“Soon as the deadly Cyclamen invades The ill-starred fishes in their deep-sunk glades, ... the slowly working bane Creeps o’er each sense and poisons every vein, Then pours concentred mischief on the brain, Some drugged, like men o’ercome with recent wine, Reel to and fro, and stagger thro’ the brine; Some in quick circlets whirl: some ’gainst the rocks Dash, and are stunned by repercussive shocks; Some with quenched orbs, or filmy eyeballs thick, Rush on the nets and in the meshes stick, In coma steeped their fins more feebly ply, Some in titanic spasms gasp and die. Soon as the plashings cease and stillness reigns, The jocund crew collect, and count their gains.”
In the simile—inevitable in Oppian—which ends the passage our author may indicate, though he does not name, the Germanic tribes (for over Rome in his day as over Europe in ours hung the barbarian menace) when he condemned the abhorred habit practised by the enemy of poisoning the springs and wells:
... “the brave defendants sink In thirsty pangs, or perish if they drink.”
In the number of methods, in the variety of devices, the fishermen of Oppian and Ælian are not behind their modern successors; it is indeed the reverse of
“John P. Robinson he Guessed they did not know everything down in Judee.”[578]
ANGLING WITH WINE.
From a Mosaic at Melos. [See n. 4, p. 239].
We moderns are, in fact, merely the heirs to a piscatorial estate, which by scientific improvement or intensive culture we have rendered more serviceable and better adapted to the requirements of fish more harried, and consequently more highly educated.