BIBLIOGKAPHICAL PREFACE. 



Here are three points settled, 1. The horn was distinct 

 from the bait; 2. It was cast deep into the sea; 3. It 

 could not have been otherwise than light, for it was sus- 

 pended from the tip of a long (tc/x/i^^i) rod ; all of which 

 confirmed our opinion already expressed as to what was 

 meant bv the stately old chronicler of heroic deeds in the 

 grandiloquent peri})hrasis. He would not have omitted 

 the sonorous uypawXoio Hods had he been speaking of a horn- 

 spoon. 



While here we may cite for what they are worth some 

 lines from the Paraleipomena (xi.,Gl-G4) of Quintus Cala- 

 ber (about 500 A.D.), where speaking of Cleon and Eury- 

 machus, two heroes of Syma slain by Polydamas, he says, 

 that thev were 



Both skilled in all the angle's treacheiy, 

 The net to plunge within the sacred sea, 

 Or, from the ship, to dart the unerring spear 

 vSwift at the finny monsters floating near. 



The word we have rendered by spear, is rpiaivn or trident. 

 The Smyrna3an imitator is true to the habits of the times 

 he describes, as may be seen by another reference to the 

 Odyssey (xii., 330), where godlike men, when pinched for 

 a dinner, fished with crooked hooks, yvaiinrsn ayKiarponnv* 

 nav, thev even dived for oysters, as we learn from the Iliad 

 (xvi., 747), where Patroclus, having with a stone struck 

 down the charioteer of Hector, who pitches in an unseemly 

 fashion on the plain, scoflingly compares his fall to one 

 diving for oysters : 



As divers plunge into the stormy main 

 The luscious oyster from his bed to gain. 



(I give a rough rhyme, as Pope despaired of getting the 

 Billingsgate into English heroics.) 



• " Crooked fishing hooks" occur also in the Odyseey, iv., 309. 



