196 AUSONIUS—SALMO— FIRST MENTION OF PIKE 



the blow vibrates on the breeze, as when a lash snaps in the 

 air with a crack, and the wind whistles to the shock. 



" The finny captives bound on the dry rocks, in terror at 

 the sunlight's deadly rays ; the force which stood to them in 

 their native stream languishes under our sky, and wastes their 

 life in struggles to respire.' Now, only a dull throb shudders 

 through the feeble frame, the sluggish tail flaps in the last 

 throes, the jaws gape, but the breath which they inhale returns 

 from the gills in the gaspings of death : as, when a breeze 

 fans the fires of the forge, the linen valve of the bellows plays 

 against its beechen sides, now opening, and now shutting, to 

 admit or to confine the wind. 



" Some fish have 1 seen who, in the last agony, gathered 

 their forces, sprang aloft, and plunged head foremost into the 

 river beneath, regaining the waters for which they had ceased 

 to hope. Impatient of this loss, the thoughtless boy dashes 

 in after them from above and strikes out in wild pursuit. 

 Even thus Glaucus of Anthedon, the old man of the Boeotian 

 Sea, when, after tasting Circe's deadly herbs, he ate of the 

 grass which dying fish had nibbled, 2 passes, a strange denizen, 

 into the Carpathian deep. Armed with hook and net, a fisher- 

 man in the depths of that realm whose upper waters he had been 

 wont to plunder, Glaucus glided along, the pirate of those 

 helpless tribes." 



Whether the Salar and the Fario of the Idyll are, or are 

 not, identical with the burn trout or salmon trout of modern 

 days affords a problem for ichthyologists, not for me. 



Ausonius is the first to mention not only the Salar and 

 Fario ^ but also our Pike — Esox lucius.'^ 



^ Cf. Plutarch, Symp., IV. 4. " The place where we live is to fish no less 

 than Hell : for no sooner come they unto it, but dead they immediately be." 

 Holland's Translation. 



2 For the story of Glaucus, see ^Esch., Frag. 28 ; Paus, IX. 22. 6 and 7 ; 

 Virgil, Mn., VI. 36; and Athen., VII. 47, 8. Ausonius follows the version 

 according to which Glaucus had been metamorphosed by Circe, and then on 

 tasting the herb regained his human form as the " Old Man of the Sea." 

 Ovid, Met., XIII. 898 ff. 



^ Mosella, 88. " Purpureisque Salar stellatus tergora guttis," and ibid., 

 129 f., "Qui necdum Salmo, necdum Salar, ambiguusque Amborum medio, 

 sario, intercepte sub aevo." 



* Mosella, 122 ff. Polemius Silvius, Index Dienim Festorum, more than 

 half a century later, seems the second — such is the infrequency of mention. 



