***. Nature and Art, June 1, 1866.] 
ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN FIELD SPORTS. 
3 
That the art was practised with much success and 
love of the sport is evident from the Halieutics of 
Oppian, the only Greek poem now extant on this 
subject • but we learn from Athenseus that several 
other writers had written treatises or poems upon 
fishing, such as Csecilius, Numenius, Pancrates, 
Posidonius, Seleucus, Leonidas, and Agathocles. 
All these writers’ works have unfortunately perished. 
The methods employed to take the scaly creatures 
of the sea and river were various, and in many 
respects similar to those now adopted by the dis- 
ciples of W alton and Cotton. The ancients netted, 
angled with rod and line, or hook and line, trolled', 
set baited wicker traps, and occasionally practised 
the art of fly-fishing after a rather rude fashion. 
Various kinds of nets were used, — Oppian mentions 
several. The most common nets were the seine or 
sean (<x ayipnj) and the casting-net (dp^t/SXr/orpor). 
The materials of the nets were either flax ( linum ) 
— hence linum sometimes denotes a net, as in 
Virg. Georg, i. 142, — 
“ Pelagoque alius trahit liumida lina,” 
or hemp. The sean net was probably not dis- 
similar to the one now used by modern fishermen ; 
there were corks or pieces of wood at the top of the 
net, and pieces of lead at the bottom. To these 
Ovid refers — • 
“ Adspicis ut summa cortex levis innatet unda 
Cum grave nexa simul retia mergat onus.” 
( Trist . III. iv. 11.) 
The following passage from Oppian clearly ex- 
plains the use of the ancient seine or circle-net : — 
“ The silent fishers in the calm profound 
With circling net a spacious plot surround, 
Whilst others in the midst with flatted oars 
The wavy surface lash ; old ocean roars 
Murm’ring with frothy rage beneath the blow, 
And rumbles to remotest deeps below. 
The dreadful din alarms the tim’rous fry ; 
They fondly to the net’s protection fly. 
Fools ! From unbodying sounds to death they run, 
And flying but o’ertake the fate they shun. 
But when returning seines the shores ascend, 
And from the struggling ropes the fishers bend, 
Imprudent fears the trembling shock begets, 
Closer they press and hug the treach’rous nets. 1 ’ 
The amphiblestron or casting-net was, there is 
much reason to believe, similar to the modern 
casting-net. But as to the precise mode in which 
it was gathered tip and thrown, there is no clear 
evidence to show. A fisherman with net in hand, 
just about to make his cast, was one of the figures 
on the shield of Hercules. His attitude is described 
as follows: — “And on the land there stood* a 
fisherman on the look-out, and he held in his 
hands a casting-net for fish, being like to a man 
about to hurl it from him.” The term to denote 
'* In the English translation of Elton (Hesiod, Shield of 
Hercules, 294) : — 
“ On the crag & fisher sat 
Observant : in his. grasp he held a net 
Like one that, poising, rises to the throw.” 
Surely theword ijaro means simply “was set” or “stationed,” 
not “ did sit.” Sitting is not the attitude for a man “on the 
look-out,” or for one about to throw a casting-net. 
“ the cast” was (36Xoc, from fiaXXw, “to throw.” The 
Romans used their casting-net, it is probable, in a 
manner not dissimilar to the one in rise amongst 
the Greeks ; and they had the same term to signify 
“the cast,” bolus. The net itself was “jaculum 
rete,” or “jaculum;” it was also called “funda.” 
There is a very amusing passage in Plautus, where 
Dinarchus compares the dangers of love and its 
allurements, to fish caught in a casting-net : — 
“ Quasi in piscinam rete qui jaculum parafc ; 
Quando abiit rete pessum, turn adducit sinum. 
Sin jecit rete, piscis ne effugiat, cavet 
Dum hie dum illuc reti eos impedit 
Pisces, usque adeo donixum eduxit foras. 
Iditem est amator.” ( True . act i. sc. 1.) 
“Just like a man who throws his casting-net into a fish- 
pond ; when the net sinks to the bottom he contracts its 
folds, and when he has made his throw he takes care that 
the fish do not escape, whilst the net entangles them in all 
directions in its meshes till he land them safely ; so is the 
lover.” 
From this passage it is pretty clear that the 
jaculum , like the ajj.cj>i(iXricrrpov, must have been 
nearly identical in form and manner of use with 
our own casting-net. It is impossible to form any 
conjecture as to the form of several other nets 
mentioned by Oppian, and in most cases by him 
alone ; what were the yplipoi, or the yayyapa, or 
the round vTroycii, or the KaXiggara, or the ire^cii, or 
the atyaipCivcu, or the aieoXia iravaypa, we have no 
means of discovering. All we can gather is that 
they were nets of different construction used by 
sea-fishermen of Ancient Greece.* 
Angling was a very common mode of fishing. 
Sometimes a rod and line were used ; jd other times 
the line was wound round the hand, and let down 
from a boat or rock ; to this cord, either a single 
large and well-weighted bait (naOer fjc) was attached, 
as a lure for some large kind of fish, or a series of 
baited hooks was fastened along a portion of it, as 
in the long-line fishing of our own coasts. The lines 
were made of hemp, horsehair, or of spartos, and were 
of great strength, as was requisite to catch the huge 
conger-eel, whose flavour always threw an old Greek 
into ecstasies of delight. The hooks were large, and 
flattened at the shaft end ; single or double, some- 
times two-barbed, and fixed back to back like our 
pike or eel hooks. Dr. Badham saw an abundant 
assortment of ancient fish-hooks in the Museum of 
Naples : they were disinterred from Pompeii, and 
vary extremely in form, size, and mode of adjust- 
ment : they were made “ of two different metals ; 
some, like our own, of hardened iron (nucleus ferri) ; 
others, as we read in Oppian, of bronze.” Some of 
the larger kinds of hooks were weighted with lead 
shaped into cylindrical lumps, which, from a certain 
rude resemblance to dolphins, were called delphini. 
The bait, being attached to this leaded hook, was 
thrown into the sea, and drawn up and down, to 
and fro, like our system of trolling. 
“ He bolds the labrax, and beneath his head 
Adjusts with care an oblong shape of lead, 
* Many words relating to fishing may be found in the 
Onomasticon of Pollux, but they are seldom explained. 
B 2 
