FLY, OR MOSS, AS LURE? 153 



literary angler at the careless indifference with which these 

 lines appear from his standpoint to be treated, the comments 

 by the editors of Martial must be classed, in other respects also, 

 as unsatisfactory and jejune. 



Paley and Stone, for instance, confine themselves to telling 

 us that " scarus is some unknown but highly prized fish, which 

 was caught by an inferior one used as bait." That is all ! 

 nothing more ! Their " unknown " stamps their indifference, 

 or ichthyic ignorance. 1 Further, they never even hint that in 

 this passage commentators have suggested two readings, 

 musco — ' moss,' and musca — ' fly.' They simply adopt musco 

 without hinting at any difficulty arising from such adoption. 



Friedlander adopts musca. His only note consists of, 

 " Vorato — musco woUte Brodaeus lesen wegen der von Athe- 

 naeus, VIL, p. 319 f., aus Aristoteles angefiihrten Stelle^ . . ." 



The majority of editors 3 prefer, and probably rightly, the 

 reading musca for many reasons, the chief being that all the 

 manuscripts of Martial without a single exception give musca. 

 The upholders of tnusco, in their endeavour to enforce that 

 mere conjecture by quoting from Athenaeus, " The Scarus 

 flourishes on his food of sea-weed," ^ and supporting it by 

 Pliny, 5 " The Scarus is said to be the only fish that ruminates 

 and is herbivorous " (and here note that as Pliny — like Athe- 

 naeus — was taking his information from Arist., N. H., VIIL 2, 

 he should have translated (^vkIoiq by algis, not by herbis), make 

 the mistake of translating <pvKiov by muscus. They ignore, 



^ See infra, p, 155, note 6. 



* See infra, p. 155, note 5. 



^ Schneidewin, Ed. I., 1842, and Ed. II., 1852, reads musca, as does Lindsay, 

 1903. Paley and Stone (1888) musco; W. Gilbert (Leipzig, 1886 and 1896) 

 reads musca, and in his apparatus criticus remarks " vorata d. sc. musca cum 

 libris Serin. Schn. Gib. — vorato d. sc. musco Brodaeus Schn." 



* VII. 113. X'^'pf' Se [so. 6 (TKapos) rfj Toiv (pvKiaiv Tpo(p-/f Bth Kal tovtois 

 6-nptvfTai, K.T.\. Athenaeus mentions Aristotle as his source. 



The references by ichthyologists to the bait used for catching the Scarus 

 seem infrequent : I at least have only come across the following. " The 

 fishing requires some experience : fishermen allege that there is necessary un 

 individu vivant pour amorcer les autres, yet here we call to mind what .lElian 

 and Oppian say as to the great number of fish attracted by following a female 

 attached to the line." See Cuvier and Valenciennes, H. N. des Poissons, 

 vol. XIV., p. 150, Paris, 1839. 



' IX. 29. Scarus solus piscium dicitur ruminare herbisque vesci, non 

 aliis piscibus. See also Oppian, II. 645-650. 



