Note 62 — PART I
Reading edition
I do not think that these gold hooks were a unit of currency, as the lari of the Persian Gulf were, according to W. Ridgeway, The Origin of Metallic Currency, etc. (Cambridge), 1892, p. 276.
This gold hook must not be confounded with the silver hook not infrequently employed in the remoter districts of Great Britain by certain anglers, who in their anxiety to avoid being greeted with Martial’s “ecce redit sporta piscator inani,” cross with silver the palm of more fortunate brethren, and
“Take with high erected comb The fish, or else the story, home And cook it.”