The annual campaign of the Tunny fishing, lasting from May 15 to Oct. 25, was based on a regular and thorough organisation. All the boats of a given section of the coast acted under the orders of an elected Captain, whose word was law.
Descriptions of fishing for Tunny and Pelamyde—the name given to the young Tunny from his habit of burying himself in the mud (πήλῳ μύειν),[226] a derivation often attributed to Aristotle, see H. A., VIII. 15, or of herding together (πέλειν ἅμα) according to Plutarch—may be found in Aristotle, N. H., IV. 10, and VIII. 15, in Pliny, H. N., IX. 53, in Ælian, de nat. an., XV. 5 and 6, and in Oppian, hal., IV. 531 ff. The story by the last of the Thracians piercing and taking myriads of mutilated Pelamydes from the mud, in which they have for warmth ensconced themselves, merits reading if only for his indignant burst:
“The various Tortures of the bleeding Shoal Command a Pity from the stoutest Soul.”[227]
Aristophanes (Hipp., 313) compares Cleon to the watch posted on a cliff or height to signal the advent of the Tunnies, a position (as Theocritus [III. 26] and Oppian [hal., IV. 637] show), very similar to that of the “Hooer” in the pilchard fishery of Cornwall at the present day.
These look-outs were frequently artificial. Ælian, de nat. an., XV. 5, describes a scaffolding consisting of two fir trees between which many cross pieces were fastened. The long ladders still used in Austria and Italy (of which Keller gives an illustration[228]) and the Turkish dalian of the Bosporus represent the modern scaffold. Oppian (hal., III. 630 ff.) and Ælian (de nat. an., XV. 5) note the enormous hauls made by the fishermen when “the army” of the Tunnies set out on its migrations, company by company.
The nets used for the capture of Tunny by the Italians (at the present day) are fixed: made of thick cord, without leads, and sometimes as much as 250 fathoms long, and 15 fathoms deep, thus recalling Oppian’s “a Town of Nets.”[229] Special regard has to be paid now as of old, in fixing their position, to the course frequented by this eminently migratory genus in its annual passage from the Atlantic to the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, a distance of 2800 miles and back again. The same route is always travelled by an ever living stream of undiminished fulness, furnishing food to millions on the Mediterranean.
To the Phœnicians and to the Spaniards of old the Tunny ranked high as a commercial asset. The Tyrian tunny was specially prized[230]; its salsamentum travelled far and wide. Rhode (p. 38) points out, however, that this originally was designed not as a delicacy, but as a preventive against scurvy and other diseases attendant on the long voyages which the far-flung commerce of the Phœnicians demanded.
The older port, Sidon, got its name from its wealth of fish, which in Phœnician was called Sidon,[231] while Tyrus, one of the earliest inhabitants of the younger port, traditionally invented fishing tackle.[232] Many Spanish towns, as their coins attest, notably those of Gades and Carteia, owed much of their prosperity, if not their existence, to the salt or pickled fish trade. Tunny fishing still remains a lucrative industry in the Peninsula.[233]
Pliny bears witness to the full stream of Tunny in IX. 2, where he tells us the multitude of the fish which met the fleet of Alexander the Great under the command of Nearchus on one occasion was so vast, that only by advancing in battle line, as on an enemy, was he able to cut his way through: non voce, non sonitu, non ictu, sed fragore terrentur, nec nisi ruina turbantur.[234]
Faber’s account of the watchman, of the alarm caused by throwing in stones near the inlet through which the shoal of fish has just passed, of the raising of the hue and cry to drive it towards the end of the enclosure, the battering of the fish to death with oars, and of other devices might well pass, although written in the nineteenth century, for a description of the Tunny fishing by an author of the first century.