76 HOMER—METHODS OF FISHING 
124) two with the Net (Od., XXIT. 386; J/., V. 487), and one 
with the Rod (Od., XII. 251). 
A. The Spear (Od., X. 124): “‘ And like folk spearing fishes 
they bare home their hideous meal.’’ This gives a very lively 
image, because the companions of Odysseus, whose boats had 
been smashed by the thrown rocks, are in the water, and are 
being speared like fish by the Lestrygones.! 
B. The Net (Od., XXII. 383 ff.): ‘‘ But he’’ (Odysseus after 
the slaughter of the suitors) “‘ found all the sort of them fallen 
in their blood in the dust, like fishes that the fishermen have 
drawn forth in the meshes of the net into a hollow of the beach 
from out the grey sea, and all the fish, sore longing for the 
salt waves, are heaped upon the sand, and the sun shines 
forth and takes their life away: so now the wooers lay heaped 
upon each other.’ 2 
In Iliad, V. 487 ff.: “‘ Only beware lest, as though entangled 
in the mesh of all-ensnaring flax, ye be made unto your foemen 
a prey and a spoil.’’ 
C. The Rod (Od., XII. 251 ff.): “ Even, as when a fisher on 
some headland? lets down with a long rod his baits for a 
snare to the little fishes below, casting into the deep the horn 
of an ox of the homestead, and as he catches each flings it 
writhing, so were they”’ (7.e. the companions of Odysseus) 
“ borne upward to the cliff’’ (by Scylla). 
D. Line and Hook (Ilad, XXIV. 8o ff.): “And she”’ (Iris 
on her Zeus-bidden mission) “ sped to the bottom like a weight 
of lead, that mounted on the horn of a field-ox goeth down, 
bearing death to the ravenous fishes.’’ 
E. Ihad, XVI. 406 ff.: “As when a man sits on a jutting 
rock and drags a sacred fish from the sea with line and 
1 The translations from the Odyssey are by Butcher and Lang (London, 
1881), and those from the Iiad by Lang, Leaf, and Myers (London, 1883). 
3 So too the Egyptians likened the men slain at the battle of Megiddo: 
‘‘ Their champions lay stretched out like fishes on the ground.” See J. H. 
Breasted, Records of Egypt (London, 1906), vol. ii. par. 431. 
3 Alike, and yet unlike, is 
“His rod was made out of a sturdy oak, 
His line a cable which in storms ne’er broke ; 
His hook he baited with a dragon’s tail, 
And sat upon a rock, and bobbed for whale.” 
