Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

GREEK AND ROMAN FISHING/CHAPTER IHOMER—THE POSITIONOF FISHERMENIt is difficult to define accurately or trace separately theLure or the Lore of these two nations, for their methods offishing were practically the same or dove-tailed one into theother. Since our authors in both languages frequentlysynchronise, or as in the case of Pliny and ^lian the youngertongue antedates the elder by a century or more, and sincethis book is based on no zoological system, I shall deal withthem for the most part in chronological order.The opposite page reproduces the figures of the fourfishermen from the famous Fishermen's Vase of Phylakopidiscovered in Melos some twenty years ago. 2 If the periodassigned to this, viz. c. 1500 B.C., be accurate, it seems to bethe oldest Greek representation, at any rate in the ^geanarea,depicting anything connected with fishing, and antedatesthe earliest Greek author by four to nine hundred years, in^ For several reasons I have anachronously placed this section first insteadof last.2 The representation, reproduced by the kind permission of the Societyfor the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, consists of four men carrying in eachhand a fish by the tail. The absence of boots and ornaments is in keepingwith their occupation. The fishes with one exception have heads likedolphins, similar to the representation of Poseidon with a tiny dolphin in hishand. The painting is executed in the " black and red " style upon theusual white shp. The figures are drawn firmly and boldly according to theconventional scheme, shoulders to front and legs in profile ; the slim proportionsof the bodies are common to many Mycenoean works. The mostbarbaric features of the drawing are the absence of hands, and the monstrouseye in the middle of the cheek. Cf. No. 80 in the British Museum Cat. ofGems, which shows a man clad with the characteristic Mycensean loin clothcarrying a fish by a short line attached to its gullet.in Melos (London, 1904), p. 123, pi. xxii.63Excavations at Phylakopi