HALIEUTICA, IV. 139-164. 



forgetting all, walk no more in their former ways 

 but follow her -vWth delight, beguiled by the sweet 

 spells of Aphrodite : even so shalt thou behold the 

 humid crowd of the Mullets passionately thronging. 

 But swiftly with them love turns to hate ; for 

 speedily the fisher Ufts the well-wrought net and 

 spreads its lap and takes spoil unspeakable, easily 

 enveloping the fishes in the embrace of the meshes. 



The Cuttle-fishes, <* again, of unhappy passion run 

 to a greater height of infatuation. For them neither 

 deadly weel nor encircling net do the toilsome fishers 

 of the sea set but merely trail in the waves a single 

 female attached to a line. The Cuttle-fishes, when 

 they behold it from afar, speedily come to meet it 

 and twine about it and cUng to it ^vith their arms : 

 even as maidens cling about brother or kindly father 

 whom after many days they see returned safe to 

 his own halls from a foreign land, or as a maid that 

 is newly taken captive in the yoke of wedded love, 

 the pleasant bond of marriage, embraces her bride- 

 groom and all night long twines about his neck the 

 bondage of her snowy arms : even so in that hour 

 the crafty Cuttle-fishes twine about one another and 

 the work of their passion abates not until the fisher- 

 men draw them forth upon the boat. And still they 

 chng and with desire take death. 



The Cuttle-fishes, indeed, men also beguile with 

 weels in the spring season. The weels they cover 



emploient souvent le merae precede mais quelquefois ils 

 remplacent la femelle, que Ton a peine a se procurer, par un 

 mannequin de seiche, si je puis ra'exprimer ainsi. appareil 

 en bois ayant la forme d'une seiche. Sur sa partie convexe 

 sent incrustes des morceaux de miroir. On tire cette seiche 

 en bois, nomraee ^vXoa-ovirLa, <7iriyid\\i, derriere le bateau. 

 Les poissons qui la suivent se pechent au haveneaii." 



415 



