THE FOWLER.
From
Brit. Mus. Cat. of Lamps,
Pl. 24, Fig. 686.
But all question as to the existence of a jointed fowling rod is now settled past peradventure by Pl. 24, Fig. 686, in the Brit. Mus. Cat. of Gr. and Rom. Lamps, 1914. This shows an animal dressed in a hooded cloak, holding in his right hand a length of fowling rod, and in his left two spare lengths, trying to reach a tree on which sits a bird. Mr. Walters, the editor of the catalogue, kindly informs me that Fig. 686 can no longer be regarded as that of The Fox and the Grapes. Similar lamps shown in S. Loeschcke’s recent Lampen aus Vindonissa, e.g. Pl. 12, No. 473, confirm the evidence of the Brit. Mus. lamp in every detail.
Not a few editors, on the other hand, retain vadis in Martial’s epigram, instead of levis, as evidently did Hay, the Scotch poet, in translating the couplet,
“Could I a trout, now, with my angle get, Or cover a young partridge with my net.”
Much can be said for the view that line three applies to fishing. So much, indeed, that were it not for one, apparently fatal, omission, we might confidently proclaim the first definite mention of a jointed rod. To this omission, conclusive to my mind of the meaning of harundo, I have so far found no allusion.
Let us suppose that the first line of the couplet does refer to fishing. The poet would like to give some birds or fish, or both, to his friend Carus, but bewails his inability to send anything better than some chickens. He does explain fully why he cannot send birds, but he omits entirely any reason, or even any hint, as to what prevents him sending fish. We are not allowed to imagine that the weather was too bad, for the whistling ploughman imitating the magpie in his call, the starlings, the linnets, all negative that.
The whole epigram seems to refer to fowling. The application, even if vadis for levis be adopted, would not necessarily be altered. Are there not wild duck and snipe to be caught in the shallows (vadis) as well as fish, and probably by other means than birdlime, though with the use of a rod?
If levis, or even vadis be read, two arguments lean heavily against harundo being the fisher’s Rod. The first, in a poem dealing entirely with birds this somewhat obscure reference to fish would be extremely abrupt; the second, the line following “harundine præda” runs, “Pinguis et” (not “aut” as before) “implicitas virga teneret aves,” “and (not or) the sticky reed-line,” etc.
Save for this omission and the trend of the whole context, a strong argument might be easily advanced for fishing in the apparent redundancy of harundo and virga. But these two words may refer to two different weapons of capture, or, what is more probable, to two different ways of catching birds—the first, by a long reed with a noose, and the second by a branch with birdlime.[345]