Note 442 — Chapter XIII · AUSONIUS—SALMO, SALAR AND FARIO—FIRST MENTION OF THE PIKE

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.