Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/516

 taken all the Eretrians captive as in a sean. The reader is referred to the Notes of Wesseling and Valckenaer on Herod. iii. 149 for some passages, in which subsequent Greek authors have quoted Herodotus and Plato. We find, "to be dragged," used in the same manner by Heliodorus.

In addition to the passages of Isaiah and Habakkuk which mention the drag in opposition to the casting-net; we find three references to the use of it in the prophecies of Ezekiel, viz. in Ezek. xxvi. 5. 14; xlvii. 10. The prophet, foretelling the destruction of Tyre, says it would become a place to dry seans upon, ; "siccatio sagenarum," Vulgate Version; "a place for the spreading of nets," Common English Version. The Hebrew term for a drag or sean is here

The only passage of the New Testament which makes express mention of the sean, is Matt. xiii. 47, 48: "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind; which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away." The casting-net, which can only inclose part of a very small shoal, would not have been adapted to the object of this parable. But we perceive the allusion intended by it to the great quantity and variety of fishes of every kind which are brought to the shore of the bay by the use of the drag. The Vulgate here retains the Greek word, translating sagena as in the above-cited passages of Habakkuk and Ezekiel. In John xxi. 6. 8. 11, the use of the sean is evidently intended to be described, although it is called four times by the common term, which denoted either a sean, or a net of any other kind. It is in this passage translated rete in the Latin Vulgate.

The Greek having been adopted under the form sagena in the Latin Vulgate, this was changed into rezne by the Anglo-Saxons , and their descendants, have still further abridged it into sean. In the south of England this word is also pronounced and spelt seine, as it is in French. We find in Bede's