The kinds of fish mentioned by this “poeta doctissimus”[407] number, according to Bishop Hieronymus, one hundred and fifty-three. This figure is verified by Ritter, who adds that “Pliny’s long list contains only twenty-three more, _i.e._ one hundred and seventy-six in all,” a total which hardly warrants the naturalist’s triumphal outburst, “In the sea and in the ocean, vast as it is, there exists by Hercules! nothing that is unknown to us, and a truly marvellous feat it is that we are best acquainted with those things which Nature has concealed in the deep.”[408] From the only English translation of the _Halieutica_ (made in 1722 by Diaper and Jones, Fellows of Balliol) I take a few passages illustrating the character and methods of Oppianic fishing.[409] The latter at once arrest our attention by their modernity. They are practically ours. Apostolides in his work describing fishing in modern Greece states that “les quatre engins d’Oppien, les filets, les hameçons, les harpons et les nasses,” with the addition of “les claies de roseau, d’importation romaine sans doute,” are the weapons of Hellas in the present day. The tricks of Oppian prevail in the Peloponnese: to-day, as nearly two millenniums back, the _Scarus_ and the Mullet are caught by using the female as decoy. The procedure of taking the Octopus (which Aristotle pictures for us in IV. 8), “when clinging so tightly to the rocks that it cannot be pulled off, but remains attached, even when the knife is employed to sever it: and yet if one employ fleabane (κόνυζα) to the creature, it drops off at once,” remains the same in Greece to-day. Apostolides writes (p. 50), “Comme on voit, non seulement le procédé de pêche aux poulpes a persisté jusqu’à nos jours, mais la plante (Conyse) qu’on emploie à cet effet porte encore le même nom.” But as Canning called into existence a new world to redress the balance of power in the old, so too the Attic fisherman to dislodge the Octopus has, Raleigh-like, imported to the aid of his old herb, American tobacco.[410] The devices for fishing, which in Oppian, I. 54-5, are— “The slender-woven Net, Viminious Weel,[411] The Taper Angle, Line and Barbed Steel Are all the Tools his constant Toil employs, On arms like this, the Fishing Swain relies,” are amplified in III. 73 ff. in number and detail. “y those who curious have their art defined, Four sorts of fishers are distinct assigned. The first in Hooks delight: here some prepare The Angle’s Taper Length, and Twisted hair. Others the tougher threads of flax entwine, But firmer hands sustain the sturdy Line. A third prevails by more compendious ways, While numerous Hooks one common Line displays.”