PIKE UNKNOWN TO GREEKS 197 
‘* Lucius obscuras ulva canoque lacunas 
Obsidet ; hic nullos mensarum lectus ad usus 
Fervet fumosis olido nidore popinis,” 
which Badham has loosely translated : 
“ The wary luce, midst wrack and rushes hid, 
The scourge and terror of the scaly brood, 
Unknown at friendship’s hospitable board, 
Smokes midst the smoking tavern’s coarsest food.” 
The striking silence as to a fish so far-spread in his habitat 
and so notable in his habits as Esox luctus in all preceding Greek 
and Latin literature must excuse a semi-excursus. 
Cuvier writes: ‘‘ We are necessarily astonished that the 
Ancients have left us no document, so to speak, on a fish so 
abundant in Europe as the Pike . . . a fish which the Greeks 
must have known. The word Esox occurs only once (Pliny, 
IX. 17) as an example of a large fish 1 comparable to the Tunny 
in form. In spite of Hardouin, I do not see that Esox of the 
Rhine is the Pike, or believe with Ducange that it is the Salmon. 
The name Luccio or Luzzo, by which we still call the Pike in 
this country, gives force to the supposition that the Latins of 
the time of Ausonius called it Lucius.’’ 2 
The astonishment at the absence of all reference to the 
Pike would be greatly increased, if the authors, or really 
Valenciennes, had lived to read later writers. Parkyn (op. cit., 
Pp. 131) cites the fish among those represented by the craftsmen 
of both Paleolithic and Neolithic Art in the caves of France 
and Spain. G. de Mortillet (op. cit., p. 220) claims that the 
remains of Pike in the Paleolithic age occur not infrequently. 
F. Keller (op. cit., vol. I. 537, 544) notes their presence in 
Neolithic finds at Moosseedorf, etc. Meek, Migration of Fish, 
p. 18 (London, 1917), states that the Pike ‘‘ occupied the 
European region in Oligocene and Miocene times, and that 
the remains of Pike are found in the Pleistocene of Breslau.”’ 
} C. Mayhoff here prints J. Hardouin’s conjecture isov, which was based 
on Hesychius’ gloss, toot ixOds roids ent ddqs. : 
? Cuvier and Valenciennes Histoire Naturelle des Poissons, vol. XVIII., 
pp. 279-80 (Paris, 1846). See Introduction. If the Pike be late in litera- 
ture, in heraldry it makes amends, for there is no earlier example of fish borne 
in English heraldry than is afforded by the Pike in the arms of the family of 
Lucy, or Lucius—a play on words not confined to heraldry but to be found in 
Shakespeare, Puttenham, and others. See Moule, op. cit., p. 49. 
