24 PROSE HALIEUTICS. 



and perplexing inquiry; but, as we might fail to carry 

 him buoyantly over, we will not plunge him needlessly 

 into such a labyrinth. Oppian teUs us, speaking of 

 some of the larger enclosures, that 



Nets lite a city to the floods descend, 



And bulwarks, gates, and noble streets extend. 



This proves, which is all we care to do, that the ancients 

 kept a magnificent stock of netting in their fishiag de- 

 p6ts, and anticipated many, perhaps most modern im- 

 provements, even to the fabrication of the madrague 

 itself; in further confirmation of the fact, however, it 

 may be as well to cite the names and functions of a few 

 mentioned by the same writer at the beginning of the 

 third Halieutic. He might have added many more, but 

 for the difficulty of weaving them into a poem; for, as 

 he truly says, 



A thousand names a fisher might rehearse 

 Of nets, intractable in smoother verse. 



The first that he has hitched into his metre, is that 

 called a dictymum, a word, like SUtuov, derived from 

 SiKetv, to throw, and was originally, no doubt, some 

 kiad of epervier, or casting net, though subsequently 

 used with less precision, to designate both hunting and 

 fishing nets. From this word, Diana derives her epi- 

 thet of Dictyna; and it enters into the composition 

 of many words of piscatorial import, for which vide lex. 

 ad loc. Next comes the ampMblestron, or amphibole, a 

 net which, working round by degrees, at last enclosed 

 its victims in a circle. Whether the net employed by 

 Vulcan, on a memorable occasion, to the damage of his 

 wife's and Mars' reputation, was an amphibole, is a 

 question as keenly agitated by commentators as its im- 

 portance deserves. A secondary meaning of this word 

 is that rhetorical trick, by which, under cover of an 

 equivoque, a wily debater takes unfair advantage of an 



