PIKE UNKNOWN TO GREEKS 197 



" Lucius obscuras ulva csenoque lacunas 

 Obsidet ; hie nullos mensarum lectus ad usus 

 Fervet fumosis olido nidore popinis," 



which Badham has loosely translated : 



" The wary luce, midst wrack and rushes hid. 

 The scourge and terror of the scaly brood, 

 Unknown at friendship's hospitable board, 

 Smokes midst the smoking tavern's coarsest food," 

 The striking silence as to a fish so far-spread in his habitat 

 and so notable in his habits as Esox lucius in all preceding Greek 

 and Latin literature must excuse a semi-excursus. 



Cuvier writes : " We are necessarily astonished that the 

 Ancients have left us no document, so to speak, on a fish so 

 abundant in Europe as the Pike ... a fish which the Greeks 

 must have known. The word Esox occurs only once (Pliny, 

 IX. 17) as an example of a large fish 1 comparable to the Tunny 

 in form. In spite of Hardouin, I do not see that Esox of the 

 Rhine is the Pike, or beUeve with Ducange that it is the Salmon- 

 The name Luccio or Luzzo, by which we stiU call the Pike in 

 this country, gives force to the supposition that the Latins of 

 the time of Ausonius called it Lucius." 2 



The astonishment at the absence of all reference to the 

 Pike would be greatly increased, if the authors, or really 

 Valenciennes, had hved to read later writers. Parkyn {op. cit., 

 p. 131) cites the fish among those represented by the craftsmen 

 of both PalaeoUthic and Neolithic Art in the caves of France 

 and Spain. G. de Mortillet {op. cit., p. 220) claims that the 

 remains of Pike in the Palaeolithic age occur not infrequently. 

 F. Keller {op. cit., vol. I. 537, 544) notes their presence in 

 Neolithic finds at Moosseedorf, etc. Meek, Migratiojt of Fish, 

 p. 18 (London, 1917), states that the Pike " occupied the 

 European region in Oligocene and Miocene times, and that 

 the remains of Pike are found in the Pleistocene of Breslau." 



1 C. Mayhoff here prints J. Hardouin's conjecture isox, which was based 

 on Hesychius' gloss, ia-o^- IxOvs iroihs K-nrwSvs. 



2 Cuvier and Valenciennes Histoire Naturelle des Poissons, vol. XVIII., 

 pp. 279-80 (Paris. 1846). See Introduction. If the Pike be late in htera- 

 ture, in heraldry it makes amends, for there is no earUer example of fish borne 

 in English heraldry than is afforded by the Pike in the arms of the family of 

 Lucy, or Lucius — a play on words not confined to heraldry but to be found in 

 Shakespeare, Puttenham, and others. See Moule, op. cU., p. 49. 



