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

Chapter 267: CHAP. 80.—WHO WAS THE FIRST INVENTOR OF PRESERVES FOR OTHER FISH.

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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. 80.—WHO WAS THE FIRST INVENTOR OF PRESERVES FOR OTHER FISH.

In the same age, also, Licinius Murena 2819 was the first to form preserves for other fish; and his example was soon followed by the noble families of the Philippi and the Hortensii. Lucullus had a mountain pierced near Naples, at a greater outlay even, than that which had been expended on his villa; and here he formed a channel,2820 and admitted the sea to his preserves; it was for this reason that Pompeius Magnus gave him the name of “Xerxes in a toga.”2821 After his death, the fish in his preserves was sold for the sum of four million sesterces.