amusement, and the earliest references to it in the Greek and Latin classics are not very satisfying to the sportsman. There is, however, a passage in the Odyssey (xii. 247) which is of considerable importance, as it shows that fishing with rod and line was well enough understood in early Greece to be used as a popular illustration. It occurs in the well-known scene where Scylla seizes the companions of Odysseus out of the ship and bears them upwards, just as “some fisher on a headland with a long rod” brings small fishes gasping to the shore. Another important, though comparatively late, passage in Greek poetry is the twenty-first idyll of Theocritus. In this the fisherman Asphalion relates how in a dream he hooked a large golden fish and describes graphically, albeit with some obscurity of language, how he “played” it. Asphalion used a rod and fished from a rock, much after the manner of the Homeric angler. Among other Greek writers, Herodotus has a good many references to fish and fishing; the capture of fish is once or twice mentioned or implied by Plato, notably in the Laws (vii. 823); Aristotle deals with fishes in his Natural History; and there are one or two fishing passages in the anthology. But in Greek literature as a whole the subject of angling is not at all prominent. In writers of late Greek, however, there is more material. Plutarch, for instance, gives us the famous story of the fishing match between Antony and Cleopatra, which has been utilized by Shakespeare. Moreover, it is in Greek that the first complete treatise on fishing which has come down to us is written, the Halieutica of Oppian (c. A.D. 169). It is a hexameter poem in five books with perhaps more technical than sporting interest, and not so much even of that as the length of the work would suggest. Still it contains some information about tackle and methods, and some passages describing battles with big fish, in the right spirit of enthusiasm. Also in Greek is what is famous as the first reference in literature to fly-fishing, in the fifteenth book of Aelian’s Natural History (3rd century A.D.). It is there described how the Macedonians captured a certain spotted fish in the river Astraeus by means of a lure composed of coloured wool and feathers, which was presumably used in the manner now known as “dapping.” That there were other Greek writers who dealt with fish and fishing and composed “halieutics” we know from Athenaeus. In the first book of his Deipnosophistae he gives a list of them. But he compares their work unfavourably with the passage of Homer already cited, in a way which suggests that their knowledge of angling was not a great advance upon the knowledge of their remote literary ancestors. In Latin literature allusions to angling are rather more numerous than in Greek, but on the whole they are unimportant. Part of a poem by Ovid, the Halieuticon, composed during the poet’s exile at Tomi after A.D. 9, still survives. In other Roman writers the subject is only treated by way of allusion or illustration. Martial, however, provides, among other passages, what may perhaps be entitled to rank as the earliest notice of private fishery rights—the epigram Ad Piscatorem, which warns would-be poachers from casting a line in the Baian lake. Pliny the elder devoted the ninth book of his Natural History to fishes and water-life, and Plautus, Cicero, Catullus, Horace, Juvenal, Pliny the younger and Suetonius all allude to angling here and there. Agricultural writers, too, such as Varro and Columella, deal with the subject of fish ponds and stews rather fully. Later than any of these, but still just included in Latin literature, we have Ausonius (c. A.D. 320) and his well-known idyll the Mosella, which contains a good deal about the fish of the Moselle and the methods of catching them. In this poem is to be found the first recognizable description of members of the salmon family, and, though the manner of their application is rather doubtful, the names salmo, salar and fario strike a responsive note in the breast of the modern angler.
Post-classical Literature.—As to what happened in the world of angling in the first few centuries of the Christian era we know little. It may be inferred, however, that both fish and fishermen occupied a more honourable position in Christendom than they ever did before. The prominence of fishermen in the gospel narratives would in itself have been enough to bring this about, but it also happened that the Greek word for fish, ΙΧΘΥΣ, had an anagrammatic significance which the devout were not slow to perceive. The initials of the word resolve into what is practically a confession of faith, Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱὸς Σωτήρ (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour). It is therefore not surprising that we find the fish very prominent as a sacred emblem in the painting and sculpture of the primitive church, or that Clement of Alexandria should have recommended it, among other things, as a device for signet rings or seals. The fisherman too is frequently represented in early Christian art, and it is worthy of remark that he more often uses a line and hook than a net. The references to fish and fishing scattered about in the writings of the early fathers for the most part reflect the two ideas of the sacredness of the fish and divine authorization of the fisherman; the second idea certainly prevailed until the time of Izaak Walton, for he uses it to justify his pastime. It is also not unlikely that the practice of fasting (in many cases fish was allowed when meat was forbidden) gave the art of catching fish additional importance. It seems at any rate to have been a consideration of weight when sites were chosen for monasteries in Europe, and in many cases when no fish-producing river was at hand the lack was supplied by the construction of fish-ponds. Despite all this, however, save for an occasional allusion in the early fathers, there is hardly a connecting link between the literature of Pagan Rome and the literature that sprang up on the invention of printing. One volume, the Geoponica, a Greek compilation concerning whose authorship and date there has been much dispute, is attributed in Bibliotheca Piscatoria to the beginning of the 10th century. It contains one book on fish, fish-ponds and fishing, with prescriptions for baits, &c., extracted for the most part from other writers. But it seems doubtful whether its date should not be placed very much earlier. Tradition makes it a Carthaginian treatise translated into Greek. A more satisfactory fragment of fishing literature is to be found in the Colloquy of Ælfric, written (ad pueros linguae latinae locutionis exercendos) towards the end of the same century. Ælfric became archbishop of Canterbury in A.D. 995, and the passage in the Anglo-Saxon text-book takes honourable rank as the earliest reference to fishing in English writings, though it is not of any great length. It is to be noted that the fisher who takes a share in the colloquy states that he prefers fishing in the river to fishing in the sea. Ascribed to the 13th or 14th century is a Latin poem De Vetula, whose author was apparently Richard de Fournival. It contains a passage on angling, and was placed to the credit of Ovid when first printed (c. 1470). A manuscript in the British museum, Comptes des pêcheries de l’église de Troyes (A.D. 1349–1413), gives a minute account of the fisheries with the weights of fish captured and the expenses of working. There is, however, practically nothing else of importance till we come to the first printed book on angling (a translation of Oppian, 1478, excepted), and so to the beginning of the literature proper. This first book was a little volume printed in Antwerp probably in 1492 at the press of Matthias van der Goes. In size it is little more than a pamphlet, and it treats of birds as well as fish:—Dit Boecxken leert hoe men mach Voghelen . . . ende . . . visschen vangen metten kanden. Ende oeck andersins. . . . (“This book teaches how one may catch birds . . . and . . . fish with the hands, and also otherwise”). Only one copy apparently survives, in the Denison library, and a translation privately printed for Mr Alfred Denison in 1872 was limited to twenty-five copies. At least two other editions of the book appeared in Flemish, and it also made its way, in 1502, to Germany, where, translated and with certain alterations and additions, it seems to have been re-issued frequently. Next in date comes the famous Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, printed at Westminster by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496 as a part of the second edition of The Book of St Albans. The treatise is for this reason associated with the name of Dame Juliana Berners, but that somewhat dubious compiler can have had nothing whatever to do with it. The treatise is almost certainly a compilation from some earlier work on angling (“bokes of credence” are mentioned in its text), possibly from a manuscript of the earlier part of the 15th century, of which a portion is
