Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

—;196 AUSONIUS—SALMO—FIRST MENTION OF PIKEthe blow vibrates on the breeze, as when a lash snaps in theair with a crack, and the wind whistles to the shock." The finny captives bound on the dry rocks, in terror atthe sunlight's deadly rays ; the force which stood to them intheir native stream languishes under our sky, and wastes theirlife in struggles to respire.' Now, only a dull throb shuddersthrough the feeble frame, the sluggish tail flaps in the lastthroes, the jaws gape, but the breath which they inhale returnsfrom the gills in the gaspings of death : as, when a breezefans the fires of the forge, the linen valve of the bellows playsagainst its beechen sides, now opening, and now shutting, toadmit or to confine the wind." Some fish have 1 seen who, in the last agony, gatheredtheir forces, sprang aloft, and plunged head foremost into theriver beneath, regaining the waters for which they had ceasedto hope. Impatient of this loss, the thoughtless boy dashesin after them from above and strikes out in wild pursuit.Even thus Glaucus of Anthedon, the old man of the BoeotianSea, when, after tasting Circe's deadly herbs, he ate of thegrass which dying fish had nibbled, 2 passes, a strange denizen,into the Carpathian deep. Armed with hook and net, a fishermanin the depths of that realm whose upper waters he had beenwont to plunder, Glaucus glided along, the pirate of thosehelpless tribes."Whether the Salar and the Fario of the Idyll are, or arenot, identical with the burn trout or salmon trout of moderndays affords a problem for ichthyologists, not for me.Ausonius is the first to mention not only the Salar andFario ^ but also our Pike Esox lucius.'^^ Cf. Plutarch, Symp., IV. 4. " The place where we live is to fish no lessthan Hell : for no sooner come they unto it, but dead they immediately be."Holland's Translation.2 For the story of Glaucus, see ^Esch., Frag. 28 ; Paus, IX. 22. 6 and 7Virgil, Mn., VI. 36; and Athen., VII. 47, 8. Ausonius follows the versionaccording to which Glaucus had been metamorphosed by Circe, and then ontasting the herb regained his human form as the " Old Man of the Sea."Ovid, Met., XIII. 898 ff.^ Mosella, 88. " Purpureisque Salar stellatus tergora guttis," and ibid.,129 f., "Qui necdum Salmo, necdum Salar, ambiguusque Amborum medio,sario, intercepte sub aevo."* Mosella, 122 ff. Polemius Silvius, Index Dienim Festorum, more thanhalf a century later, seems the second—such is the infrequency of mention.