Natural Hiftory of the Ancients. 1 5 



to find out what the following paflage means. A 

 hero is ftricken and falls infenfible, " as, under 

 the ripple caufed by the north wind, a fifh leaps 

 up on the weedy more, and the dark wave covers 

 it." 1 Probably it would be better rendered "a 

 fifh leaps up by the weedy fubmerged reef." As 

 for the capture of fifh, the Laeftrygons hurl rocks 

 at and kill the haplefs mariners of Odyfleus, and, 

 " like men fpearing fifties," they bear home their 

 frightful meal. But angling was known to 

 Homer ; " as when a man fitting upon a projecting 

 rock draws a facred" (i.e. mighty) "fifh to land 

 from the fea with line and mining brafs" hook. 2 

 The fifhing-rod is not here named, and the "brafs" 

 hook was probably a hook of bronze, one of which 

 is figured in Evans's "Bronze Implements." But 

 in the "OdyfTey" (and this Teems a confirmation 

 of the view that it is a later poem than the " Iliad") 

 a rod is employed ; " as when a fifherman on a 

 projecting rock, with a very long fifhing-rod letting 

 down his baits as a fnare to the little fifh, flings 

 into the fea a horn of an ox of the homeftead, 

 and then, as he has caught the fifh, flings it gafping 

 on the fhore." 3 Here a difficulty is contained in 

 the ufe of the horn. It was probably a fheath 

 coming over the bait, either to prevent its being 

 warned off, or to protect it from crabs and the like. 

 Thefe are the two chief authorities for fifhing 



1 " Iliad," xxi. 692. 2 Ibid., xvi. 406. 



3 " Odyffey," xii. 251. A cognate paflage occurs in the 

 " Iliad," xxiv. 80 : Iris "plunged into the depths of the fea like 

 a leaden plumb which in the horn of an ox of the ftall entering 

 the fea drops through it, bearing death to ravening fifties." 



