Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

THE ROD IN HOMER 77glittering hook of bronze, so on the bright spear dragged heThestor," etc.*F. Odyssey, IV. 368 f . :" Who " (the companions of Menelaus)" were ever roaming round the isle, fishing with bent hooks,for hunger was gnawing at their belly."Odyssey, XII. 330 f. :" They " (the companions of Odysseus)" went wandering with barbed hooks in quest of game, as needsthey must, fishes and fowls, whatever might come to theirhand, for hunger gnawed at their belly." ^The Rod finds one express mention—in passage C. Is itsuse implied in passages D. and E. ? The answer depends greatlyon whether the adjectives employed are really descriptive of thequahties and sizes of the fish,or whether they are merely (asoften the case in Homer) ornamental or conventional epithetsmore suited for general than particular use, or are redundant.Our wonder, if the adjectives are really descriptive, growsby the Rod being only specifically mentioned when " httlefishes " are the prey.If the contention of modern fishermenthe value of the rod as an implement increases in proportionto the weight of the fish on the hook—holds good, why doesHomer cite the Rod in connection only with "little" fishes,more especially as the prey in the simile (the companions ofOdysseus) can hardly be classed as " little " ?^ See Eustathius ad loc. The spear with which Telegonos woundedOdysseus was tipped with the Kivrpov of a Roach, according to A. G. Pearson,Fragments of Sophocles (Cambridge, 1917), vol. ii. p. 105 ff., d propos of the lost'OSuo-o-eus aKaveoir\i]^. Van 'Le.eviwen {Odyssey, 2nd ed., Leyden, 1917), in hisnote on xi. 134-7, makes the fish the sting-ray {radio raics pastinacce), whichfrom its deadly character (cf. Pliny, N. H., ix. 67) is to my mind much moreprobable, despite Liddell and Scott's translation of rpvycov as ' roach,' theabsolutely harmless Roach ! Cf. Epicharmus, Frag. 66 Kaibel, Tpvy6i'est' oTTia-eSKfi'Tpoi, and Aristotle, N. H., ix. 48. Whatever the fish were, it is good toknow that it too came to an untimely death at the hands of Phorcys, becauseof its cannibal propensities. See Eustathius, O^., p. 1676, 45, commenting onxi. 133. In The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, vi. 32, Philostratos says Odysseuswas wounded by the alxf^v Trjs Tpvy6vos. Van Leeuwen instances among someold armour preserved at Bergum the weapon of an Indian pirate, " which ismade of the tail of the ray."^ It is with something of a shock I find such careful translators as Butcherand Lang translating yvafiirrolcnv ayKicrrpoKni' in Od., IV. 369, as " bent,"and in Od., XII. 332, as " barbed" hooks, without one word of explanation.These weapons differ in appearance, execution, and date of invention. Toevolve the barbed from the bent hook required probably as many generationsof men, and centuries of effort, as the development of the bent hook from theprimitive gorge. See Introduction.