CHAPTER XIII. Ausonius—Salmo, Salar and Fario—First Mention of the Pike

AUSONIUS—SALMO, SALAR AND FARIO—FIRST MENTION OF THE PIKE

Ausonius (c. 310-c. 393 A.D.) is practically the last Latin writer within my time-limit (A.D. 500) who has allusions of interest to Fishing. In the fifth century, however, Sidonius, whose fishing and hunting interest apparently equalled his diocesan—his ‘Nolo Episcopari’ was, if fruitless, at once exceptional and genuine, for the see of Clermont had to be forced on his acceptance—tells us in a letter and in his poems of the catching of fish, especially by night lines in a lake on his wife’s property in the Auvergne.

The tenth Idyll of Ausonius (“Ad Mosellam,” a great favourite with Izaak Walton), ranks, according to Mackail, “the writer not merely as the last or all but last of Latin, but also as the first of French poets.” It demands mention, quite apart from the vividness of its pictures, because it is the only fisher poem of any length in classical Latin, and because in it occurs the first mention of the Salar and the Fario.

Of the Salmo Pliny three hundred years previously was the first to speak. The Greeks knew not the Salmon: at any rate, no opsophagist or other author notices the fish. Their silence is natural; the high temperature of the water forbids its frequenting the Mediterranean or its inflowing rivers.

The length of the whole poem (483 lines) prevents entire quotation, although the touch and movement all through display fully the instinct and feeling for sport.

Pictures of the scenery along the banks of the Moselle are followed by the enumeration and characterisation of the fish in its waters rendered after the manner of the didactic epic. The poem furnishes a lively description of the fishermen of the Moselle, made from actual observation. Men in boats drag nets in midstream; men watch the corks of little nets in shallower water; men perched on banks or on rocks armed with rods scan the floats bobbing on the water, or jerk in the prey. But we search for fly-fishing in vain.

“And now, where the bank gives easy access, a host of spoilers are searching all the waters. Alas! poor fish, ill sheltered by thine inmost stream! One of them trails his wet lines far out in mid-river, and sweeps off the shoals caught in his knotty seine; where the stream glides with placid course, another spreads his drag-nets buoyed on their cork-floats.

“A third, leaning over the waters beneath the rock, lowers the arching top of his supple rod, as he casts the hooks sheathed in deadly baits. The unwary rovers of the deep rush on them with gaping mouth—too late, their wide jaws feel through and through the stings of the hidden barb—they writhe—the surface tells the tale, and the rod ducks to the jerky twitch of the quivering horse-hair. Enough—with one whizzing stroke the boy snatches his prey slant-wise from the water; the blow vibrates on the breeze, as when a lash snaps in the air with a crack, and the wind whistles to the shock.

“The finny captives bound on the dry rocks, in terror at the sunlight’s deadly rays; the force which stood to them in their native stream languishes under our sky, and wastes their life in struggles to respire. Now, only a dull throb shudders through the feeble frame, the sluggish tail flaps in the last throes, the jaws gape, but the breath which they inhale returns from the gills in the gaspings of death: as, when a breeze fans the fires of the forge, the linen valve of the bellows plays against its beechen sides, now opening, and now shutting, to admit or to confine the wind.

“Some fish have I seen who, in the last agony, gathered their forces, sprang aloft, and plunged head foremost into the river beneath, regaining the waters for which they had ceased to hope. Impatient of this loss, the thoughtless boy dashes in after them from above and strikes out in wild pursuit. Even thus Glaucus of Anthedon, the old man of the Bœotian Sea, when, after tasting Circe’s deadly herbs, he ate of the grass which dying fish had nibbled, passes, a strange denizen, into the Carpathian deep. Armed with hook and net, a fisherman in the depths of that realm whose upper waters he had been wont to plunder, Glaucus glided along, the pirate of those helpless tribes.”

Whether the Salar and the Fario of the Idyll are, or are not, identical with the burn trout or salmon trout of modern days affords a problem for ichthyologists, not for me.

Ausonius is the first to mention not only the Salar and Fario but also our Pike—Esox Lucius.

“Lucius obscuras ulva cænoque lacunas Obsidet; hic nullos mensarum lectus ad usus Fervet fumosis olido nidore popinis,”

which Badham has loosely translated:

“The wary luce, midst wrack and rushes hid, The scourge and terror of the scaly brood, Unknown at friendship’s hospitable board, Smokes midst the smoking tavern’s coarsest food.”

The striking silence as to a fish so far-spread in his habitat and so notable in his habits as Esox lucius in all preceding Greek and Latin literature must excuse a semi-excursus.

Cuvier writes: “We are necessarily astonished that the Ancients have left us no document, so to speak, on a fish so abundant in Europe as the Pike ... a fish which the Greeks must have known. The word Esox occurs only once (Pliny, IX. 17) as an example of a large fish comparable to the Tunny in form. In spite of Hardouin, I do not see that Esox of the Rhine is the Pike, or believe with Ducange that it is the Salmon. The name Luccio or Luzzo, by which we still call the Pike in this country, gives force to the supposition that the Latins of the time of Ausonius called it Lucius.”

The astonishment at the absence of all reference to the Pike would be greatly increased, if the authors, or really Valenciennes, had lived to read later writers. Parkyn (op. cit., p. 131) cites the fish among those represented by the craftsmen of both Palæolithic and Neolithic Art in the caves of France and Spain. G. de Mortillet (op. cit., p. 220) claims that the remains of Pike in the Palæolithic age occur not infrequently. F. Keller (op. cit., vol. I. 537, 544) notes their presence in Neolithic finds at Moosseedorf, etc. Meek, Migration of Fish, p. 18 (London, 1917), states that the Pike “occupied the European region in Oligocene and Miocene times, and that the remains of Pike are found in the Pleistocene of Breslau.”

Attempts have been made to explain the absence of this fish previous to Ausonius by identifying Esox lucius with (A) the Oxyrhynchus, and (B) the Lupus. These seem to me unsuccessful.

Petrus Bellonius among the early writers upholds the first identification. In his Observations de Plusieurs Singularitëz, Book II. ch. 32 (published 1553), “Le fleuve du Nil nourrit plusieurs autres poissons, lesquelz toutes fois ie ne veul specifier en ce lieu, sinon entăt que le Brochet y est frequent, et que nous avons difficulté de luy trouver une appellation antique, ie veul mŏstrer qu’il fut ancieňement appellé Oxyrynchus.”

His effort breaks down for three reasons. First, Ælian says that the Oxyrhynchus,—a fish supposed to have sprung from the blood of the dead Osiris, or to be the impiscation (if the word may be coined) of Osiris—although caught in the Nile (X. 46, 1, 12.), dwells mainly, or according to Plutarch, de Iside et Osiride, 7, altogether in the sea, whereas our Esox cannot endure sea-water. Second, the sharp pointed form of beak (whence the name) cannot possibly represent the broad goose-like mouthpiece of our Pike. Third, the size of the Oxyrhynchus, often 8 cubits or 12 feet in length, proscribes the Pike.

Against the identification suggested by Franciscus Philadelphus of Esox lucius with Lupus two reasons lean heavily: (A) the etymological impossibility of λύκος (because of the wolflike nature of the Pike) changing into Lucius, and (B) the Lupus is always in Greek called λάβραξ, never λύκος.

The story of how the Lupus comes to his death by the Prawn can be read in Oppian and in Ælian. The fish, ever voracious, takes the prawns into his mouth by the thousand; these, unable to resist or retreat, jump about and puncture his throat and jaws so seriously that he soon dies of poison and suffocation.

Pliny (IX. 17), it has been claimed, under the word Esox intends our Esox lucius; but Cuvier maintains, and rightly, that his Esox signifies some very large fish, perhaps a Tunny.

Sulpicius Severus, a presbyter who lived in Aquitania (c. 365-425 A.D.) and penned an enthusiastic Life of S. Martin of Tour, writes: “ad primum jactum reti permodico immanem Esocem extraxit.” It is not for me to discuss or decry this amazing statement of a very small net holding this monstrous Esox. But as the growth of a Pike under the most favourable circumstances is probably not more than 2 lbs. a year for twelve years when usually it lessens materially, I do suggest that the adjective immanem is hardly applicable (unless St. Martin’s biographer, perhaps also a fisherman, has lapsed unconsciously into a “fish story”) to a fish of about 20 or 30 lbs., and so would seem to confirm Cuvier.

Pike, Carp, and Grayling were not apparently indigenous in England. They were introduced from the Continent at some undetermined date by one of the earlier religious orders for the better keeping of Fast Days, which as enjoined by the Church, even in Queen Elizabeth’s time, amounted to no less than 145 in number.

The Pike, though known in the thirteenth century, was very scarce. Its price (as fixed by Edward I.) doubled that of the salmon, and exceeded ten times over that of either the turbot or cod. Even as late as the Reformation a large pike fetched as much as a February lamb, and a very small pickerel more than a fat capon. This ratio of prices recalls the rebuke administered by Cato the Censor to those prodigal Romans who were willing to pay more for a dish of fish than for a whole ox.

In view of the necessity for fish on the fast days, which claimed nearly half the year, the situation of twenty Sees (two Archbishoprics and eighteen Bishoprics) out of twenty-seven on what were then salmon rivers can hardly have been a geographical accident.

The Carp must also have been a scarce fish in Tudor England. Dame Juliana Berners writes, “Ther be fewe in Englande.” Holinshed, à propos of its scarcity in the Thames, states, “It is not long since that kind of fish is brought over into England.” Leonard Mascall, however, in his Book of Fishinge (1596), credits a Mr. Mascall of Plumstead in Essex with the introduction of carp.

A hackneyed couplet, frequently quoted for the purpose of establishing the date at which carp and pike were introduced, but so full of mistakes as to be worthless, runs thus:

“Turkies, Carps, Hops, Pickerell, and Beer, Came into England all in one year.”

Since another version brackets “Reformation, hops, bays, and beer,” the year intended is obviously 1532.

A Pike, or rather the head of a fish so-called, served at supper is said to have caused the end of Theodoric the Goth. In it he imagined he saw the face and head of Symmachus, whom he had just put to death; straightway he became so terror-stricken that within three days he had joined his victim.

FOOTNOTES:

Ep., II. 2; Carmina, XIX. and XXI. Fortunately for Sidonius, Clermont was in the Auvergne, so he could be at once piscator and episcopus.

IX. 32. “In Aquitania salmo fluvialis marinis omnibus prefertur.” To make this clear piscibus should be understood after omnibus. The salmon is the fish most frequently found in the débris of the French caves, many of which are in Aquitania, so Palæolithic and Plinian man at any rate ate tooth to tooth in their preference. See Introduction. It is somewhat amazing, considering their opsophagy and the excellence of the fish, that down to 500 A.D. no Greek, and no Latin writer, except Pliny, Ausonius, and Sidonius, Ep. II. 2, mentions the Salmonidæ. I cannot forgo Ausonius’s epithet—mouth-filling yet appropriate—for us, who dwell in “this blessed Isle, this England,” Aquilonigenasque Britannos.

Salmon appear but infrequently in representations, but Plate 8 in C. W. King’s Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, London, 1879, shows in colours a mosaic dedicated to the god Nodons by Flavius Senilis, an officer in command of the fleet stationed off the Severn: this mosaic includes a number of salmon. King, ib. Plate 13, 2, is a diadem of beaten bronze representing a fisherman with a pointed cap in the act of hooking with undoubtedly a tight line a fine salmon: cf. A. B. Cook’s discussion of these finds in Folk-Lore, 1906, XVI. 37 ff. Nodons was in fact, like Nuada, a fish god, indeed a Celtic understudy for Neptune. If salmon figure little in representations, they bulk large in laws, and in commissariats for campaigns, e.g. 3000 dried salmon were ordered by Edw. II. in his war with Bruce.

From Professor R. C. Jebbs’ Translation, p. 176 (line 240 ff.).

Cf. Plutarch, Symp., IV. 4. “The place where we live is to fish no less than Hell: for no sooner come they unto it, but dead they immediately be.” Holland’s Translation.

For the story of Glaucus, see Æsch., Frag. 28; Paus., IX. 22, 6 and 7; Virgil, Æn., VI. 36; and Athen., VII. 47, 8. Ausonius follows the version according to which Glaucus had been metamorphosed by Circe, and then on tasting 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 ævo.”

Mosella, 122 ff. Polemius Silvius, Index Dierum Festorum, more than half a century later, seems the second—such is the infrequency of mention.

C. Mayhoff here prints J. Hardouin’s conjecture isox, which was based on Hesychius’ gloss, ἴσοξ ἰχθὺς ποιὸς κητώδης.

Cuvier and Valenciennes Histoire Naturelle des Poissons, vol. XVIII., pp. 279-80 (Paris, 1846). See Introduction. If the Pike be late in literature, in heraldry it makes amends, for there is no earlier example of fish borne in English heraldry than is afforded by the Pike in the arms of the family of Lucy, or Lucius—a play on words not confined to heraldry but to be found in Shakespeare, Puttenham, and others. See Moule, op. cit., p. 49.

For the attempt to identify the Esox with the Huso made by a French writer, apud Vincentium, XVII. 53, and with the Salmon by other writers, see J. G. Schneider, op. cit., pp. 24 and 126.

Ælian, N. H., XVII. 32.

The epigram on Pope Lucius III. (1181 to 1185 A.D.), who was banished from Rome for his tyranny and exactions, is, both as a comparison and a contrast, apt.

“Lucius est piscis rex atque tyrannus aquarum: A quo discordat Lucius iste parum. Devorat ille homines, his piscibus insidiatur: Esurit hic semper, ille aliquando satur. Amborum vitam si laus æquata notaret, Plus rationis habet qui ratione caret.”

Athen., VII. 86; “The λάβραξ has his name from his voracity, λαβρότης” (cf. Opp., II. 130). It is said also in shrewdness he is superior to other fish, being very ingenious in devising means to save himself, wherefore Aristophanes the comedian writes:

“Labrax, the wisest of all fish that be.”

Op. cit. II. 127 ff.

Op. cit. I. 30.

De Virtute B. Martini, III. 13.

The biggest Pike ever caught in the United Kingdom seems to be the 72-pounder mentioned by Colonel Thornton in his “Sporting Tour.” Walton’s ring-decorated fish (see Gesner), three hundred years or so old, was no doubt heavier, if it were genuine. At any rate a Pike of 40-50 lbs. is very exceptional.

The value of the herring (Clupea harengus) was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and so remained generally till the Middle Ages. “Ignorance, presumably of the real nature of the Cetaceans betrayed our forefathers into breaking Lent, for under the impression that the whale, porpoise, and seal were fish, they ate them on fast days. High prices, moreover, were paid for such meats, and porpoise pudding was a dish of State as late as the sixteenth century” (P. Robinson, Fisheries Exhibition Literature, Pt. III. p. 42). Some laxity may, I think, be pardoned, for the very name “porpoise” (in Guernsey pourpeis)—derived apparently from porc-peis (porcum + piscem)—implies that the creature was regarded as a “pig-fish.”