Whether the _Salar_ and the _Fario_ of the Idyll are, or are not, identical with the burn trout or salmon trout of modern days affords a problem for ichthyologists, not for me.
Ausonius is the first to mention not only the _Salar_ and _Fario_[446] but also our Pike—_Esox Lucius_.[447]
“Lucius obscuras ulva cænoque lacunas Obsidet; hic nullos mensarum lectus ad usus Fervet fumosis olido nidore popinis,”
“The wary luce, midst wrack and rushes hid, The scourge and terror of the scaly brood, Unknown at friendship’s hospitable board, Smokes midst the smoking tavern’s coarsest food.”
The striking silence as to a fish so far-spread in his habitat and so notable in his habits as _Esox lucius_ in all preceding Greek and Latin literature must excuse a semi-excursus.
Cuvier writes: “We are necessarily astonished that the Ancients have left us no document, so to speak, on a fish so abundant in Europe as the Pike ... a fish which the Greeks must have known. The word _Esox_ occurs only once (Pliny, IX. 17) as an example of a large fish[448] comparable to the Tunny in form. In spite of Hardouin, I do not see that _Esox_ of the Rhine is the Pike, or believe with Ducange that it is the Salmon. The name _Luccio_ or _Luzzo_, by which we still call the Pike in this country, gives force to the supposition that the Latins of the time of Ausonius called it _Lucius_.”[449]
The astonishment at the absence of all reference to the Pike would be greatly increased, if the authors, or really Valenciennes, had lived to read later writers. Parkyn (_op. cit._, p. 131) cites the fish among those represented by the craftsmen of both Palæolithic and Neolithic Art in the caves of France and Spain. G. de Mortillet (_op. cit._, p. 220) claims that the remains of Pike in the Palæolithic age occur not infrequently. F. Keller (_op. cit._, vol. I. 537, 544) notes their presence in Neolithic finds at Moosseedorf, etc. Meek, _Migration of Fish_, p. 18 (London, 1917), states that the Pike “occupied the European region in Oligocene and Miocene times, and that the remains of Pike are found in the Pleistocene of Breslau.”
Attempts have been made to explain the absence of this fish previous to Ausonius by identifying _Esox lucius_ with (A) the _Oxyrhynchus_, and (B) the _Lupus_. These seem to me unsuccessful.[450]