Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

——CHAPTER XIIIAUSONIUS—SALMO, SALAR AND FARIO—FIRST MENTIONOF THE PIKEAusoNlus (c. 310-C. 393 A.D.) is practically the last Latinwriter within my time-limit (a.d. 500) who has allusions ofinterest to Fishing. In the fifth century, however, Sidonius,whose fishing and hunting interest apparently equalled hisdiocesanhis ' Nolo Episcopari ' was, if fruitless, at onceexceptional and genuine, for the see of Clermont had to beforced on his acceptance—tells us in a letter and in his poemsof the catching of fish,especially by night lines in a lake on hiswife's property in the Auvergne.^The tenth Idyll of Ausonius (" Ad Mosellam," a greatfavourite with Izaak Walton), ranks, according to Mackail," the writer not merely as the last or all but last of Latin, butalso as the first of French poets." It demands mention, quiteapart from the vividness of its pictures, because it is the onlyfisher poem of any length in classical Latin, and because init occurs the first mention of the Salar and the Fario.Of the Salmo Pliny three hundred years previously was thefirst to speak. 2 The Greeks knew not the Salmon : at any^ Ep., II. 2 ; Carniina, XIX. and XXI. Fortunately for Sidonius, Clermontwas in the Auvergne, so he could be at once piscator and episcopus.2 IX. 32. " In Aquitania salmo fluvialis marinis omnibus prefertur."To make this clear piscibus should be iinderstood after omnibus. The salmonis the fish most frequently found in the debris of the French caves, many ofwhich are in Aquitania, so Palaeolithic and Plinian man at any rate ate toothto tooth in their preference. See Introduction. It is somewhat amazing,considering their opsophagy and the excellence of the fish, that down to500 A.D. no Greek, and no Latin writer, except Pliny, Ausonius, and Sidonius,Ep. II. 2, mentions the Sahnonidcs. I cannot forgo Ausonius's epithetmouth-filling yet appropriate—for us, who dwell in " this blessed Isle, thisEngland," Aquilonigenasque Britatmos.194