“Nets, like a city, to the floods descend And bulwarks, gates, and noble streets extend,” excuses himself from further amplification: “A thousand names a fisher might rehearse Of nets, intractable in smoother verse.”[559] Confirmation comes from Alciphron’s[560] statement that scarce a fathom of the harbour of Ephesus but held a Net: on one occasion the sole haul, after much moiling and toiling, was the putrid carcase of a camel![561] What and whence the Rod? It was certainly short: only from 6 to 8 feet (Ælian, XV. 1)—a length which is in the main confirmed, if assuming the height of some of the fishermen represented on vases, etc., in the Greek and Roman rooms of the British Museum to be as high as six feet, you then measure the rod. On the other hand, the sitting youth in the Agathemeros relief (_Brit. Mus. Cat. Sculpture_, I. 317, No. 648) measures 24 cm., the Rod 8 cm., the line 15 cm.[562] As we do not possess any relic of the Homeric rod, the length of the only one mentioned in either the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_ must be a matter of conjecture, especially as this is styled περιμήκης, or “very long” one.[563] The ordinary Rods were made of cane, hence _Harundo_ and _Calamus_, which was imported usually from Abaris in Lower Egypt, or of some light elastic wood. For large and powerful fish, where something stronger was required, Ælian tells us that _Tuncus Marinus_ and _Ferula_ were preferred. If the Rod were tapered, it was tapered probably by Nature not by art, at least so the Agathemeros relief, all the pictures of Venus and Cupid angling, and of many _Amorini_ from Herculaneum would suggest. The question whether the Rods were jointed has been discussed in my chapter on the _crescens harundo_ of Martial. The line, ὁρμιά, or _Linea_, made from the strong bristly hairs of animals (_seta_) but most generally of horse-hair,[564] of flax, of _sparton_ out of the _genista_, perhaps of _byssus_, but never of gut, was very finely twisted, as the epithet εὐπλόκαμος shows. It was usually as long as the rod itself, although in the Agathemeros relief we find it nearly double the length. The colours of the line were grey, black, brown—sometimes red or purple. It was made tight to the top of the Rod and not let down to the butt, or running.[565] Plutarch prescribes that the hairs next to the hook should for deception’s sake be taken from a _white_ horse, and adds advice, as pertinent now as then, that there “should not be too many knots in the line!”[566] To the line was fastened the hook (_hamus_) which was of one or two sharp barbs.[567] From Herculaneum,[568] Pompeii, and elsewhere have been collected hooks which vary extremely in form, size, and method of adjustment.[569] Although sometimes of bone, they are mostly manufactured from iron or bronze. Cf. Oppian, III. 285: χαλκοῦ μὲν σκληροῑο τετυγμένον ἠὲ σιδήρου.