xvi BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 



we infer from frequent passages in his other poems, among 

 the rest Art of Love, i., 47, 48, ii., 393, but especially Re- 

 medy of Love, one of which Tate (who was himself a 

 genuine angler) renders with artistical feeling, thus : 



" Or else for fish your bearded angle bait, 

 And for your art's success with patience wait, 

 Through sports like these you'll steal into relief, 

 And, while your time you cozen, cheat your grief." 



The graceful and elaborate Oppian wrote his Halieutica 

 in the time of Severus. These and other works on fishing 

 (of which we are about to take more notice) make it certain 

 that the Romans under the Caesars had no small notion of 

 the sport, though they knew of nothing better than sea- 

 fi>liing ;* nor may we doubt that the shores of the lakes 

 and of the sea near their favorite resort, the Bay of Naples, 

 often rang with the mirth and music of the luxurious mag- 

 nates after a successful chase of the finny game. 



Not a few works, as we have already hinted, were writ- 

 ten by the later ancients on Halieutics, or subjects of pis- 

 catory interest ; but it is greatly to be lamented that most 

 of them are known to us only by their titles, or, in some 

 cases, a few extracts, cited by other authors. Among these 

 !o>t books are 



An epic poem, De Re Piscatoria, by C^cilius (or Cici- 

 lius as Suidas writes it). He was, probably, the physician 

 whose commentaries Pliny cites in several places (xxviii., 

 xxix.), a Greek, who wrote some books in Latin, and some 

 in his own tongue, whence Athenoeus (i., 2*2) calls him 

 ArcJiivus. 



An epic poem 'K^uvriKa^ by Pancrates the Arcadian, pro- 

 bably the same work quoted several times by Athena3us 

 as QaUaaiu 'Epya If, as Bruuck supposes (though his opinion 



• Suetonius says that Augustus was an angler : animi laxandi causa 

 modo piscab.itur hamo. ( Octavius, S3.) Nero, on the other hand, " fished 

 with a golden net." (AVro, 30.) Sir Humphrey Davy claims Trajan as an 

 angler. 



