Note 158 — Chapter II · HOMER—METHODS OF FISHING

See Eustathius ad loc. The spear with which Telegonos wounded Odysseus was tipped with the κέντρον of a Roach, according to A. G. Pearson, Fragments of Sophocles (Cambridge, 1917), vol. ii. p. 105 ff., à propos of the lost Ὀδυσσεὺς ἀκανθοπλήξ. Van Leeuwen (Odyssey, 2nd ed., Leyden, 1917), in his note on xi. 134-7, makes the fish the sting-ray (radio raiæ pastinacæ), which from its deadly character (cf. Pliny, N. H., ix. 67) is to my mind much more probable, despite Liddell and Scott’s translation of τρυγὼν as ‘roach,’ the absolutely harmless Roach! Cf. Epicharmus, Frag. 66 Kaibel, τρυγὁνες τ’ ὀπισθόκεντροι, and Aristotle, N. H., ix. 48. Whatever the fish were, it is good to know that it too came to an untimely death at the hands of Phorcys, because of its cannibal propensities. See Eustathius, Od., p. 1676, 45, commenting on xi. 133. In The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, vi. 32, Philostratos says Odysseus was wounded by the αἰχμὴ τῆς τρυγόνος. Van Leeuwen instances among some old armour preserved at Bergum the weapon of an Indian pirate, “which is made of the tail of the ray.”