The ordinary Rods were made of cane, hence Harundo and Calamus, which was imported usually from Abaris in Lower Egypt, or of some light elastic wood. For large and powerful fish, where something stronger was required, Ælian tells us that Tuncus Marinus and Ferula were preferred.
If the Rod were tapered, it was tapered probably by Nature not by art, at least so the Agathemeros relief, all the pictures of Venus and Cupid angling, and of many Amorini from Herculaneum would suggest. The question whether the Rods were jointed has been discussed in my chapter on the crescens harundo of Martial.
The line, ὁρμιά, or Linea, made from the strong bristly hairs of animals (seta) but most generally of horse-hair,[564] of flax, of sparton out of the genista, perhaps of byssus, but never of gut, was very finely twisted, as the epithet εὐπλόκαμος shows. It was usually as long as the rod itself, although in the Agathemeros relief we find it nearly double the length. The colours of the line were grey, black, brown—sometimes red or purple. It was made tight to the top of the Rod and not let down to the butt, or running.[565]
Plutarch prescribes that the hairs next to the hook should for deception’s sake be taken from a white horse, and adds advice, as pertinent now as then, that there “should not be too many knots in the line!”[566]
To the line was fastened the hook (hamus) which was of one or two sharp barbs.[567] From Herculaneum,[568] Pompeii, and elsewhere have been collected hooks which vary extremely in form, size, and method of adjustment.[569] Although sometimes of bone, they are mostly manufactured from iron or bronze. Cf. Oppian, III. 285: χαλκοῦ μὲν σκληροῑο τετυγμένον ἠὲ σιδήρου.
It strikes us moderns as strange to have the epithet hard applied to bronze and not to iron, till we are informed that the ancient bronze was made of tin and copper, not zinc and copper, as is our softer alloy, and was so hard that, Pliny tells us, it could be worked to represent the finest hair of a woman’s head.
The Pompeian hooks were almost exclusively adapted for sea fishing, and are thus generally large in size, long in shank, and flattened at the top to facilitate attachment to the line.
THE OLDEST
MYCENÆAN
HOOKS IN
THE BRITISH
MUSEUM.