Our wonder, if the adjectives are really descriptive, grows by the Rod being only specifically mentioned when “little fishes” are the prey. If the contention of modern fishermen—the value of the rod as an implement increases in proportion to the weight of the fish on the hook—holds good, why does Homer cite the Rod in connection only with “little” fishes, more especially as the prey in the simile (the companions of Odysseus) can hardly be classed as “little”?
Four differing explanations are possible:—
1. That “little” is an ornamental or redundant adjective.
2. That ῥάβδος, which is usually translated rod, _i.e._ _fishing_-rod, is (according to Hayman and others) not a fishing-rod, but merely a staff, or spear, shod with horn, and that “little” signifies only fish suitable for food, not large fish, such as dolphins, etc.
3. That the fishermen of Homer (anticipating our professional deep-sea fishermen in Kent and the Channel Islands, who for quickness and certainty, especially in the case of heavy fish, prefer hand-lines to rods), limited the use of the Rod to “little,” _i.e._ not large, fish.[160]
4. That “little” is partly ornamental, partly intentional, because fish caught close inshore are normally smaller than those caught farther out.
From the adjectives in passages D. and E. can we infer the use of the Rod? Of the adjective in E., Butcher and Lang write: “It is difficult to determine whether ἱερός in Homer does not sometimes retain its primitive meaning of ‘strong’ (see Curtius, _Etym._, No. 614); in certain phrases, this may perhaps be accepted, as an archaism.... On the whole we have not felt so sure of the archaic use as to adopt it in our translation.”
Paley, “ἱερὸς means huge, as if a favourite of or dedicated to some sea-god.” Was it from this shade of meaning that Theocritus in his _Fisherman’s Dream_[161] drew his conception that certain fish might be κειμήλιον Ἀμφιτρίτας, a pet of the sea-goddess? Faesi seems to incline to Paley’s view, but for a more general reason: ἱερὸς equalling ἄνετος earmarks “all herds and shoals of fish, especially those in the Sea, as consecrate to the Gods.”
Granting this, why should one fish be singled out by the epithet when the whole “herd or shoal” is equally ἱερός? The infrequent coupling of the adjective with ἰχθὺς suggests some less general meaning, if it mean anything.