FISHING EPIGRAMS— LEONIDAS 137 



flint pregnant with fire, that sets ahght the tinder "), corre- 

 sponds in material and order of enumeration fairly closely with 

 Asphalion's in Theocritus. 



Of the second I borrow a spirited translation of the last lines, 



" Yet — not Arcturus, nor the blasts that blow 

 Down-rushing, swept this aged man below ; 

 But like a lamp long burning, and whose light 

 Flickers, self-spent, and is extinguished quite, 

 In a rush hut he died : — to him this grave 

 (No wife, no child he had) his brother fishers gave." ^ 



The third, which should be The Awful Warning, if any 

 warning avail, to boys fishing in the middle of a burn and holding 

 while changing their lure a fish in their teeth (who of us has not 

 done this?), sets a picture of a more violent death, "for the 

 slippery thing went wriggling down his narrow gullet," and 

 choked him on the spot. 



The subjoined, somewhat loose, translation is from Black- 

 wood's Magazine, Vol. XXXVIII. 2 



" Parmis, the son of Callignotus — he 

 Who trolled for fish the margin of the sea, 

 Chief of his craft, whose keen perceptive search, 

 The kichle, scarus, bait-devouring perch, 

 And such as love the hollow clefts, and those 

 That in the caverns of the deep repose. 

 Could not escape — is dead ! 



Parmis had lured 

 A Julis from its rocky haunts, secured 

 Between his teeth the slippery pert, when, lo ! 

 It jerked into the gullet of its foe, 



* The following translation by Mr. Andrew Lang is truer : 



" Theris the Old, the waves that harvested 



More keen than birds that labour in the sea. 

 With spear and net, by shore and rocky bed. 



Not with the well-manned galley laboured he ; 

 Him not the star of storms, nor sudden sweep 



Of wind with all his years hath smitten and bent. 

 But in his hut of reeds he fell asleep. 



As fades a lamp when all the oil is spent : 

 This tomb nor wife nor children raised, but we 



His fellow-toilers, fishers of the sea." 



* I n line 5 trpdrris, which makes nonsense, should certainly be corrected to 



