[721] Observe also the use of the word μυχὸς in the passage of Lucian’s Timon, quoted below.
In the following passage Ovid mentions the use both of the corks and of the leads[722]. This passage also shows that several nets were fastened together in order to form a long sean:
Aspicis, ut summa cortex levis innatat unda,
Cum grave nexa simul retia mergat onus?
Trist. iii. 4. 1, 12.
[722] Μολύβδαιναι, J. Pollux, x. 30. § 132.
This use of cork and lead in fishing is also mentioned by Ælian, Hist. Anim. xii. 43; and that of cork by Pausanias, viii. 12. § 1; and by Pliny, H. N. xvi. 8. s. 13, where, in reciting the various uses of cork, he says it was employed “piscantium tragulis.” Sidonius Apollinaris, describing his own villa, says:—
Hinc jam spectabis, ut promoveat alnum piscator in pelagus, ut stataria retia suberinis corticibus extendat.—Epist. ii. 2.
“Hence you will see how the fisherman moves forward his boat into the deep water, that he may extend his stationary nets by means of corks.”
Alciphron, in his account of a fishing excursion near the Promontory of Phalerum, says, “The draught of fishes was so great as almost to submerge the corks[723].” The earnest desire of a posterity, founded on the wish for posthumous remembrance, which was a very strong and prevailing sentiment among the ancients, is illustrated by the language of Electra in the Choëphorœ of Æschylus, where she entreats her father upon this consideration to attend to her prayer, and likens his memory to a net, which his children, like corks, would save from disappearing:—“Do not extinguish the race of the Pelopidæ. For thus you will live after you are dead. For a man’s children are the preservers of his fame when dead, and, like corks in dragging the net, they save the flaxen string from the abyss.” The use of the corks is mentioned in several of the epigrams of the Greek Anthology, already referred to, and in the following passage of Plutarch:—