The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 1 (of 3)

And Aristophanes, in his Ships of Burden, says—

For they used to steep in pickle all the fish which were proper to be dressed on the coals. And they called pickle, Thasian brine; as also the same poet says in his Wasps,—

138. There is also a fish called the thratta. And since we have brought the discussion to this point, and have also discussed the thrissa; let us now examine what the thrattæ are, which are mentioned by Archippus, in his play called the Fishes. For in that play, in the treaty between the Fishes and the Athenians, he introduces the following sentences—

Now in these lines, perhaps a man may ask what sort of thrattæ among the fishes are meant here, which the fish agree to give up to the men. And since I have got some private things written out on this subject, I will now recite to you that portion of them which bears most on the subject.

The thratta, then, is really a genuine sea-fish; and Mnesimachus in his Horse-breeder, mentions it; and Mnesimachus is a poet of the middle comedy. And he speaks thus—

But Dorotheus of Ascalon, in the hundred and eighth book of his Collection of Words, writes this name θέττα, either because he fell in with a copy of the drama with an incorrect text, or because, as he himself was unused to the word, he altered it so before he published it. But the name thetta does absolutely never occur in any Attic writer whatever. But that they were used to call a sea-fish by the name of thratta, that Anaxandrides establishes, speaking in this manner in his play called Lycurgus,—

And Antiphanes says in his Etrurian—

139. We come now to the sea-sparrow. Diocles enumerates this fish among the drier kinds. But Speusippus, in the second book of his Things resembling one another, says that the sea-sparrow and the buglossus and the tænia are very much alike. But Aristotle, in the fifth book of his Parts of Animals, writes—"And in the same manner the greater number of the small fish have young once a year; such as those which are called chyti, which are surrounded by a net, namely, the chromis, the sea-sparrow, the tunny, the pelamys, the cestreus, the chalcis, and others of the same sort." And in his treatise on Animals he says—"These fish are cartilaginous, the sea-cow, the turtle, the torpedo, the ray, the sea-frog, the buglossa, the sea-sparrow, the mussel." But Dorion, in his book on Fishes, says—"But of flat fish there is the buglossus, the sea-sparrow, the escharus, which they also call the coris." The buglossi are mentioned also by Epicharmus in his Hebe's Wedding—

And Lynceus the Samian, in his Letters, says that the finest sea-sparrows are procured near Eleusis, in Attica. And Archestratus says—

But the Romans call the sea-sparrow rhombus; which, however, is a Greek name. And Nausicrates, in his Sea Captains, having first mentioned the sea-grayling, proceeds in this manner—

140. So now, having given you, O Timocrates, the whole of the conversation which took place among the Deipnosophists on the subject of fish, we may conclude our book here; and unless you want some other kind of food, we will end by setting before you what Eubulus has said in his Lacedæmonians, or Leda;—

Being sated, therefore, with all this, let us now take due care of our bodies, in order to be able to feed comfortably on what is coming next.

FOOTNOTES:

END OF VOL. I.

B. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.