178 PLUTARCH—CLEOPATRA—OPPIAN—ATHENEUS 
d’Oppien, les filets, les hamecons, les harpons et les nasses,”’ 
with the addition of “‘ les claies de roseau, d’importation romaine 
sans doute,’”’ are the weapons of Hellas in the present day. 
The tricks of Oppian prevail in the Peloponnese: to-day, as 
nearly two millenniums back, the Scarus and the Mullet are 
caught by using the female as decoy. 
The procedure of taking the Octopus (which Aristotle pictures 
for us in IV. 8), “ when clinging so tightly to the rocks that 
it cannot be pulled off, but remains attached, even when the 
knife is employed to sever it: and yet if one employ fleabane 
(kévuga) to the creature, it drops off at once,’’ remains the 
same in Greece to-day. Apostolides writes (p. 50), “Comme 
on voit, non seulement le procédé de péche aux poulpes a 
persisté jusqu’a nos jours, mais la plante (Conyse) qu’on 
emploie a cet effet porte encore le méme nom.” 
But as Canning called into existence a new world to redress 
the balance of power in the old, so too the Attic fisherman to 
dislodge the Octopus has, Raleigh-like, imported to the aid 
of his old herb, American tobacco.! 
The devices for fishing, which in Oppian, I. 54-5, are— 
‘“ The slender-woven Net, Viminious Weel,? 
The Taper Angle, Line and Barbed Steel 
Are all the Tools his constant Toil employs, 
On arms like this, the Fishing Swain relies,” 
are amplified in III. 73 ff. in number and detail. 
1 N.C. Apostolides, La Péche en Gréce (Athénes, 1907), p.31. The selection 
of Aristotle as the prototype of philosophical inveighers against Tobacco by 
Thomas Corneille (Act I., Sc. 1, of Le Festin de Pierre), 
** Quoi qu’en dise Aristote, et sa digne cabale, 
Le tabac est divin, il n’est rien qui l’égale,” 
is hardly happy, for, as the weed nicotine only reached Europe some nineteen 
centuries after the philosopher’s death, his “‘ dise’’ equals rten / 
2 With Sdvat and «dtpros, cf. the mwAekrdy bpacua in Archestratus (frag. 
xv. 6). See pp. 147 and 176 ff. of Paulus Brandt’s Parodorum epicorum 
Grecorum et Archestvati Reliquie, Leipzig, 1888. Brandt argues that the 
expression describes a nassa, qua retis loco piscatores utebantur, and on the 
analogy of the Dalmatian fishermen (cf. Brehm, Thierleben, IV., vol. II. p. 533) 
who, when the sea is not quite calm, drop from the bow of the boat pebbles 
dipped in oil to make smooth the surface, and so more easily detect the fish, 
explains dovety whpovs in Frag. XV. line 8. Although Archestratus’s state- 
ment that the fish are not to be seen (ot8 éoidciv Sconow), except by those 
who resort to the mAexrdy tpacua, and cidbact Soveivy Whpous, gives some colour to 
Brandt’s ingenious identification, the lack of any mention of the essential factor 
in such a calming operation, the oil, seems to rule it out. 
