The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 215: CHAP. 28.—THE LUPUS, ASELLUS.

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The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 28.—THE LUPUS, ASELLUS.

At a later period, they set the highest value on the lupus 2402 and the asellus,2403 as we learn from Cornelius Nepos, and the poet, Laberius, the author of the Mimes. The most approved kinds of the lupus are those which have the name of “lanati,” or “woolly,” in consequence of the extreme whiteness and softness of the flesh. Of the asellus there are two sorts, the callarias, which is the smallest, and the bacchus,2404 which is only taken in deep water, and is hence much preferred to the former. On the other hand, among the varieties of the lupus, those are the most esteemed which are taken in rivers.