Agathias gives us one of the very few, perhaps the only, fisher epigram with a love motive. “A fisherman was employed in catching fish. Him did a damsel of property see, and was affected in her heart with desire, and made him the partner of her bed. But he, after a life of poverty, took on himself the swell of all kinds of high bearing, and Fortune with a smile was standing by, and said to Venus,—‘This is not your contest, but mine.’”[324]
Lastly it is of interest to note that one of the few Greek poetesses concerned herself with a love-tale of the sea. Hedyle, who came of a poetic stock (for she was daughter of Moschine the iambist and mother of Hedylus the epigrammatist), penned a poem on Glaucus’ love for Scylla. In it she told how the love-sick swain would repair to the cavern of his mistress—
“Bearing a gift of love, a mazy shell, Fresh from the Erythrean rock, and with it too The offspring, yet unfledged, of Alcyon, To win the obdurate maid. He gave in vain. Even the lone Siren on the neighbouring isle Pitied the lover’s tears.”[325]
CHAPTER VIII
THE TWO PLINYS—MARTIAL—WAS THE ROD JOINTED?
After Theocritus we reach the period which chronologically might perhaps be termed that of the Roman writers, although our two greatest authorities on Fish Lure and Lore wrote in Greek, some three to four centuries after Plautus (c. 254-184 b.c.) had produced his Rudens.
This, the first Latin play, I believe, introducing fishermen on the stage, re-echoes the Greek note of poverty and misery. In Act II., Sc. 2, Trachalio asks, “Shellfish-gatherers, and hook-fishers, hungry race of men, how fare ye?” and receives the answer, “Just as befits fishermen; with hunger, thirst, and expectation.” The wretchedness of their calling is made further manifest in Act II., Sc. 1.
Descriptions of fishermen are found in Latin adaptations of Greek plays. The Latin mimes, as did the Greek, often display fishermen as characters. The Latin references to actual fishing not only far outnumber the Greek, but also, unlike the Greek, which are almost solely concerned with sea fishing, frequently treat of river and lake fishing. Plautus, Cicero, Horace, Ovid,[326] Juvenal, Tibullus, Pliny the Elder and the Younger, Martial, and Ausonius, by no means conclude the list of our Roman authors.
It may be fairly asked, why I omit any special notice of so valuable and voluminous work as the Natural History of Pliny the Elder.