Dumnotoni tales solita est ostendere gazas:
Nodosas vestes animantum Nerinorum,
Et jacula, et fundas, et nomina villica lini,
Colaque, et indutos terrenis vermibus hamos.
Epist. iv. 51-55.
Besides the passage of Plautus, here quoted by Isidore, there are two others, in which the casting-net is mentioned under the name of rete jaculum, viz. Asinar. l. i. 87, and Truc. l. i. 14. Pareus, as we find from his Lexicon Plautinum, clearly understood the meaning of the term, and the distinction between the casting-net and the sean. Of the Rete jaculum he says, “Sic dicitur ad differentiam verriculi, quod non jacitur, sed trahitur et verritur.” He adds, that Herodotus calls it ἀμφίβληστρον, and the Germans Wurffgarn.
The word occurs twice in Herodotus, and both places throw light upon its meaning. In Book i. c. 141. he says: “The Lydians had no sooner been brought into subjection by the Persians than the Ionians and Æolians sent ambassadors to Cyrus at Sardis, entreating him to receive them under his dominion on the same conditions on which they had been under Crœsus. To this proposal he replied in the following fable. A piper, having seen some fishes in the sea, played for a while on his pipe, thinking that this would make them come to him on the land. Perceiving the fallacy of this expectation, he took a casting-net, and, having thrown it around a great number of the fishes, he drew them out of the water. He then said to the fishes, as they were jumping about, As you did not choose to dance out of the water, when I played to you on my pipe, you may put a stop to your dancing now.” The other passage (ii. 95) has been illustrated in a very successful manner by William Spence, Esq., F. R. S., in a paper in the Transactions of the Entomological Society for the year 1834. In connection with the curious fact, that the common house-fly will not in general pass through the meshes of a net, Mr. Spence produces this passage, in which Herodotus states, that the fishermen who lived about the marshes of Egypt, being each in possession of a casting-net, and using it in the day-time to catch fishes, employed these nets in the night to keep off the gnats, by which that country is infested. The casting-net was fixed so as to encircle the bed, on which the fisherman slept; and, as this kind of net is always pear-shaped, or of a conical form, it is evident that nothing could be better adapted to the purpose, as it would be suspended like a tent over the body of its owner. In this passage Herodotus twice uses the term ἀμφίβληστρον, and once he calls the same thing δίκτυον, because, as we have seen, this was a common term applicable to nets of every description[706].
[706] None of the commentators appear to have understood these passages. In particular we find that Schweighäuser in his Lexicon Herodoteum explains Ἀμφίβληστρον thus: “Verriculum, Rete quod circumjicitur.” Rete, however, corresponds to δίκτυον, which meant a net of any kind; and Verriculum is the Latin for Σαγήνη, which, as will be shown hereafter, was a sean, or drag-net.
The antiquity of the casting-net among the Greeks appears from a passage in the Shield of Hercules, attributed to Hesiod (l. 213-215). The poet says, that the shield represented the sea with fishes seen in the water, “and on the rocks sat a fisherman watching, and he held in his hands a casting-net (ἀμφίβληστρον) for fishes, and seemed to be throwing it from him.” We apprehend that, the position of sitting was not so suitable to the use of the casting-net as standing, because it requires the free use of the arms, which a man cannot well have when he sits. In other respects this description exactly agrees with the use of the casting-net: for it is thrown by a single person, who remains on land at the edge of the water, observes the fishes in it, and throws the net from him into the water so as suddenly to inclose them.
In two of the tragedies of Æschylus we find the term ἀμφίβληστρον applied figuratively by Clytemnestra to the shawl, in which she enveloped her husband in order to murder him.