TACKLE—CURIOUS METHODS OF FISHING FOR THE SARGUS BY DRESSING IN A SHE-GOAT’S SKIN—FOR THE SKATE BY DANCING AND MUSIC—FOR THE SILURUS BY A YOKE OF OXEN—FOR THE EEL WITH THE GUTS OF A SHEEP. WHAT WAS THE SILURUS? WILD THEORIES AS TO THE PROPAGATION OF EELS
“Unseen, Eurotas, southward steal, Unknown, Alpheus, westward glide, You never heard the ringing Reel, The music of the waterside.” (A. Lang.)
The tackle, implements, and some curious modes of fishing apparently peculiar to, or handed down to us only from, Greek and Roman sources call for consideration and comment.
Nets, we have seen, were of all sorts and kinds in shape, make, and size. Their number and nature as disclosed by Julius Pollux, Plutarch, and Ælian indicate that the art of netting was well nigh perfected. Oppian, after enumerating many varieties and telling how the enormous
“Nets, like a city, to the floods descend And bulwarks, gates, and noble streets extend,”
excuses himself from further amplification:
“A thousand names a fisher might rehearse Of nets, intractable in smoother verse.”[559]
Confirmation comes from Alciphron’s[560] statement that scarce a fathom of the harbour of Ephesus but held a Net: on one occasion the sole haul, after much moiling and toiling, was the putrid carcase of a camel![561]
What and whence the Rod? It was certainly short: only from 6 to 8 feet (Ælian, XV. 1)—a length which is in the main confirmed, if assuming the height of some of the fishermen represented on vases, etc., in the Greek and Roman rooms of the British Museum to be as high as six feet, you then measure the rod. On the other hand, the sitting youth in the Agathemeros relief (Brit. Mus. Cat. Sculpture, I. 317, No. 648) measures 24 cm., the Rod 8 cm., the line 15 cm.[562]
As we do not possess any relic of the Homeric rod, the length of the only one mentioned in either the Iliad or the Odyssey must be a matter of conjecture, especially as this is styled περιμήκης, or “very long” one.[563]