VIRGIL— ^iV77/OIOG//4 P^lL^r/A'^— PAPYRI 121 



fisherman in Greek poems, plays, or writers from Homer 

 down to the later Greek Romanticists, ^ or (as far as I know) 

 in the epigrams from 700 B.C. to 500 a.d., of the Anthologia 

 Palatina.^ 



" The figure of the weather-beaten fisher is a favourite one 

 in the old poets, and we meet it constantly in Art ; in Greek, 

 and in Roman Art especially, it was a very favourite subject." ^ 



M. Campaux, Mr. Hall, and Herr Bunsmann confirm and 

 amplify this sentence of Bliimner's. The thesis of Bunsmann 

 — not easy to obtain, although published in 1910 at Miinster 

 in Westphalia — seems within its limited scope (he scarcely 

 touches on the methods or craft of fishing) perhaps the best 

 little treatise De Piscaiorum in GrcBcorum atque Romanorum 

 littcris usii. 



He sets out to discover and formulate a list of the charac- 

 teristics most frequently attributed to fishermen. He proceeds 

 to establish each of the dozen selected by buttressing questions 

 from Homer down to Sidonius. 



Hospitality, Piety to the Gods and Dead, Shrewd (almost 

 Pawky) Humour, Old Age, Toil and Poverty figure most 



^ They must, however, now according to the evidence of the Papyri be 

 dated back some three centuries, i.e. from the usually accepted date of the 

 sixth to about the third century a.d. 



As regards some of the Romance writers, the Papyri are a revelation 

 and compel apparently much revision of dates. Thus Chariton (whom " the 

 critics place variously between the fifth and the ninth centuries a.d.") is 

 fixed by Pap., Fayihn Towns, as before 150 a.d. Achilles Tatius, whose 

 allotted span, owing to his imitation of Heliodorus (who hitherto has been 

 dated about the end of the fourth century), was run " about the latter half of 

 the fifth or beginning of the sixth century," is now placed by Pap., Oxyrh., 

 1250, as living before 300, and thus Hehodorus is removed up to (c.) 250 a.d. 



^ In the Anthologia Palalina there are some 3700 epigrams, etc., dating 

 from 700 B.C. and ending about 1300 a.d. ; none of these, as far as I can recall, 

 contradict the poverty note. 1 have chosen 500 a.d. as being a convenient 

 date, because it includes all Greek and Graeco-Roman writers as distinct 

 from the Byzantine, and includes also the earlier and better prose writers, 

 like Heliodorus and Longus. Epigrams, it is true, continued to be written 

 until the fourteenth century, but there is little, and that of no poetical account, 

 after the tenth, when the popular or " political " verse began, with a few 

 exceptions, to supplant the classical forms. 



' H. Bliimner, Romische Privataltertumer, p. 329. " It is noteworthy 

 that as Virgil omitted all mention of fishermen in his Bucolics, his imitators 

 have followed his example, and in consequence in classical Latin the fisherman 

 has no place as a pastoral character. The hut and tackle in the Theocritean 

 story of Asphalion was foreign to Virgil's conception of the province of 

 pastoralism " (Hall, op, cit., 1914, p. 28). 



