Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

82 HOMER—METHODS OF FISHINGoff, covers a soft woollen line, to which is tethered a live rat,a common bait for a big Nile fish,with a pipe or tube of maizestalk. Here the similarity ends ; on the Nile no hook isemployed ; the sportsman harpoons the fish while hangingon to the rat,(2) Kipag, according to Paley (quoting Spitzner), was abit of horn fastened to the hook and plummet to disguisetheir appearance ; this, from being nearly the same colouras the sea, served better to deceive the fish,(3) Kepag, according to Trollope and others, was the hornor tube, but in it only the leaden weight was enclosed,(4)Kipag was a kind of tress, made out of the hair of abull. Plutarch, however, states flatly, " But this is an error."Damm and others insist that the word in this sense is post-Homeric, and agree with Plutarch that these tresses, if everused, would have been of the hair of a horse, and not of abull,i{5) Ktpag, according to Hayman and others, was simply aprong of horn attached to a staff to pierce and fork out thefish while feeding ; hence the prehminary baits, uSara (similarto baiting a swim on the Thames), are of course not on orattached to the horn,The epithet in C. is TrepifxriKtjg, not merely long, but verylong. The adjective, if not redundant, lends weight to Hayman'stheory of spear as against fishing rod. Against it,however, in Od., X. 293, the pd[5^og, or wand of Circe, whichthrice appears (in Od., X. 238, 319, 389) minus any adjective,suddenly takes unto itself TTzpifii^K^g, very long, without apparentreason for the distinction.(6) Mr. Minchin's explanation is ingenious, if open to twoobjections. "As to the ox horn puzzle," he writes to me," I feel no doubt that the Cherithai (as the Bible calls theKretans) cut a ring out of the horn of an ox, and then cut a^ Apollonius Sophista, Lexicon Homericum, (ed. Bekker, Berlin 1833), p. 52,was evidently aware of interpretation (i), and also, from his words fvioi 5e tVTplx°- Kepas, of (4). Cf. Plutarch de Sol. an. 24.' " The remarks of the Schohast here {Od., XII. 251) citing as authorityAristarchus perhaps illustrate fishing tackle as later known. The Homerictackle was far simpler, a staff shod with a native horn" (Hayman).