Diogenes, seeing a great number of fishes in the deep, says there is need of a sean to catch them; σαγήνης δέησις.—Lucian, Piscata, § 51. tom. i. p. 618, ed. Reitz.
The sean is called, from its material, σαγηναίον λίνον, in an epigram of Archias.—Brunck, Anal. ii. 94. No. 10.
Plutarch, describing the spider’s web, says, that its weaving is like the labor of women at the loom, its hunting like that of fishermen with the sean.—De Solertia Animalium, tom. x. p. 29, ed. Reiske. He here uses the term σαγηνευτὴς for a fisher with the sean. This verbal noun is regularly formed from σαγηνεύειν, which means to inclose or catch with the sean: e. g. ἐν δίκτυοις σεσαγηνευμένοι.—Herodian, iv. 9, 12.
Lucian uses the same verb in reference to the story of Vulcan inclosing Mars and Venus in a net; σαγηνεύει τοῖς δεσμοῖς.—Dialogi Deor. tom. i. p. 243. Somnium, tom. ii. p. 707, ed. Reitz.
Leonidas of Tarentum, in an epigram enumerating the ornaments of a lady’s toilet (Brunck, Anal. i. p. 221), mentions ὁ πλατὺς τριχῶν σαγηνευτήρ
The following verse of Manilius (lib. v. ver. 678.) is remarkable as a rare instance of the adoption of the Greek word sagena by a Latin poet:—
Excipitur vasta circumvallata sagena.
We have seen that the sean supplied figures of speech no less than the purse-net (ἄρκυς), and the casting-net (ἀμφίβληστρον). It is applied thus in the case of persons who are ensnared by the wicked[729], who are captivated by the charms of love[730] or of eloquence[731], or who are held in bondage by superstition[732]. But by far the most distinct, expressive and important of its metaphorical applications, was to the mode of besieging a city by encircling it with one uninterrupted line of soldiers, or sweeping away the entire population of a certain district by marching in similar order across it. Of this the first example occurs in Herodotus iii. 145:—
Τὴν δὲ Σάμον σαγηνεύσαντες οἱ Πέρσαι παρέδοσαν Σολυσῶντι, ἐρῆμον ἐοῦσαν ἀνδρῶν.
“The Persians, having dragged Samos, delivered it, being now destitute of men, to Solyson.”