Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

138 THEOCRITUS—GREEK EPIGRAMMATISTSWho fell beside his lines and hooks and rod,And the choked fisher sought his last abode.His dust lies here. Stranger, this humble graveAn angler to a brother angler gave."Alciphron, judging from his extant letters, seems the mostprolific of the later Piscatory writers. His tribute to theveracity of Sosias, " who is famous for the delicious sauce madeof the fish which he entices," reads in such deadly oppositionto the common but false impression that fishermen rank nextto mining engineers as the biggest liars in the world, that itmust be quoted, if only on the principle of "An angler to abrother angler gave.""He isone of those who duly reverence Truth, and suchan one would never even slip into Falsehood."Lest as an Angler I may be accused of " slipping intoFalsehood " in my translation, I subjoin the Greek :"Etrri St tGjv iTrieiKtbg rrji a\i]deiav ti/xmvtiov, koi oi»k av ttotIkhvoq dg ipevdrjyopiav oXiaOoi.^Lucian's Dialogues of the Sea Gods, by their confidentialchat, give witty expression to the author's own scepticismtowards mythology. " With their imitation of the earlierpoets and their amoebean form they may be considered asconnecting links between Theocritus and others of his groupand the eclogues of marine mythology, sometimes classed aspiscatory eclogues during the renaissance." 2If any doubt be as to their being "links," there can benone as to the charm of The Dialogues of (in Macaulay's words)" the last great master of Attic eloquence, and Attic wit," or(he has been perhaps equally well termed) " the first of themoderns."» Bk. I. 18.^ See Hall, op. cit. p. 22 (1914), and ibid., p. 35 (1912). Lucian, althougha Syrian (to which nation fish was from the earliest times a forbidden food),frequently shows himself very conversant with fishes and avails himself oftheir characteristics: e.g. Menelaus, after witnessing some of the "turns"of that celebrated " lightning-change artist," Proteus, exclaims frankly, " theremust be some fraud "! The artist pooh-poohs him and bids him consider theeveryday miracle of invisibility wrought by the Polypus, who having " selectedhis rock and having attached himself by means of his suckers, assimilateshimself to it, changing his colour to match that of the rock. Thus there is nocontrast of colour to betray his presence : he looks just like a stone " {Dialoguesof the Sea Gods, iv. 1-3, Fowler's Translation).