I yS PLUTARCH— CLEOPATRA— OPPI AN— ATHEN.EUS 



d'Oppien, les filets, les hame9ons, les harpons et les nasses," 

 with the addition of " les claies de roseau, d'importation romaine 

 sans doute," are the weapons of Hellas in the present day. 

 The tricks of Oppian prevail in the Peloponnese : to-day, as 

 nearly two millenniums back, the Scarus and the Mullet are 

 caught by using the female as decoy. 



The procedure of taking the Octopus (which Aristotle pictures 

 for us in IV. 8), " when clinging so tightly to the rocks that 

 it cannot be pulled off, but remains attached, even when the 

 knife is employed to sever it : and yet if one employ fieabane 

 (kovu^o) to the creature, it drops off at once," remains the 

 same in Greece to-day. Apostolides writes (p. 50), " Comme 

 on voit, non seulement le procede de peche aux poulpes a 

 persiste jusqu'a nos jours, mais la plante (Conyse) qu'on 

 emploie a cet effet porte encore le meme nom." 



But as Canning called into existence a new world to redress 

 the balance of power in the old, so too the Attic fisherman to 

 dislodge the Octopus has, Raleigh-like, imported to the aid 

 of his old herb, American tobacco. ^ 



The devices for fishing, which in Oppian, L 54-5, are — 



" The slender-woven Net, Viminious Weel,^ 

 The Taper Angle, Line and Barbed Steel 

 Are all the Tools his constant Toil employs, 

 On arms like this, the Fishing Swain relies," 



are amplified in IIL 73 ff. in number and detail. 



^ N. C. Apostolides, La Peche en Grhe (Athenes, 1907), p. 3i- The selection 

 of Aristotle as the prototype of philosophical inveighers against Tobacco by 

 Thomas Corneille (Act I., Sc. i, of Le Festin de Pierre), 



" Quoi qu'en dise Aristote, et sa digne cabale, 

 Le tabac est divin, il n'est rien qui I'egale," 

 is hardly happy, for, as the weed nicotine only reached Europe some nineteen 

 centuries after the philosopher's death, his " dise " equals rien I 



^ With 5({ra| and Kvpros, cf. the irKiKThv v(pa(Tfia in Archestratus {frag. 

 XV. 6). See pp. 147 and 176 ff. of Paulus Brandt's Parodoriim epicorum 

 GrcBcorum et Archestrati ReliquicB, Leipzig, 1888. Brandt argues that the 

 expression describes a nassa, qua retis loco piscatores utebantur, and on the 

 analogy of the Dalmatian fishermen (cf. Brehm, Thierleben, IV., vol. IL p. 533) 

 who, when the sea is not quite calm, drop from the bow of the boat pebbles 

 dipped in oil to make smooth the surface, and so more easily detect the fish, 

 explains SoveTv }f/-fi(f>ovs in Frag. XV. line 8. Although Archestratus's state- 

 ment that the fish are not to be seen (ov5' eai^fTv oa-o-oiixii'), except by those 

 who resort to the nXtKrov v<pa(rfj,a, and elddaai 5ovf7u \i/v^ovs, gives some colour to 

 Brandt's ingenious identification, the lack of any mention of the essential factor 

 in such a calming operation, the oil, seems to rule it out. 



