Hos cava contento retia fune trahunt.
Ovid, Art. Amat. i. 763, 464.
By Virgil the casting-net is called funda, which is the common term for a sling. In illustration of this it is to be observed, that the casting-net is thrown over the fisherman’s shoulder, and then whirled in the air much like a sling. By this action he causes it to fly open at the bottom so as to form a circle, which is loaded at intervals with stones or pieces of lead, and this circle “strikes the broad river[703]:” for the casting-net is used either in pools of moderate depth, or in rivers which have, like pools, a broad smooth surface; whereas the sean is employed for fishing in the deep (pelago)[704].
[703] The Arabs now employ the casting-net on the shores of the Arabian Gulf. “Its form is round, and loaded at the lower part with small pieces of lead; and, when the fisherman approaches a shoal of fish, his art consists in throwing the net so that it may expand itself in a circular form before it reaches the surface of the water.”—Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia, vol. ii. p. 148.
[704] For a technical account of nets, including the casting-net as now made, the reader is referred to the Hon. and Rev. Charles Bathurst’s Notes on Nets; or the Quincunx practically considered, London, 1837, 12mo. Duhamel wrote on the same subject in French.
Isidore of Seville, in his account of the different kinds of nets (Orig. xix. 5), thus speaks: “Funda genus est piscatorii retis, dicta ab eo, quod in fundum mittatur. Eadem etiam a jactando jaculum dicitur. Plautus:
Probus quidem antea jaculator eras[705].”
[705] Jaculator corresponds to the Greek ἀμφιβολεὺς.
Ausonius, in the following lines, which refer to the methods of fishing in the vicinity of the Garonne, appears to distinguish between the jaculum and the funda.
Piscandi traheris studio? nam tota supellex