BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. xiii 



Generally, the lot of a fisherman is described as one of 

 extreme hardship, as in an epitaph by Sappho {Anth. Gr., 

 vii., 505), which I translate : 



Menischus, weeping for his Pelagon, 

 Places above the ashes of his son, 

 The fisher's curving net and well-worn oar, 

 Memorials of the bitter life he bore. 



So Theocritus (Idyll, xxi.), tells us of a fisherman dream- 

 ing of gold by his comrade's side, and thus describes their 

 dwelling : 



" A straw-thatched shed, 

 Leaves were their walls, and sea-weed was their bed. 



hard-by were laid 



Baskets, and all their implements of trade, 



Rods, hooks, and lines composed of stout horse-hairs, 



And nets of various sorts and various shares, 



The seine, the cast-net, and the wicker maze. 



To waste the watery tribes a thousand ways ; 



A crazy boat was drawn up on a plank. 



Mats were their pillows, wov'n of osiers dank. 



Skins, caps, and ragged coats a covering made : 



This was their wealth, their labor, and their trade." 



{Fawkes.) 



These men, we may note in passing, angled with a rod, 

 among other ways of taking fish; for besides nyKiarpa and 

 /tdXa/iot (hooks and reed poles), 6pntiai means particularly lines 

 used with a rod ; though it is not so certain that they were 

 made of " stout horse-hairs," as Fawkes, following the 

 Latin oi^do, has it, not, however, without some scholastic 

 authority. 



Among the Romans, w^e have early traces of fishing, the 

 art of which Janus had taught his Etrurians. The Italian 

 shores have been crowded with fishermen from time im- 

 memorial, and the rivers, even the yellow Tiber, abounded 

 with fish. Indeed, the fish-fasts of the Romish Church are 

 supposed to derive their origin from a desire to promote 

 the profit of fishermen — (a fitting arrangement to be 



