CHAPTER II
HOMER—METHODS OF FISHING
Whether Homer lived before or after the adoption of fish as a food, we find in the Iliad and Odyssey several references to fishing with the Spear, the Net, the Hand-line, and the Rod.
It is a point of curious interest that nearly all the references, where methods or weapons of fishing find mention, are made for the purpose of or occur in a simile, which despite the so-called Higher Criticism Mackail says, “In Homer reached perfection.”[153] A Homeric comparison, like the parable of the New Testament in its very nature is intended to throw light from the more familiar upon what is less familiar. The poet cannot intend to illustrate the moderately familiar by what is wholly strange. In modern writers the subjects of a simile, apart from those drawn from nature, are sometimes modern or new; in the old they are almost invariably drawn from some well established custom.
If so, it follows that to the Greeks of Homer’s time (as was the case with the Egyptians before them) fishing with Spear, Net, Line, and Rod were old and familiar devices.[154] Which of the first three—Spear, Net, Line—ranks the oldest, has (as shown in my Introduction) been long disputed and seems doubtful of definite settlement.
METHODS OF FISHING.
From Roman Mosaic at Sousse in Revue Arch., 1897, Pl. xi. The top left corner (destroyed) no doubt showed angling. The men in the left-hand boat are using (according to P. Gauckler ‘relève des nasses’) bottle-shaped baskets.