C. That this solitary passage is inconclusive as to whether the fly was simply a natural one attached to a hook, and used perhaps as now in dapping,[364] or an artificial one.
To my mind, however, the scale dips deeply in favour of the artificial fly for the following reasons.
1. The trend and purpose of the whole passage, especially when we note carefully the preceding verse and a half, “Odi dolosas munerum et malas artes. | Imitantur hamos dona,” is to inveigh against fraudful gifts, typical of which fraudful flies are singled out—in fact, against all presents which are not what they appear. Mr. A. B. Cook writes: “I quite agree with your view that the passage gains much, if all three lines are made to refer to an artificial fly with a hook concealed in it. Indeed, that is pretty obviously the meaning.”
2. The difficulty which the ancients would have experienced in impaling, etc., on one of their hooks a natural fly would have been greater than dressing an artificial one. The smallest hook in the Greek-Roman Collection at the British Museum (found at Amathus in Cyprus 1894) measures over ¼ in. breadth at the bend.[365] If we allow that owing to oxidation the metal may have coarsened and swollen, the task of impaling, and further of fastening a natural fly securely enough to withstand the buffets of even wavelets of the sea (for N.B. the Scarus is marine) must verily have demanded τὸν δημιοεργόν, “a craftsman of the people, welcome over all the wide earth.”[366]
For these reasons the kudos of the first mention of an artificial fly belongs, in my opinion, to Martial rather than to Ælian.
CHAPTER X
THE SCARUS—THE EARLIEST ACCLIMATISATION OF FISH—THE FIRST NOTICE “FISHING PROHIBITED”
From the wealth of copious yet conflicting accounts of this famous fish in Greek and Roman writers, a large monograph might be produced.[367] I restrict myself to a short notice of the acclimatisation of the fish, and of the controversies on its value, as (A) a Dainty, and (B) a Diet.