon), which has, I think, escaped the many-eyed net of our fishing authors, testifies to its absence in the former.
St. Wilfrid (born 634) on his return from Friesland, where fishing yielded the staple of food, met with such success in his mission to the South Saxons that he not only converted them, “with all the priests of the Idols,” but also—“which was a great relief unto them”—taught them the craft of fishing, of which, save eeling, they wotted naught. Collecting under the Saint’s order eel-nets where they could, the first adventurers meritis sui patris Divina largitate adjuti[112] enmeshed three hundred fishes, which they equally divided between the poor, the net-owners, and themselves.
The Celtæ, with some exceptions such as the scomber-catching Celtiberi, eschewed fish, probably from religious prejudices, which owing to their adoration of the springs, rivers, and waters prevented the eating of their denizens.
Whatever the cause, Dion Cassius expressly comments on the abstinence of the Caledonians, although their seas and rivers abounded with food.[113] In time the example of the clergy and the ordinance of fast days gradually overcame—save in the case of Eels, which still remain to the Highlander an abomination—their obstinate antipathy. Across St. George’s Channel the Irish two centuries ago “had little skill in catching fish.”[114]
But when the Western Highlanders did go a-fishing, their prayers and promises—prompted by the same principle of gratitude being a sense of favours to come—echo the prayers and promises, Dis mutatis, of the Anthologia Palatina.
The seas differ, but the gods precated are the same. If in the following verses you substitute for “Christ, King of the Elements” Poseidon, King of the Waters, for “brave Peter” ruseful Hermes, and for “Mary fair” Aphrodite, you have the tutelary deities of fishing. The spirit of the prayer and promise of the firstling remain unchanged.
For century after century the fishermen of the Isles have handed down orally to generation after generation the Gaelic prayer with which they set out to sea.[115]
“I will cast down my hook: The first fish which I bring up In the name of Christ, King of the Elements, The poor man shall have for his need: And the King of the Fishers, the brave Peter, He will after it give me his blessing. Columba, tender in every distress, And Mary fair, the endowed of grace, Encompass ye us to the fishing bank of ocean, And still ye to us the crest of the waves!”
The rarity—I have not met its mention—and curious nature of a volume published at Frankfort in 1611, even if more than a century after The Boke of St. Albans, compels some reference.
Conjecturæ Halieuticæ by Raphael Eglinus consists of a long dissertation based on the strange markings of three fishes (pictured on its title-page), two caught in Scandinavia on the same day, November 21, 1587, and the third in Pomerania on May 21, 1596. These markings, supposedly chronological, provide their author with a basis for various prophecies and warnings of the evils to come in Central Europe, especially in Germany.
As neither text nor type peculiarly tempt to perusal, I have not found it easy to disentangle the disasters or allot to each country its individual woe. Deductions from Daniel, the patriarch Joseph, and of course the Apocalypse enable Eglinus to establish definitely to his own satisfaction the future advent, in one or other of the Central Kingdoms, of Antichrist.
Nor, again, is it easy to gather whether a time-limit is set for his appearance, or whether the prophecies apply to twentieth-century events. Alas! also, the data do not enable me with certainty from the very promising entries from Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria to single out the precise potentate who best fills the bill, or closest answers to the author’s Antichrist.[116]
Space debars from one fascinating branch of my subject—the superstitions of Fishing. Their far-flung web enclosed the ancient piscator more firmly than his brother venator, or, indeed, any class save only the “medicine men” of Rome.
Nor could their successors disentangle themselves, as witness the recipe given above by Bassus for inscribing on the limpets’ shell the Gnostic formula, and Mr. Westwood’s words, “There is, in fact, more quaint and many-coloured superstition in a single page of Old Izaak than in all the forty-five chapters of the twentieth Book of the Geoponika. Silent are they touching mummies’ dust and dead men’s feet—silent on the fifty other weird and ghastly imaginations of the later anglers.”[117]
And even the modern angler, if he thoroughly examine himself, must confess that some shred of gossamer still adheres. Does he not at times forgo, even if he boast himself incredulous of consequence, some act, such as stepping across a rod, lest it bring bad luck? If particular individuals rise superior, the ordinary fisherman in our present day still avows and still clings to superstitions or omens. Let him in the South of Ireland be asked whither he goes, meet a woman, or see one magpie, and all luck vanishes.[118] A dead hare (manken) regarded as a devil or witch a century ago brought piscator nigh unto swooning.[119]
Women seem usually fatal to good catches; as one instance out of many we read in Hollinshed’s Scottish Chronicle, that “if a woman wade through the one fresh river in the Lewis, there shall no salmon be seen there for a twelvemonth after.”
Superstitions of every sort and almost incredible dictate to the ancient and to the modern fisherman what are the good and what the bad days for plying his craft, or setting his sail. Their cousin, imitative magic, plays no small part in deciding his bait.
But enough here of fishing superstitions. Are they not writ large in Pliny, Oppian, Plutarch, in the Folk Lore Records, and larger, geographically, in that masterpiece, The Golden Bough?
The most incredulous, if there were one chance in a hundred of the operation ensuring adeptness in our craft, would willingly sacrifice in conformity with Australian superstition the first joint of his little finger.[120] Nor, again, if only the most moderate success resulted, would any of us utter a belated plaint at his mother imitating her Fijian sister and throwing, when first a-fishing after childbirth, his navel-string into the sea, and thus “ensuring our growing into good fisherfolk.”[121]
GREEK AND ROMAN FISHING
“Noster in arte labor positus, spes omnis in illa.”
FISHERMEN ON THE VASE OF PHYLAKOPI.
Probably the earliest Greek representation connected with fishing, c. 1500 b.c.
[See n. 2, p. 63].
GREEK AND ROMAN FISHING.[122]
CHAPTER I
HOMER—THE POSITION OF FISHERMEN
It is difficult to define accurately or trace separately the Lure or the Lore of these two nations, for their methods of fishing were practically the same or dove-tailed one into the other. Since our authors in both languages frequently synchronise, or as in the case of Pliny and Ælian the younger tongue antedates the elder by a century or more, and since this book is based on no zoological system, I shall deal with them for the most part in chronological order.
The opposite page reproduces the figures of the four fishermen from the famous Fishermen’s Vase of Phylakopi discovered in Melos some twenty years ago.[123] If the period assigned to this, viz. c. 1500 b.c., be accurate, it seems to be the oldest Greek representation, at any rate in the Ægean area, depicting anything connected with fishing, and antedates the earliest Greek author by four to nine hundred years, in accordance with the varying ages allotted to the Homeric poems.[124]
It is to Homer, whether written by half a dozen different authors or in half a dozen different centuries,[125] as the oldest Greek writer extant that we naturally turn for information about fishermen and fishing. His evidence is not only the earliest, but also the most trustworthy, according to Athenæus. “Homer treats of the art of fishing with greater accuracy than professional writers on the subject such as Cæcilius, Oppian, etc.”[126] —an endorsement from the piscatorial side of the Theocritean ἅλις πάντεσσιν Ὅμηρος.
Neither fishermen nor traders in the Iliad and Odyssey possess any real status. While farmers, more especially pastoral farmers, occupy an acknowledged and—next to the chiefs and warriors—the highest position, no fisherman or trader is regarded as a representative unit of the body, politic or social, or as a contributor to the wealth of the tribe or state, a condition with which that of the fisherfolk in ancient Egypt [127] and in China, both in early times and in the present day, is elsewhere compared and contrasted.[128]
“For trader Homer knows no word.”[129] As traders he represents no Greeks, although the Taphians approximate closely (Od., I. 186). For this three reasons have been assigned:—
First, the Greeks of Homer’s time with the exception of the Phæacians, “who care not for bow or quiver, but for masts, and oars of ships, and gallant barques, wherein rejoicing, they cross the grey sea” (Od., VI. 270), hardly impress us, despite Dr. Leaf’s “The whole attitude of both the Poems is one of maritime daring,”[130] as adventurous sailors.
They disliked long sea voyages; they shrank from spending the night on the water; they would go thrice the distance, if they could but keep in touch with land—and naturally enough, when we remember that for the Homeric boat the Ægean was safe for only a few months of the year.
Their food supply made the sea a hateful necessity. “As much as a mother is sweeter than a stepmother, so much is earth dearer than the grey sea” might have been written as appropriately by Homer as by Antipater centuries later.[131]
Whatever trading existed was in the hands not of the Phæacians, but of the Phœnicians, to whose great port Sidon Homer makes reference more than once.[132] Boldness of navigation, plus guile and gainfulness, characterised the nation; their “tricky trading” (cf. the Levantines of our day)[133] found frequent comment.
A comparison of them with the seamen of Elizabeth’s time shows common traits. Both were “the first that ever burst into the silent seas,” both committed acts of piracy, both kidnapped and enslaved freely. Lest it be objected that the evidence of Od., XIV. 297 and 340 occurs in a fictitious account by Odysseus of himself and so is itself fictitious, let us call as witness the Hebrew prophet Joel[134]: “What have ye to do with Me, O Tyre and Zidon? The children, also, of Judah, and the children of Jerusalem, have ye sold unto the sons of the Grecians.”
The second reason lies in the fact that each Homeric house or each hamlet, although perhaps not each town, apparently supplied nearly all its own wants and was practically self-supporting.
The chief crafts existed, as Hesiod shows, but only in a rudimentary stage; workers there were in gold, silver, bronze, wood, leather, pottery, carpentry. Although they were not “adscripti glebæ,” the proper pride or narrow jealousy of each settlement was strongly averse from calling in craftsmen from outside. Only apparently those “workers for the people,” such as “a prophet, or a healer of ills, or a shipwright, or a godlike minstrel who can delight all by his song,” were free to come and go, as they willed, sure of a welcome: “These are the men who are welcome over all the wide earth.”[135]
The third reason was due to nearly all ordinary trade being effected by barter. Payment was in kine, kind, or service. The ox, probably because all round the most important of possessions, constituted the ordinary measure of value: thus a female slave skilled in embroidery fetches four oxen. Laertes gives twenty for Eurycleia, while much-wooed maidens by gifts from their successful suitors “multiply oxen” for their fathers.
Mentes sails to Temesa with a cargo of “shining iron” to exchange for copper.[136] Then again in Il., VII. 472 ff., “the flowing-haired Achæans bought them wine thence, some for bronze and some for gleaming iron, and some with hides, and some with whole kine, and some with captives.” Among the fishermen of the Indian Ocean, fish-hooks, on the same principle of importance of possession, “the most important to them of all implements, passed as currency and in time became a true money larin, just as did the hoe in China.”[137]
“The talents of gold,”[138] probably Babylonian shekels, whether Hultsch’s heavy or W. Ridgeway’s light one, implied, according to some, a money standard of value. But wrongly, because neither gold nor silver came to coinage in Greece or anywhere else till long after Homer’s day.
Fishermen seem slowly to have acquired some sort of status. Ἁλιεύς, at first meaning a seaman or one connected with the sea, in time denoted also a fisherman. Od., XIX. iii, characterises the well-ordered realm of a “blameless king” as one, in which “the black earth bears wheat and barley, and trees are laden with fruit, and sheep bring forth and fail not, and the sea gives store of fish.”
Any objection that such a kingdom had no actual existence, but was only invented to heighten the hyperbole of laudation of Penelope’s fame, “which goes up to the wide heaven, as doth the fame of a blameless king,” concerns us not at all, for the kingdom whether actual or imaginary is held up as worthy of all praise and admiration. In this our Fish and so our Fishermen have attained some, if small, constituent status.
The period of such attainment cannot be dated, but how and why the status arrived I now try to trace.
Authorities differ widely as to whether the (so-called) Greeks, on leaving Central Asia or whatever their Urheimat, established their first lodgements in Europe or Asia, in Greece Proper or Asia Minor. E. Curtius maintained that the Ionians at any rate, if not all the Greeks, founded their earliest settlements on the coast of Asia Minor, and only later crossed to Greece.
This view finds little favour among most Homeric scholars of the present day,[139] who reverse the theory. They place the first settlement of the immigrant Greeks in European Greece, whence by peaceable permeation or otherwise they subsequently colonised the coasts of Asia Minor and the Islands.
According to Professor K. Schneider[140] the Greeks, when swarming from their original Aryan hive and establishing themselves on the coast of Asia Minor and in the Islands of the Ægean Sea, carried with them and for a long time closely preserved their original habits of life and livelihood. Descended from generations of inland dwellers, eaters of the flesh of wild animals, of sheep, etc., they were ignorant of marine fish as a food. Only when the population increased more rapidly than the crops, did they, profiting by their contact with the Phœnicians, to whom in seamanship[141] and, according to some writers, in art[142] they owed much, begin to realise and utilise the wealth of the harvest to be won from the adjacent seas.[143]
Fishing, followed at first mainly by the very poor to procure a food in low esteem, gradually found itself.
In the Iliad and Odyssey no fish appear at banquets or in the houses of the well-to-do: only in connection with the poorest or starving do they obtain mention.
Meleager of Gadara accounted for this fact—previously noted by Aristotle—by the suggestion that Homer represented his characters as abstaining from fish, because as a Syrian by descent he himself was a total abstainer. The curious omission of fish has been held to indicate that Homer either lived before the adoption of fish as food, or, if not, that the social conditions and habits of diet which he delineates are those of generations before such transition.[144]
The decision, if one be possible, lies for Homeric scholars, and not for a mere seeker after piscatoriana. Even to such an one, however, two alternatives seem clear.
First, if Homer did live after the transition occurred, his descriptions of ancient times and customs unconsciously included habits and conditions of a more modern society.[145]
Second, if he lived before such transition—a supposition, which scarcely consists with the presence in Palæolithic débris of copious remains of fish—passages such as Od., XIX. 109-114, which ranks “a sea-given store of fish” a constituent of a well-ordered realm, and Il., XVI. 746, where “This man would satisfy many by searching (or diving) for oysters,” are interpolations by later writers.
It is difficult otherwise to reconcile or explain conflicting passages. How, for instance, can the dictum, that “Fish as a food was in the Poems only used by the very poor or starving,” be made to harmonise with Il., XVI. 746, just quoted?[146] If it be confined solely to the Odyssey, a more plausible case may possibly be presented.
Another suggestion, not quite similar, yet not repugnant, is Seymour’s. “The Poet represented the life which was familiar to himself and his hearers. Each action, each event might be given by tradition, or might be the product of the poet’s imagination, but the details which show the customs of the age, and which furnish the colours of the picture, are taken from the life of the poet’s time. His interest is centred in the action of the story, and the introduction of unusual manners and standard of life would only distract the attention of his hearers.”
Mackail, perhaps, concludes the whole matter. “The Homeric world is a world imagined by Homer: it is placed in a time, evidently thought of as far distant, though there are no exact marks of chronology any more than there are in the Morte d’Arthur.”[147]
Homer’s close knowledge of the many devices for the capture of fish, and his lively interest in the habits of fish quite apart from actual fishing seem inconsistent with Schneider’s contention of Greek ichthyic ignorance.
Fish, as we have seen, came gradually to be considered as much a part of natural wealth as the fruits of the ground or herds of cattle. And yet in all the pictures with which Hephæstus adorns the Shield of Achilles, pictures of common ever-present objects, first of the great phenomena of Nature—Earth, Sea, Sun, Moon, and Stars—and then of the various events and occupations that make up the round of human life—in all these pictures, which as a series of illustrations of early life and manners are obviously a document of first-rate importance, no form of sea-faring has any place. Ships of war, maritime commerce, and fishing are alike unrepresented.[148]
No satisfactory explanation of this omission has as yet seen the light. The design of The Shield, say some, came from an inland country, such as Assyria. Others that Homer described some foreign work of art fabricated by people who knew not the sea, but Helbig points out that the omission consists with the references to ships and sea-faring elsewhere in Homer. No commerce or occupation, which could be placed side by side with farming in a picture of Greek life, then existed. If Mr. Lang’s view—which possesses the pleasant property of incapacity of either proof or disproof—that The Shield was simply an ideal work of art had been more generally borne in mind, we should have been spared endless comment.
In his ascription of The Shield to Assyrian or Phœnician influence Monro finds himself at variance with Sir Arthur Evans. Even if his statement, “the recent progress of archæology has thrown so much light on the condition of Homeric art,” be accurate and the deductions from such recent progress be justifiable, the still more recent progress in the same science (according to Evans) ousts the Assyrian or Phœnician in favour of a Cretan parentage.
“It is clear that some vanguard of the Aryan Greek immigrants came into contact with this Minoan culture at a time when it was still in its flourishing condition. The evidence of Homer is conclusive. Arms and armour described in the poems are those of the Minoan prime; the fabled Shield of Achilles, like that of Herakles described by Hesiod, with its elaborate scenes and variegated metal work, reflects the masterpieces of the Minoan craftsmen in the full vigour of their art. Even the lyre to which the minstrel sang was a Minoan invention.”[149]
The suggestion that both authorities are really in agreement and that the influence at work may be traced back ultimately to the early Assyrian, i.e. Sumerian, culture, even if Evans holds “that the first quickening impulse came to Crete from Egypt and not from the Oriental side,” seems, on present data, untenable.
Till twenty years ago it was generally accepted that no character of Homer ever sailed for recreation, or fished for sport. They were far too near the primitive life to find any joy in such pursuits. Men scarcely ever hunted or fished for mere pleasure. These occupations were not pastimes; they were counted as hard labour. Hunting, fishing, and laying snares for birds in Homer and even in the classical periods had but one aim, food.[150]
The Poet expressly mentions the hardships (ἂλγεα, Od., IX. 121) of hunters in traversing forest and mountains. Nowhere does he give any indication of sport in hunting or fishing, except perhaps in the case of the wild boar and in the delight of Artemis “taking her pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer,”[151] where the word, παίζουσιν, would seem surely to indicate pleasure in sport.
“IN AT THE DEATH.”
But the recent discovery at Tiryns of a fresco where two ladies are depicted standing in a car at a boar-hunt[152] —perhaps “in at the death”—certainly makes for considerable qualification, and, if succeeded by similar finds, for complete reversal of the non-sporting theory.
On Circe’s Island, Odysseus strikes down “a tall antlered stag” as “he was coming down from his pasture in the woodland to the river, for verily the might of the Sun was sore upon him.” He bears the “huge beast” across his neck to the black ship of his companions, who soon devour it. This is the only mention of venison in Homer (Od., X. 158 ff.).
CHAPTER II
HOMER—METHODS OF FISHING
Whether Homer lived before or after the adoption of fish as a food, we find in the Iliad and Odyssey several references to fishing with the Spear, the Net, the Hand-line, and the Rod.
It is a point of curious interest that nearly all the references, where methods or weapons of fishing find mention, are made for the purpose of or occur in a simile, which despite the so-called Higher Criticism Mackail says, “In Homer reached perfection.”[153] A Homeric comparison, like the parable of the New Testament in its very nature is intended to throw light from the more familiar upon what is less familiar. The poet cannot intend to illustrate the moderately familiar by what is wholly strange. In modern writers the subjects of a simile, apart from those drawn from nature, are sometimes modern or new; in the old they are almost invariably drawn from some well established custom.
If so, it follows that to the Greeks of Homer’s time (as was the case with the Egyptians before them) fishing with Spear, Net, Line, and Rod were old and familiar devices.[154] Which of the first three—Spear, Net, Line—ranks the oldest, has (as shown in my Introduction) been long disputed and seems doubtful of definite settlement.
METHODS OF FISHING.
From Roman Mosaic at Sousse in Revue Arch., 1897, Pl. xi. The top left corner (destroyed) no doubt showed angling. The men in the left-hand boat are using (according to P. Gauckler ‘relève des nasses’) bottle-shaped baskets.
The passages referring to fishing number eight. Of the four methods of fishing mentioned one is with Spear (Od., X. 124) two with the Net (Od., XXII. 386; Il., V. 487), and one with the Rod (Od., XII. 251).
A. The Spear (Od., X. 124): “And like folk spearing fishes they bare home their hideous meal.” This gives a very lively image, because the companions of Odysseus, whose boats had been smashed by the thrown rocks, are in the water, and are being speared like fish by the Læstrygones.[155]
B. The Net (Od., XXII. 383 ff.): “But he” (Odysseus after the slaughter of the suitors) “found all the sort of them fallen in their blood in the dust, like fishes that the fishermen have drawn forth in the meshes of the net into a hollow of the beach from out the grey sea, and all the fish, sore longing for the salt waves, are heaped upon the sand, and the sun shines forth and takes their life away: so now the wooers lay heaped upon each other.”[156]
In Iliad, V. 487 ff.: “Only beware lest, as though entangled in the mesh of all-ensnaring flax, ye be made unto your foemen a prey and a spoil.”
C. The Rod (Od., XII. 251 ff.): “Even, as when a fisher on some headland[157] lets down with a long rod his baits for a snare to the little fishes below, casting into the deep the horn of an ox of the homestead, and as he catches each flings it writhing, so were they” (i.e. the companions of Odysseus) “borne upward to the cliff” (by Scylla).
D. Line and Hook (Iliad, XXIV. 80 ff.): “And she” (Iris on her Zeus-bidden mission) “sped to the bottom like a weight of lead, that mounted on the horn of a field-ox goeth down, bearing death to the ravenous fishes.”
E. Iliad, XVI. 406 ff.: “As when a man sits on a jutting rock and drags a sacred fish from the sea with line and glittering hook of bronze, so on the bright spear dragged he Thestor,” etc.[158]
F. Odyssey, IV. 368 f.: “Who” (the companions of Menelaus) “were ever roaming round the isle, fishing with bent hooks, for hunger was gnawing at their belly.”
Odyssey, XII. 330 f.: “They” (the companions of Odysseus) “went wandering with barbed hooks in quest of game, as needs they must, fishes and fowls, whatever might come to their hand, for hunger gnawed at their belly.”[159]
The Rod finds one express mention—in passage C. Is its use implied in passages D. and E.? The answer depends greatly on whether the adjectives employed are really descriptive of the qualities and sizes of the fish, or whether they are merely (as often the case in Homer) ornamental or conventional epithets more suited for general than particular use, or are redundant.
Our wonder, if the adjectives are really descriptive, grows by the Rod being only specifically mentioned when “little fishes” are the prey. If the contention of modern fishermen—the value of the rod as an implement increases in proportion to the weight of the fish on the hook—holds good, why does Homer cite the Rod in connection only with “little” fishes, more especially as the prey in the simile (the companions of Odysseus) can hardly be classed as “little”?
Four differing explanations are possible:—
1. That “little” is an ornamental or redundant adjective.
2. That ῥάβδος, which is usually translated rod, i.e. fishing-rod, is (according to Hayman and others) not a fishing-rod, but merely a staff, or spear, shod with horn, and that “little” signifies only fish suitable for food, not large fish, such as dolphins, etc.
3. That the fishermen of Homer (anticipating our professional deep-sea fishermen in Kent and the Channel Islands, who for quickness and certainty, especially in the case of heavy fish, prefer hand-lines to rods), limited the use of the Rod to “little,” i.e. not large, fish.[160]
4. That “little” is partly ornamental, partly intentional, because fish caught close inshore are normally smaller than those caught farther out.
From the adjectives in passages D. and E. can we infer the use of the Rod? Of the adjective in E., Butcher and Lang write: “It is difficult to determine whether ἱερός in Homer does not sometimes retain its primitive meaning of ‘strong’ (see Curtius, Etym., No. 614); in certain phrases, this may perhaps be accepted, as an archaism.... On the whole we have not felt so sure of the archaic use as to adopt it in our translation.”
Paley, “ἱερὸς means huge, as if a favourite of or dedicated to some sea-god.” Was it from this shade of meaning that Theocritus in his Fisherman’s Dream[161] drew his conception that certain fish might be κειμήλιον Ἀμφιτρίτας, a pet of the sea-goddess? Faesi seems to incline to Paley’s view, but for a more general reason: ἱερὸς equalling ἄνετος earmarks “all herds and shoals of fish, especially those in the Sea, as consecrate to the Gods.”
Granting this, why should one fish be singled out by the epithet when the whole “herd or shoal” is equally ἱερός? The infrequent coupling of the adjective with ἰχθὺς suggests some less general meaning, if it mean anything.
Athenæus[162] after trying to answer, “But what is the fish which is called Sacred?” by citing instances where the Dolphin, Pompilus, Chrysophrys, etc., are so designated, adds a sentence which seems either to be the authority for, or to confirm the authority of Faesi; “but some understand by the term ‘sacred fish’ one let go and dedicated to the God, just as people give the same name to a consecrated ox.”
Seymour holds that “the epithet ἱερὸς as applied to a fish in Il., XVI. 407, has not been satisfactorily explained from ordinary Greek usage: instead of sacred, it seems rather to mean active, vigorous, strong. Cf. the same epithet applied to the picket guard of the Achæans in Il., X. 56.” Curtius connects the word with the Sanskrit ishirá = vigorous. Ἱερὸς as active, agile, strong is applied to horses, spies, mind, women, and cows.
Leaf suggests that the word, when applied to night, etc., would have developed the meaning of mighty, mysterious, and so later on sacred. If sacred, the epithet may have arisen out of some sort of tabu or religious feeling against eating fish, in early times often regarded as either uncanny creatures living under water and possessed of superhuman powers, or as divine or semi-divine.[163]
Gradually the dread of fish as creatures tabu wore off, but survived for long in a hole-and-corner way, e.g. the veneration of τέττιξ ἐνάλιος, ‘the lobster,’ at Seriphos,[164] or the deification of καρκίνοι, ‘crabs,’ in Lemnos.[165]
If ἱερὸς does mean a big, fine, vigorous fish, to most modern fishermen a Rod would seem implied. This is strengthened by the nature of the act to which the simile applies: ὣς ἕλκε δουρὶ φαεινῷ, as Patroclus dragged Thestor on the bright spear from the chariot, so the fishermen dragged the fish from the sea.
In D. the case, if any, for the implied use of the Rod is very weak. In this alone of all the references does lead as a weight occur. Here we have no comparison to action such as dragging up a fine fish, but simply to swiftness; the effect of it, the splash, makes the point of the comparison with which Iris sped on her mission. Nor does the adjective applied to the fish give any aid, for ὠμηστής, if it be not redundant, signifies ‘raw-flesh devouring’ (rather than ‘ravenous’) fish, such as shark or swordfish.[166]
But if the early Greeks and Romans only fished for the pot and not for amusement, the question arises, why should this particular Homeric piscator “be after” swordfish or shark? Fishing, down to the early Roman times, continued to be more of a distinct trade than was the pursuit of animals and birds.[167] Hence the Net with quicker and surer returns and not the Rod was the favourite weapon of the fishermen by trade.
In F. (Od., IV. 369, and XII. 330) something in the nature of a line and of a bait of some sort (though not necessarily of a rod) attached to the bent, or barbed, hooks, must be implied. Hunger would assuredly continue to “gnaw at their bellies,” if their only food was caught by hooks, pure and simple, for, as Juliana Berners pithily puts it, “Ye can not brynge an hoke into a fyssh mouth without a bayte.”
Abstention from fish, however general, did not prevail among Homer’s sailors. Athenæus (I. 22) points out that since the hooks used could not have been forged on the Island, and so must have been carried on board the ships, “it is plain sailors were fond of and skilful in catching fish.”
Basing my surmise on ὄρνιθας in Od., XII. 331 and on the statement of Eustathius ad loc., that hooks were used for capturing sea-birds as well as fish, I suggest that the baits on the hooks were either small fishes (left possibly by the tide in some pool in the rocks), or shellfish, or oysters. These attached to a line (with or without a rod) and thrown into the sea were taken by both sea-fowl and fish.[168]
But all the preceding points dwarf in interest before the term κέρας βοὸς ἀγραύλοιο, “the horn of a field ox, or ox of the homestead.”[169] How does the horn of an ox find itself in this galley? What was its exact use? Where and how was it employed?
Many scholars and fishermen, ancient and modern, have essayed the problem. The reason for the use of the horn passed early out of common knowledge and afforded matter for conjecture from Aristotle downwards.
To enumerate all the theories would necessitate a list almost as long as Homer’s catalogue of the ships. The following, the most important, must suffice for our purpose.
(1) Κέρας was a little pipe or collar of horn protecting the line (which passed through it) just at its junction with the hook, and served the same purpose as a “gimp” on a trolling line.[170] “This precaution (according to Arnold) was taken so that the fish might not gnaw through the line”—a precaution very similar to our use of wire between the line and the hook, when fishing for tigerfish, tarpon, shark, etc.[171]
A similar interpretation of the word occurred to Aristotle, who[172] held that the lower piece of the line was fortified by a little hollow piece of horn, lest the fish should come at the line itself and bite it off. But the use of κέρας in the second (Od.) passage appears to rule out Aristotle’s and Arnold’s interpretations. The fish here are admittedly, not raw-flesh devouring, which might imply size, but small. Why then this elaborate contrivance as precaution against severance of the line?
The above explanation of the use of κέρας derives strong support from the method even now employed in the Nile.[173] The native sportsman, as protection against its being bitten off, covers a soft woollen line, to which is tethered a live rat, a common bait for a big Nile fish, with a pipe or tube of maize stalk. Here the similarity ends; on the Nile no hook is employed; the sportsman harpoons the fish while hanging on to the rat.
(2) Κέρας, according to Paley (quoting Spitzner), was a bit of horn fastened to the hook and plummet to disguise their appearance; this, from being nearly the same colour as the sea, served better to deceive the fish.
(3) Κέρας, according to Trollope and others, was the horn or tube, but in it only the leaden weight was enclosed.
(4) Κέρας was a kind of tress, made out of the hair of a bull. Plutarch, however, states flatly, “But this is an error.” Damm and others insist that the word in this sense is post-Homeric, and agree with Plutarch that these tresses, if ever used, would have been of the hair of a horse, and not of a bull.[174]
(5) Κέρας, according to Hayman and others, was simply a prong of horn attached to a staff to pierce and fork out the fish while feeding; hence the preliminary baits, εἴδατα (similar to baiting a swim on the Thames), are of course not on or attached to the horn.[175]
The epithet in C. is περιμήκης, not merely long, but very long. The adjective, if not redundant, lends weight to Hayman’s theory of spear as against fishing rod. Against it, however, in Od., X. 293, the ῥάβδος, or wand of Circe, which thrice appears (in Od., X. 238, 319, 389) minus any adjective, suddenly takes unto itself περιμήκης, very long, without apparent reason for the distinction.
(6) Mr. Minchin’s explanation is ingenious, if open to two objections. “As to the ox horn puzzle,” he writes to me, “I feel no doubt that the Cherithai (as the Bible calls the Kretans) cut a ring out of the horn of an ox, and then cut a gap, thus making a crescent of horn, to the one end of which they attached their line, which is exactly what the black fellows (in Australia) do to-day with a pearl shell.”[176]
But against this conjecture weighs the fact that as the grain of the horn runs from butt to point, if the hook be cut from cross-section it would probably break, as the cross-section would be across the grain, and so very frayable. If, however, the hook were cut from a panel removed from the side of the horn and just where the curve comes before the point, the substance of the hook might possibly stand.
MR. MINCHIN’S EXPLANATION OF κέρας.
Anticipating and dissenting from Mr. Minchin’s explanation are Monro’s note on Il., XXIV. 80 ff., and Professor Tylor’s comment in the note. “The main difficulty in the ancient explanation of the passage is the prominence given to the κέρας, which is spoken of as if it were the chief feature of the fisherman’s apparatus. The question naturally suggests whether the κέρας might not be the hook itself, made, like so many utensils of primitive times, from the horn of an animal.”
On this point Mr. E. B. Tylor writes to Monro as follows: “Fish-hooks of horn are in fact known in prehistoric Europe, but are scarce, and very clumsy. After looking into the matter, I am disposed to think that the Scholiast knew what he was about, and that the old Greeks really used a horn guard, where the modern pike fisher only has his line bound, to prevent the fish biting through. Such a horn guard, if used then, would last on in use, anglers being highly conservative, and I shall look out for it.”
Maspero,[177] however, states, “Objects in bone and horn are still among the rarities of our museums: horn is perishable and is eagerly devoured by certain insects, which rapidly destroy it,” with which statement may be compared Od., XXI. 395, “lest the worms might have eaten the horns” (of the bow of Odysseus).
Finally the explanation first suggested by Mr. C. E. Haskins[178] and adopted by Dr. Leaf, that κέρας was an artificial bait of horn, appears to me as an angler and as having seen in the Pacific, but not used, “bait fish-hooks made of shell all in one piece, of a simple hooked form without any barb,”[179] to be perhaps the most likely solution of our problem.
According to Mr. Haskins, κέρας means an artificial bait of horn, probably shaped like a small fish, and hollow at all events at the upper end, into which a μολύβδαινα (lead) was inserted to sink it. It had hooks of χαλκός fastened to it and was used by being thrown out, allowed to sink, and then rapidly drawn through the water to attract the fish by its glitter and motion. The εἴδατα may either be the same as the κέρας mentioned in the next line, or more probably ground bait thrown in to attract fish to the spot, while the use of the present participle, κατὰ ... βάλλων, seems to imply constant action, i.e. the fisherman throwing in at intervals a handful of ground bait.
While I have not, like Mr. Haskins, “caught many trout with artificial baits made of horn,” I can vouch that in England horn minnows still exist and that horn spoons are even now used for pike.
We find in Homer no special variety of fishes, except eels and dolphins. Eels are not ranked in a strict sense as fish; the words are “both eels and fishes” (Il., XXI. 203, 353). Sea calves and seals also find a place. Other fish occur in the picture of Scylla (Od., XII. 95): “and there she fishes (ἰχθυάᾳ) swooping round the rock, for dolphins or sea-dogs, or whatso greater beast she may anywhere take, whereof the deep-voiced Amphitrite feeds countless flocks.”
Seals[180] greedily devour a corpse in the sea (Od., XV. 480). Il., XXI. 122, 203, extend the pleasant practice to fish and eels: “around him eels and fishes swarmed, tearing and gnawing the fat about his kidneys.”
It is noteworthy that in Greek and Latin literature the first fish attaining to the dignity of a name is the Eel.[181]
The sea is called ἰχθυόεις, “fishy,” or perhaps better “fishful,” twelve times: the Hellespont only once. Plutarch (Symp., IV. 4) had this probably in mind, when he wrote, “the heroes encamped by the Hellespont used themselves to a spare diet, banishing from their tables all superfluous delicacies to such a degree that they abstained from fish.” Ἰχθυόεις happens but once in connection with a river, the Hyllus (Il., XX. 392).
Homer seemingly applies it only where he is impressed, not by the number of fish obvious to the eye or still remaining in, but by the number already taken out of the water. The proportion of salt water ‘fishfuls’ to fresh water ‘fishfuls’—13 as against 1—would, if not quite accidental, accord with the fact that the early Greeks, whatever be the time at which they became Ichthyophagists, set no high store on fresh-water fish.[182]
CHAPTER III
THE CONTEST BETWEEN HOMER AND HESIOD—HOMER’S DEATH
The cause and circumstances of Homer’s death remain uncertain and disputed. For them some writers hold fisherfolk responsible.
Midway between (A) the tradition that Homer took so to heart his impotency to read—be it remembered he had been acclaimed “of mortals far the wisest”—the riddle of the fisher boys, that he took also to bed and shortly after died, and (B) the absolute assertion by Herodotus the Grammarian (Vita Homeri) that the poet “died at Ios of disease contracted on his arrival there, and not of grief at failing to understand the riddle of the fishers,” lies the account of the death given in the Ἀγὼν Ἡσιόδου καὶ Ὁμήρου, or The Contest between Hesiod and Homer.[183]
The Contest, despite the rather laboured thrusts of the antagonists full of curious if not connected touches, makes the funeral solemnities of King Amphidamas the occasion and Chalcis (not Aulis or Delos) the scene of the encounter.
Victory and prize were adjudged to Hesiod, because he “sang of Tilth and Peace, not of War and Gore.”[184]
If left to a jury composed of or even leavened by fishers instead of to the king, the verdict would surely have gone the other way, were it only on the ground that while Homer affords several spirited pictures of fishing, we search in vain all Hesiod’s genuine works for any mention, for even any allusion to fishing.
The word fish occurs only in Works and Days, line 277. Even if we allow The Shield of Heracles to be by Hesiod, we find but one passage (lines 214-5) relating to fishing, and this with a Net.[185] Hesiod’s silence on the subject surprises, for (a) he boasts himself the poet of country life, (b) states that as a youth he fed and led his flocks on the sides and amid the streams of Mount Helicon, and (c) passed the rest of his life on the banks of the river Cephissus.[186]
Homer had previously, on consulting the Pythian Priestess as to the country whence he sprang, received a response, which I render—
“Thy mother’s home is Ios, where in time Thou’lt lie; but ’ware the young lads’ riddling rhyme.”[187]
But now let the Ἀγὼν speak. “After the contest the poet sailed unto Ios, and there abode a long time, being already an old man. Sitting one day on the sea-shore, he asked some lads returning from fishing,
‘Fishermen from Arcadia, have we aught?’
To which they made answer,
‘What caught we, we left; what caught we not, we carry.’[188]
Homer, however, caught not on, until he was told that the key of ‘what’ was not fish, but lice.[189]
“Remembering him of the oracle that the end of life was upon him, he makes the epitaph for his own tomb. Arising thence, he slipped in the mud, falling on his rib, and on the third day, so men say, died. And he was buried in Ios.”
This is the epitaph—
Ἐνθάδε τὴν ἱερὴν κεφαλὴν κατὰ γαῖα καλύπτει, Ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων κοσμήτορα, θεῖον Ὄμηρον.
or
“Here Earth has hid that holy head of thine, Marshal of heroes, Homer the divine.”[190]
The story of Hesiod after his victory over Homer as set forth in The Contest repays telling.
He journeyed at once to Delphi to give the first fruits of his victory as a votive offering to the Oracle—and here let us note how in early times, certainly down to the time of Xenophon, the Greeks at important events in their lives resorted to some such fane for guidance.[191]
Greeted from the inner shrine as one “held in honour high by the immortal Muses,” as one “whose fame shall reach as far as is spread the light of morn” (this use of one of Homer’s own and fairest lines[192] was no doubt intended as the highest possible tribute to his victor), Hesiod is then warned, “But beware of the fair grove of the Nemean Zeus, for there lies thy fate of death.”
Alas! for the poet, who to escape the well-known temple of Nemean Zeus in the Peloponnese hurried off to stay at Oinoë in Locris, never to discover that there too was a place sacred to the same god and called by the same name.
At Oinoë he abode with his hosts, until suspecting that he had debauched their sister (Hesiod seems to have been endowed with superhuman powers, for according to Proclus and Suidas he was a youth twice!), they slew him and threw him into the sea. But on the third day his body was borne back to land by dolphins. On hue and cry for the murderers being raised the brothers seized a fishing boat and set sail for Crete.[193] But they found not favour in the “pure eyes and perfect witness of all-judging” Zeus, who thundered and sank them. “But the maiden, their sister, after the rape hanged herself.” To conclude in the words of the Ἀγών,
“So much for Hesiod!”
CHAPTER IV
THE DOLPHIN—HERODOTUS—THE ICHTHYOPHAGI—THE TUNNY
The Shield of Heracles, now rarely attributed to Hesiod the poet nearest in time to Homer, gives us pictures, similar if more ornate in style to those in Homer’s “The Shield of Achilles.”
The Shield of Heracles would probably not have been written had not Homer’s “Shield of Achilles” existed. It differs from the older poem in the presentation of mythological scenes and a scene of fishing, but is perhaps the most complete illustration from fisher life extant before Theocritus.
“there appeared A sheltering haven from the untamed rage Of ocean. It was wrought of tin refined And rounded by the chisel; and it seemed Like to the dashing wave; and in the midst Full many dolphins chased the fry, and show’d As though they swam the waters, to and fro Darting tumultuous. Two of silver scale Panting above the wave, the fishes mute Gorged, that beneath them shook their quivering fins In brass. But on the crag a fisher sate Observant: in his grasp he held a net Like one that, poising, rises to the throw.”[194]
The painting of the harbour, of the cliffs, of the fishes tossing in tumultuous heaps, and of the chase and capture by dolphins of their prey, all seem to Mr. Hall but a careful elaboration of a suitable background (as the fields, etc., in the ancient Pastorals form an artistic background to the shepherds) for the solitary figure.
“But, on the crag a fisher sate Observant; in his grasp he held a net, Like one that, poising, rises to the throw.”
The occurrence here of the Dolphin, together with the part that it played in the recovery of Hesiod’s body, makes this an appropriate place for a brief résumé of the position occupied by this fish in Greek and Roman authors, and of the many pretty legends in which for all time its memory is enshrined.[195]
The myth of the Dolphin—a creature of lightness and swiftness—as the protégé of the gods and the helpmate of man stands out as a purely Hellenic conception, and contrasts sharply with that of the Tortoise, unmoving, half-hidden, which according to Eastern belief supports the weight of the world.
In Greek and Latin literature (exclusive of the recipes of the gourmets or the rhapsodies of the opsophagi) no fish wins more frequent mention or higher appreciation than the Dolphin.
And justly so, since, of a nature essentially philanthropic, it delights to be with man, and aid man by willing services.[196] Pliny,indeed, confesses that he could never reach the end of the stories about their kindly acts, especially towards the young. He notes that they found pleasure not only in the society of man, but also in music, præcipue hydrauli sono, or “the organ,” the only trait, I imagine, common to the fish and to Nero![197]
The helpfulness of the Dolphin shows itself in diverse ways, often on vital occasions. In gratitude for the rescue of Telemachus, Ulysses wore its effigy stamped on signet and on shield. Attracted by Arion’s singing, it saves from the waves “the sweet musician,” and bears him safe to Tænarum.[198] Later on, with pleasant disregard of religious bias, it rescues the Christian Saint Callistratus from a watery grave.[199] It acts as willing, almost as “common” carrier, alike to gods, schoolboys, and damsels in distress. It anticipates our meteorological office, for from the direction of its swim can be predicted the wind of to-morrow.[200]
Its constant and practical service to fishermen meets wide attestation. Oppian sings it: Pliny proses it: Ælian cribs, and confirms it.[201]
From the lagoon of Latera (says our Latin author) multitudes of mugils or grey mullets at stated periods flock to the sea.[202] The moment the migration begins, crowds collect for the sport, shout their loudest, and summon “Simo” from the vasty deep, or rather the mouth of the lagoon.
The Dolphins, formed in line of battle, swim swiftly in, cut off all escape to sea, and drive before them the frightened fish to the shoals.[203] While the nets are being drawn the dolphins kill, but pause not to eat, such fish as escape the meshes. When at last the catch is saved, then they fall to and devour the fish already killed.
Here let us note an instance of intellectual anticipation of Trade Unionism. Well aware that their labour has yielded far more than the regulation Trade stroke, and earned more than the Eight Hours’ wage, they quietly await settling day—next morning—when they are paid by being stuffed not only with fish, but also with crumbs soaked in wine.[204]
Thus Oppian of another fish-drive,
“The Fishers pick the choicest of the Spoil, Supply their wishes and reward their Toil.”
In a story of similar fishing by Mucianus the Dolphins await neither summons by voice as above, or signal by torch (as in Ælian, II. 8) but “uncalled and of their own accord” present themselves ready for work.
Trades Unionism among the Dolphins is again not obscurely indicated, ipsis quoque inter se publica est societas. Furthermore, close corporations, not unlike mediæval Guilds or modern Unions, but wotting not of “blackleg” or even “dilutee,” surely prevailed, for suum quæque cymba e delphinis socium habet.[205]
Ælian’s dolphins foreshadow, it would seem, our modern principle of co-operation, when “they draw near demanding the due reward of their joint-undertaking.” But their organisation of labour differed from ours in two respects.
First, the willingness and the wage for night and day shift were identical. Second, since they were not blessed as we in the higher civilisation of the twentieth century are by the exalted, if not always successful conceptions of Conferences of Conciliation or Compulsory Arbitration, a strike, occasioned either by divergence from the strict terms of the bargain, or by gauche “handling” of the workers—whether for it the sanction of the Ballot or an order of the Shop Steward were a necessary preliminary my researches have not as yet disclosed—a strike, I repeat, could not be called off, but was irreparable, for οὐκέτι oἱ δελφῖνες ἀρηγόνες εἰσὶν ἐπ’ ἄγρην.[206]
By the Dolphins the economic weapon was evidently brought to greater perfection than by their human brethren. The crude “down tooling” of the Egyptian masons in the fourteenth century b.c., although accompanied by violence such as forcing main gates, etc., was (according to Maspero) quickly settled by the attacked Governor handing over the keys of the granaries, whence with bags—and bellies—full filled they meekly returned to work.
Of another ingratiating characteristic of the Dolphin, its attachment and services to boys, instances are numerous and well attested.[207] In truth we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, from the autoptic gospel of the Anti-Semite Apion[208] and of the wide-travelled Pausanias[209] to the gleanings of the industrious A. Gellius,[210] that I can draw attention to two stories only. These illustrate the relations existing between the Dolphin, and (a) the boy of Baiæ as set forth by Pliny (IX. 8), and (b) the boy of Iasos by Oppian (V. 468), Athenæus (XIII. 85), and Ælian (VI. 15).[211]
In the last two occurs the pretty tale of the fish waiting daily till school ended to take the beloved lad for swims and larks in the sea, but without the refinement found elsewhere of waiting every morning and afternoon to carry him to and from school! To the spectacle in Iasian waters of their play and of their races (“to bring the thorough-bred and the donkey together” à la Admiral Rous, the fish must have been crushingly handicapped!):
“Drawn by Report to see the strange Amour Admiring Nations crowded to the Shore. Rapt with delight, surveyed their am’rous Game And owned the Sight superior to the Fame.”
But alas! soon was “their am’rous Game” to end.
One day the lad, tired and eager for a bathe, threw himself on his comrade’s back, only however to impale himself on the dorsal spike and gradually bleed to death. No sooner did the Dolphin perceive the water tinged with blood, than “with the force of a full-sailed Rhodian ship,” he drave straight for land, flung himself and his burden high and dry on the strand, and there, by the side of his beloved dead, abode until death came unto him also.
To testify that these twain “were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided,” the citizens of Iasos erected a monument, showing the beautiful boy astride the back of the Dolphin, and issued coins bearing the effigies of each, which were sought far as souvenirs by bands of pilgrims attracted thither by the story. In such regard did the legend continue to be held that even up to the third century b.c. the Iasians struck coins with the device of a youth swimming beside a dolphin, which he clasps with one arm.[212]
Like Scylla, who “fishes for dolphins and whatso greater beast she may anywhere take,” both the Thracians and Byzantines, despite the enormous annual revenues derived by the latter from their fisheries, caught and ate the Dolphin, and for so-doing are branded as impious and barbarian.[213] The more ancient Byzantine coins show a cow standing on a dolphin, which perhaps symbolises the heifer crossing the Bosporus.[214]
THE DOLPHIN AND
THE BOY OF IASOS.
From Coin, British Museum,
Cat. Pl. 21. 7.
The ancient literature of the East also portrays Dolphins (Ç i çumâras) as the ready helpers of man, in rescuing lives, in drawing ships, etc.[215] The inhabitants of Isle Sainte Marie, near Madagascar, even now never harm or eat the fish, holding it as sacred, because they believe it rendered signal service to some ancestor.[216]
Herodotus mentions a tribe living round Lake Prasias, who in dwellings and food resemble the Wolga folk, and early Continental and English Lake-dwellers:—
“Platforms supplied by tall piles stand in the middle of the lake, which are approached from the land by a narrow single stage. At first the piles were fixed by all citizens, but since that time the custom that has prevailed about fixing them is this, every man drives in three for each wife he marries. Now the men all have many wives apiece, and this is the way they live. Each has his own hut (wherein he dwells) on one of the platforms, and each has a trap door, giving access to the lake beneath: their wont is to tie the baby children by the foot with a string, to save them from rolling into the water. They feed their horses and other beasts on fish, which abound in the lake in such a degree that a man has only to open his trap door, and let down a basket by a rope into the water, and then wait a very short time, when he draws it up quite full of fish.”[217]
Confirming and illustrating Herodotus’s account (I. 202) of how a tribe dwelling on the Araxes lived on raw fish,[218] but depicting more sharply how on fish a whole people were dependent for everything that made up their lives, comes Arrian’s description[219] of the Ichthyophagi of the Persian Gulf.
Denied by the barrenness of their country the ordinary sources of subsistence, they were compelled to use fish for every purpose—food, clothes, houses, etc. These peoples (for the Indian Ichthyophagi are quite distinct from the Arabian) find comment by many authors—e.g. Strabo, Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus. Although by their diet of fish comparatively free from disease, they were noted as short-lived. Alexander the Great, with a view to increasing their span of existence, forbade all the Ichthyophagi an unmixed diet.
Solinus (56, 9) testifies as to their extreme swiftness in swimming: non secus quam marinæ beluæ nando in mari valent. Marco Polo (III. 41) found on the coast of Arabia an interesting survival of the Ichthyophagi. In consequence of the sterility of the soil they fed their cattle, camels, and horses on dried fish, “which being regularly served to them they eat without any signs of dislike. They are dried and stored, and the beasts feed on them from year’s end to year’s end. The cattle will also eat these fish just out of the water.”
Not dissimilar is the account given[220] some twelve centuries earlier of the people of Stobera in India. “They clothe themselves in the skins of very large fishes, and their cattle taste like fish and eat extraordinary things: for they are fed upon fish, just as in Cairo the flocks are fed on figs.”
In strong contrast with these Ichthyophagi other races abstained entirely, not as the Egyptians and Jews partially, from fish. Of such were the Syrians, either because they worshipped fish as gods or held them as sacred,[221] or because (as asserted by Anaximander) of the inhumanity, since mankind originally were born from fish, of devouring one’s fathers and mothers.[222]
Surprising, indeed, sounds the statement of Plutarch that among total abstainers in early times were the more religious-minded of the Greeks, among whom later the eating of fish developed into a passionate, almost cat-like, devotion. Invested though the abstentions, total or other, were with divine origin or armed with divine sanction, the root reason of all of them rested, I believe, on the terror of skin-diseases, attributable to a fish diet.[223] Others, however, hold that the ultimate reason of the tabu lay in the uncanny nature of creatures that can and do live under water, while we can not.
Fishermen rank higher in the time of Herodotus than in the Homeric era. Even the oracles and soothsayers now condescend to avail themselves of their technique and parlance for framing their answers. Thus Amphilytus the Acarnanian encourages Pisistratus before the battle of Pallene with
“The casting net is thrown down, and the fishing net spread wide. And the tunnies shall dart to and fro (therein) in the moonlight.”[224]
If Pisistratus squared the Acarnanian, as effectively as the Alcmæonidæ (his hereditary foes and the ejectors of his descendants from Athens) absolutely bought the oracle at Delphi, words of greater light and leading than “The Tunnies shall dart to and fro in the moonlight” might have been vouchsafed, for Herodotus relates that Pisistratus fell on the enemy, when they were having their mid-day meal, or asleep after it, or playing dice. To suppose that these words foretold and were understood by Pisistratus to foretell the hour of the subsequent capture of Athens itself presumes a power of mental suggestion, which even Charcot would have envied.
The deliverance may possibly have been particular as regards time, but more probably was, oracle-like, entirely general in terms and time. The words “And the tunnies shall dart up and down in the moonlight” merely continue the fishing analogy of the first line, and refer to the well-known method of catching Tunnies “at the full of the moon,” when, allured by the silvery light, they glide and race through the water, and are easily taken.
The mention here of the Tunny makes appropriate some notice of a fish, which looms large in nearly all our authors. Most of them dilate at length on its multitude, migrations, habits, and size. Its economic value as a food asset, then and now, finds ample recognition by writers separated over two thousand years (such as Aristotle and Apostolides), and in its current title of “The Manna of the Mediterranean.”
CUTTING UP THE TUNNY.
From Gerhard, Aus. Vas., Pl. 316, 2.
It is curious that the first two fish, the Dolphin and Tunny, on which I have occasion to comment because of the chronological sequence of Hesiod and Herodotus, should have greater attention paid them and should occupy more space in ancient writers than any other.
The reasons, however, are very dissimilar.
The Dolphin by its engaging habits of aidfulness and of comradeship—to it scarcely anything human seems alien—evoked gratitude and liking. The Tunny, apart from the wonder awakened by its multitudes and migrations, compelled an economic interest from its food-producing quantities and qualities. Rhode has excellently summarised the dissemblance: “Delphinus veterum cordibus atque animis se insinuavit, thynnus gulis atque ventriculis.”[225]
The annual campaign of the Tunny fishing, lasting from May 15 to Oct. 25, was based on a regular and thorough organisation. All the boats of a given section of the coast acted under the orders of an elected Captain, whose word was law.
Descriptions of fishing for Tunny and Pelamyde—the name given to the young Tunny from his habit of burying himself in the mud (πήλῳ μύειν),[226] a derivation often attributed to Aristotle, see H. A., VIII. 15, or of herding together (πέλειν ἅμα) according to Plutarch—may be found in Aristotle, N. H., IV. 10, and VIII. 15, in Pliny, H. N., IX. 53, in Ælian, de nat. an., XV. 5 and 6, and in Oppian, hal., IV. 531 ff. The story by the last of the Thracians piercing and taking myriads of mutilated Pelamydes from the mud, in which they have for warmth ensconced themselves, merits reading if only for his indignant burst:
“The various Tortures of the bleeding Shoal Command a Pity from the stoutest Soul.”[227]
Aristophanes (Hipp., 313) compares Cleon to the watch posted on a cliff or height to signal the advent of the Tunnies, a position (as Theocritus [III. 26] and Oppian [hal., IV. 637] show), very similar to that of the “Hooer” in the pilchard fishery of Cornwall at the present day.
These look-outs were frequently artificial. Ælian, de nat. an., XV. 5, describes a scaffolding consisting of two fir trees between which many cross pieces were fastened. The long ladders still used in Austria and Italy (of which Keller gives an illustration[228]) and the Turkish dalian of the Bosporus represent the modern scaffold. Oppian (hal., III. 630 ff.) and Ælian (de nat. an., XV. 5) note the enormous hauls made by the fishermen when “the army” of the Tunnies set out on its migrations, company by company.
The nets used for the capture of Tunny by the Italians (at the present day) are fixed: made of thick cord, without leads, and sometimes as much as 250 fathoms long, and 15 fathoms deep, thus recalling Oppian’s “a Town of Nets.”[229] Special regard has to be paid now as of old, in fixing their position, to the course frequented by this eminently migratory genus in its annual passage from the Atlantic to the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, a distance of 2800 miles and back again. The same route is always travelled by an ever living stream of undiminished fulness, furnishing food to millions on the Mediterranean.
To the Phœnicians and to the Spaniards of old the Tunny ranked high as a commercial asset. The Tyrian tunny was specially prized[230]; its salsamentum travelled far and wide. Rhode (p. 38) points out, however, that this originally was designed not as a delicacy, but as a preventive against scurvy and other diseases attendant on the long voyages which the far-flung commerce of the Phœnicians demanded.
The older port, Sidon, got its name from its wealth of fish, which in Phœnician was called Sidon,[231] while Tyrus, one of the earliest inhabitants of the younger port, traditionally invented fishing tackle.[232] Many Spanish towns, as their coins attest, notably those of Gades and Carteia, owed much of their prosperity, if not their existence, to the salt or pickled fish trade. Tunny fishing still remains a lucrative industry in the Peninsula.[233]
Pliny bears witness to the full stream of Tunny in IX. 2, where he tells us the multitude of the fish which met the fleet of Alexander the Great under the command of Nearchus on one occasion was so vast, that only by advancing in battle line, as on an enemy, was he able to cut his way through: non voce, non sonitu, non ictu, sed fragore terrentur, nec nisi ruina turbantur.[234]
Faber’s account of the watchman, of the alarm caused by throwing in stones near the inlet through which the shoal of fish has just passed, of the raising of the hue and cry to drive it towards the end of the enclosure, the battering of the fish to death with oars, and of other devices might well pass, although written in the nineteenth century, for a description of the Tunny fishing by an author of the first century.
From this fishing Æschylus[235] drew his vivid image of the destruction of the host of Xerxes at sea—an image placed with more poetic than dramatic aptness in the mouth of the Persian messenger who paints the battle to Atossa. “But the Greeks,” he tells her, “kept striking, hacking us with fragments of oars and splinters of wrecks, as if we were Tunnies or a draft of fish.”
The comparison strikes as all the more telling, when we remember that one of the most killing methods of capturing the Tunny was and still is by stabbing with pikes and poles the fish, after having driven them into a narrow space.
Imagine the storm of applause, which that bold and glowing picture (in but two lines!) of the common practice and of the wondrous victory must have aroused from an audience who eight years before had either fought at or feared for Salamis, to an author whose conspicuous gallantry both there and at Marathon had earned for him the high honour of a place in the great commemorative fresco in the Stoa Poikile at Athens!
Phædimus states: “The Tunny is so sensible of the equinoxes and solstices that he teaches even men themselves without the help of any astrological table.”[236] Further, that being dim sighted, or as according to Æschylus “casting a squint-eye like a Tunny,” the fish always coast the Euxine Sea on the right side and contrariwise when they come forth—“prudently committing the care of their bodies to their best eye!”
Again, although the fish lack knowledge of arithmetic, they are yet so endowed that “they arrive in such a manner to the perfection of that science,” that for mutual love and protection “they always make up their whole fry into the form of a cube and make a solid of the whole number consisting of six equal planes, and swim in such order as to present an equal front in each direction.”
“The Tunny more than any other fish delights in the heat of the sun. It will burrow for warmth in the sand in shallow waters near the shore, or will, because it is warm, disport itself on the surface of the sea.”[237] With this pleasure inevitably surgit aliquid amari, for about the rising of the Dog-star this fish, as well as the sword fish, became the prey of a piercing parasite, which was nicknamed the “gadfly.”
The ordinary weights and sizes to which the Tunny attained are uncertain. The passages in Arist., N. H., VIII. 30, and in Pliny, IX. 17, on account of the doubt whether the span of tail should be two or five cubits are not authoritative. Richter records the capture in 1565 of a fish thirty-two feet long and sixteen feet thick, on whose skin a ship of war was depicted in its entirety.[238]
The power of the skin to expand seems the only limitation of their size and weight, for they take on fat till they burst.[239] No wonder that for beasts of such dimensions the Celtæ used great iron hooks,[240] which elsewhere were double.[241] But their devices met defeat by these “Fat” (if not somnolent) “Boys” of the Sea, for teste Oppian,
“Oft on the Spikes that arm the indented Chine Rolling averse they sawed the trembling Line.”
The Tuna of the Canadian and Californian coasts run very heavy: one of the former caught on a Rod and Line weighed 707 lbs.