150 PLINY— MARTIAL— WAS THE ROD JOINTED? 



epigram, instead of levis, as evidently did Hay, the Scotch poet, 

 in translating the couplet, 



" Could I a trout, now, with my angle get, 

 Or cover a young partridge with my net." 



Much can be said for the view that line three applies to fishing. 

 So much, indeed, that were it not for one, apparently fatal, 

 omission, we might confidently proclaim the first definite mention 

 of a jointed rod. To this omission, conclusive to my mind of 

 the meaning of harundo, I have so far found no allusion. 



Let us suppose that the first line of the couplet does refer 

 to fishing. The poet would like to give some birds or fish, 

 or both, to his friend Cams, but bewails his inability to send 

 anything better than some chickens. He does explain fully 

 why he cannot send birds, but he omits entirely any reason, or 

 even any hint, as to what prevents him sending fish. We 

 are not allowed to imagine that the weather was too bad, for 

 the whistling ploughman imitating the magpie in his call, the 

 starlings, the linnets, all negative that. 



The whole epigram seems to refer to fowling. The applica- 

 tion, even if vadis for levis be adopted, would not necessarily 

 be altered. Are there not wild duck and snipe to be caught 

 in the shallows {vadis) as well as fish, and probably by other 

 means than birdlime, though with the use of a rod ? 



If levis, or even vadis be read, two arguments lean heavily 

 against harundo being the fisher's Rod. The first, in a poem 

 dealing entirely with birds this somewhat obscure reference to 

 fish would be extremely abrupt ; the second, the line following 

 " harundine praeda " runs, " Pinguis et " (not "aut " as before) 

 "implicitas virga teneret aves," " and (not or) the sticky reed- 

 line," etc. 



Save for this omission and the trend of the whole context, 

 a strong argument might be easily advanced for fishing in the 

 apparent redundancy of harundo and virga. But these two 

 words may refer to two different weapons of capture, or, what 

 is more probable, to two different ways of catching birds — the 

 first, by a long reed with a noose, and the second by a branch 

 with birdlime. 1 



^ The best reeds for fowling purposes {harundo auciipatoria) came from 



