Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

76 HOMER—METHODS OF FISHING124) two with the Net {Od., XXII. 386 ; //., V. 487), and onewith the Rod {Od., XII. 251).A. The Spear [Od., X. 124) :" And Hke folk spearing fishesthey bare home their hideous meal." This gives a very livelyimage, because the companions of Odysseus, whose boats hadbeen smashed by the thrown rocks,being speared hke fish by the Lsestrygones.iare in the water, and areB. The Net {Od., XXII. 383" ff.) But he " (Odysseus after:the slaughter of the suitors) " found all the sort of them fallenin their blood in the dust, like fishes that the fishermen havedrawn forth in the meshes of the net into a hollow of the beachfrom out the grey sea, and all the fish, sore longing for thesalt waves, are heaped upon the sand, and the sun shinesforth and takes their life away : so now the wooers lay heapedupon each other." 2In Iliad, V. 487 ff. : " Only beware lest, as though entangledin the mesh of all-ensnaring flax, ye be made unto your foemena prey and a spoil."C. The Rod {Od., XII. 251 ff.) " : Even, as when a fisher onsome headland 3 lets down with a long rod his baits for asnare to the little fishes below, casting into the deep the hornof an ox of the homestead, and as he catches each flings itwrithing, so were they " {i.e. the companions of Odysseus)" borne upward to the cHff " (by Scylla).D. Line and Hook {Iliad, XXIV. 80 ff.) : "And she " (Irison her Zeus-bidden mission) " sped to the bottom like a weightof lead, that mounted on the horn of a field-ox goeth down,bearing death to the ravenous fishes."E. Iliad, XVI. 406 ff. : "As when a man sits on a juttingrock and drags a sacred fish from the sea with hne and1 The translations from the Odyssey are by Butcher and Lang (London,1881), and those from the Iliad by Lang, Leaf, and Myers (London, 1883).2 So too the Egyptians hkened 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."