144 PLINY—-MARTIAL—WAS THE ROD JOINTED ? 
The medieval writer, Paolo Giovio, dwells at length on 
the enormous fish to be seen 350 years ago in the depths of 
Lake Como, and states that trout of 100 lbs. and over were no 
uncommon objects.! 
What a prospect of joyous, easeful sport is opened here! 
No tedious travel of days or weeks to Norway, Canada, or New 
Zealand ; no sleepless roughing it under tent or shack; no 
diet of canned food; no being “ bitten off in chunks” by 
mosquito or black fly. Think of it, O Angler of high hope, 
but of sore disappointment—of hard toil and weary waiting ! 
Think of it! To wake, after sound slumber, in one’s own 
comfortable room: to seize the ready rod, and with one 
dexterous cast, “almost from your very bed,” to be fast in a 
hundred-pound trout ! 
“Than which no more in deed, or dream ! ” 
Martial’s abiding love for his birthplace on the picturesque 
banks of the River Salo in Spain (the delights of which in 
Ep., XII. 18, and I. 49, he paints with happy enthusiasm to 
Rome-tied Juvenal and to Licinianus) probably accounts for 
Angling being mentioned more appreciatively by him than by 
any other Latin poet. 
Angling was one of the favourite amusements of men like 
Martial, a yeoman (if I may differ from Prof. Mackail 2)—to 
judge from the frequent references made to his own farm—or 
at any rate a close observer of the class, which in Ep. I. 55, he 
so wel] describes : 
“Hoc petit, esse sui nec magni ruris arator, 
Sordidaque in parvis otia rebus amat.”’ 
1 P. Lund, The Lake of Como (London, 1910), p. 23, refers to P. Giovio, 
‘De Piscibus Romanis, c. 38. 
2 Latin Literature (1906), p. 193. ‘‘ Martial’s gift for occasional verse just 
enabled him to live up three pair of stairs in the city: in later years he could 
just afford a tiny country house among the Sabine hills.” This three-pair-back 
theory seems a bit strained, for he often speaks of his Nomentanus ager, a small 
farm at Nomentum, which yielded excellent wine. Cf. Ep., Il. 38; VI. 43; 
XIII. 119. He owned, in addition to a house in Rome, apparently another 
small place at Tibur (IV. 80) ; so his complaints of being a “‘ pauper ’”’ must be 
understood only in a relative sense. Thither he goes chiefly, he delicately 
insinuates, for the pleasure of seeing Ovid, who was his neighbour there. Ct. 
also VII. 93. 
