144 PLINY— MARTIAL— WAS THE ROD JOINTED? 



The mediaeval writer, Paolo Giovio, dwells at length on 

 the enormous fish to be seen 350 years ago in the depths of 

 Lake Como, and states that trout of 100 lbs. and over were no 

 uncommon objects. 1 



What a prospect of joyous, easeful sport is opened here! 

 No tedious travel of days or weeks to Norway, Canada, or New 

 Zealand ; no sleepless roughing it under tent or shack ; no 

 diet of canned food ; no being " bitten off in chunks " by 

 mosquito or black fly. Think of it, O Angler of high hope, 

 but of sore disappointment — of hard toil and weary waiting ! 

 Think of it ! To wake, after sound slumber, in one's own 

 comfortable room : to seize the ready rod, and with one 

 dexterous cast, "almost from your very bed," to be fast in a 

 hundred-pound trout ! 



" Than which no more in deed, or dream ! " 



Martial's abiding love for his birthplace on the picturesque 

 banks of the River Salo in Spain (the delights of which in 

 Ep., XII. 18, and I. 49, he paints with happy enthusiasm to 

 Rome-tied Juvenal and to Licinianus) probably accounts for 

 Angling being mentioned more appreciatively by him than by 

 any other Latin poet. 



Angling was one of the favourite amusements of men like 

 Martial, a yeoman (if I may differ from Prof. Mackail 2) — to 

 judge from the frequent references made to his own farm — or 

 at any rate a close observer of the class, which in Ep. I. 55, he 

 so well describes : 



" Hoc petit, esse sui nee magni ruris arator, 

 Sordidaque in parvis otia rebus amat." 



* P. Lund, The Lake of Como (London, loio), p. 23, refers to P. Giovio, 

 De Piscibus Romanis, c. 38. 



* Latin Literature (1906), p. 193. " Martial's gift for occasional verse just 

 enabled him to Jive up three pair of stairs in the city : in later years he could 

 just afford a tiny country house among the Sabine hills." This three-pair-back 

 theory seems a bit strained, for he often speaks of his Js'otnentanus ager, a small 

 farm at Nomentum, -which yielded excellent wine. Cf. Ep., II. 38 ; VI. 43 ; 

 XIII. 119. He owned, in addition to a house in Rome, apparently another 

 small place at Tibur (IV. 80) ; so his complaints of being a " pauper " must be 

 understood only in a relative sense. Thither he goes chiefly, he delicately 

 insinuates, for the pleasure of seeing Ovid, who was his neighbour there. Cf. 

 also VII. 93. 



