twice mentioned or implied by Plato, notably in the Laws (vii. 823); Aristotle deals with fishes in his Natural History, and there are one or two fishing passages in the anthology.  But in Greek literature, as a whole the subject of angling is not at all prominent.  In writers of late Greek, however, there is more material.  Plutarch, for instance, gives us the famous story of the fishing match between Antony and Cleopatra, which has been utilized by Shakespeare.  Moreover, it is in Greek that the first complete treatise on fishing which has come down to us is written, the Halieutica of Oppian (c.  A.D. 169).  It is a hexameter poem in five books with perhaps more technical than sporting interest, and not so much even of that as the length of the work would suggest.  Still it contains some information about tackle and methods, and some passages describing battles with big fish, in the right spirit of enthusiasm.  Also in Greek is what is famous as the first reference in literature to fly-fishing, in the fifteenth book of Aelian’s Natural History (3rd century A.D.).  It is there described how the Macedonians captured a certain spotted fish in the river Astraeus by means of a lure composed of coloured wool and feathers, which was presumably used in the manner now known as “dapping.”  That there were other Greek writers who dealt with fish and fishing and composed “halieutics” we know from Athenaeus.  In the first book of his Deipnosophistae he gives a list of them.  But he compares their work unfavourably with the passage of Homer already cited, in a way which suggests that their knowledge of angling was not a great advance upon the knowledge of their remote literary ancestors.  In Latin literature allusions to angling are rather more numerous than in Greek, but on the whole they are unimportant.  Part of a poem by Ovid, the Halieuticon, composed during the poet’s exile at Tomi after A.D. 9, still survives.  In other Roman writers the subject is only treated by way of allusion or illustration.  Martial, however, provides, among other passages, what may perhaps be entitled to rank as the earliest notice of private fishery rights—­the epigram Ad Piscatorem, which warns would-be poachers from casting a line in the Baian lake.  Pliny the elder devoted the ninth book of his Natural History to fishes and water-life, and Plautus, Cicero, Catullus, Horace, Juvenal, Pliny the younger and Suetonius all allude to angling here and there.  Agricultural writers, too, such as Varro and Columella, deal with the subject of fish ponds and stews rather fully.  Later than any of these, but still just included in Latin literature, we have Ausonius (c.  A.D. 320) and his well-known idyll the Mosella, which contains a good deal about the fish of the Moselle and the methods of catching them.  In this poem is to be found the first recognizable description of members of the salmon family, and, though the manner of their application is rather doubtful, the names salmo, salar and fario strike a responsive note in the breast of the modern angler.