The Feast Day, Ludi, of the Tiber fishermen was celebrated on the Campus Martius in June under the management of the Prætor Urbanus with much ceremony. Ovid[504] sings:

The custom of offering to the Gods fish (although rarer than that of animals) certainly and widely prevailed. Proof can be piled on proof—pace a passage from Plutarch and pace the contention that the practice is not purely Hellenic—from the pages of both Greek and Roman authors.

Take, for instance, the statement of Agatharchides of Knidos: that the largest eels from Lake Copaïs were sacrificed by the Bœotians, who crowned them like human victims, and after sprinkling them with meal offered prayers over them.[505] Or the story in Posidonius the Stoic of Sarpedon celebrating his victory by “sacrificing to Neptune, who puts armies to flight, enormous quantities of fish.”[506] Theocritus in his fragmentary Berenice, Ælian,[507] and Antigonus on the offering of the Tunny all confirm the custom.[508]

Plutarch (Symp., VIII. 3) would seem indeed the only exception: he straightly asserts, according to Nonnius and others, that “no fish is fitting for offering or sacrifice.”[509]

This is but another instance of Plutarch’s being saddled with responsibility for some expression or opinion uttered by one of his characters, as is clearly shown by the words: “Sylla, commending the discourse, added with regard to the Pythagoreans that they tasted especially the flesh sacrificed to the gods, but that no fish is fit for offering or sacrifices.”

P. Stengel holds that fish, with the curious exception of the Eel, were not sacrificed to the gods in early days, because they neither possessed blood which could be poured forth at the altar, nor could they be offered up alive as could be an enemy, a sacrifice which found special favour in divine eyes.[510]

This statement, unless explained in some manner, contrasts queerly with the passage in Plutarch’s Life of Numa Pompilius, where the king is taught by Picus and Faunus, reinforced subsequently by Jupiter himself, to make a lustration “as a charm against thunder and lightning, composed of Onions, Hair, and Pilchards!” Lest these curious constituents arouse your mirth and infect you with doubt as to their efficacy, hearken unto Plutarch’s further words, “which is used even unto this day!”

From this account (wittily versed by Ovid)[511] we discover Jupiter, resentful at being brought down to earth by the magic of Picus and Faunus, ordering the charm to consist “of Heads”—“Of onions,” replied Numa. “Human”—“Hairs,” said Numa, desirous to fence against the dreadful injunction, and interrupting the god. “Living,” said Jupiter—“Pilchards,” broke in Numa.

Whether fish were but rarely sacrificed or not, Festus[512] at any rate makes clear that at the Ludi on June 7th, and possibly the Volcanalia in September (although at the latter the oblations were mostly animal), Roman fishermen did offer up fish, “quod id genus pisciculorum vivorum datur ei Deo pro animis humanis.”

Offerings of fish may be (as O. Keller suggests) a relic of Totemism resting on the belief that the spirits of men after death pass into fish.

The suggestion gains force when we remember that Anaximander[513] and others taught that men lived once as fishes, but later came on land and threw off their scales; and that the early religious conceptions of Latium were so debased as readily to engender or harbour such a conception. On the other hand, it must be admitted that not a single clear and convincing case of Totemism has hitherto been adduced from the Græco-Italic area.

In these oblations and in Varro’s “Populus pro se in ignem animalia mittit,”[514] an animal in place of a man be it remarked—can be detected a mitigated survival of the widespread custom of human sacrifice in propitiation of a deity.[515] On much the same lines grew up the custom, as civilisation progressed, of burning the weapons of, instead of killing, the captured foe, after a battle. The immolation of prisoners formed a sacrifice not so much of revenge, as one in honour of the slain on the side of the victors: such at least is the conclusion suggested to me by the words of Festus, “humanum sacrificium dicebant, quod mortui causa fiebat.”[516]

As offerings at Rome had dwindled from men down to animals, or small fish, or eventually even salt or pickled fish, or fish mixed with wheat, so among the Israelites the Scape-Goat had become the vicarious victim offered up to Jehovah “for the sins of all the people,” and among the Assyrians the oblation had even shrunk to little fishes, made of ivory or metal.

Fish, in addition to being worshipped as gods or held so sacred that eating them was prohibited, were frequently used by the Priests or by the Augurs for divinatory purposes. In accordance with their swimming or not, and in what direction, with their leaps into the air, how, whence, and whither effected, with their reception, or refusal, or smashing with their tails of particular foods, were framed the oracular deliverances or priestly predictions, as Plutarch and others show.[517]

Thus at the spring of Limyra in Lycia, if the fish seized food thrown to them greedily, the omen was favourable; if they flapped at it with their tails, the reverse.[518] In Lydia (according to Varro[519]) from their movements, when rising to the surface at the sound of a flute, the watching seer deduced and delivered his answer. Divination was not limited to certain holy waters; when in the war between Augustus and Sextus Pompeius a fish darted from the sea and threw itself at the feet of the former, the ready augur found no difficulty in acclaiming him as the future “Ruler of the Waves.”[520]

Ichthyic soothsaying held its ground among the Greeks of the Byzantine empire. One prediction[521] —when a boiled fish shall spring out of the pot, then the last hour of Constantinople will have struck—is of present-day importance. But whether the fish has filled his saltatory rôle, and if so whether the doom of the city has sounded, lie for decision at the moment of writing on the lap of the Big Four in Paris.

The belief that fish could and did foretell events lingered long in England; thus the deaths of Henry II. and of Cromwell were foreshadowed by the fighting of fish among themselves in the vivaria belonging to Henry II. and Cromwell.[522]

As is but natural in hot countries, the trade in salted and pickled fish, the τάριχος of the Greeks, the salsamentum of the Romans, grew to great importance.[523]

This sweet-sour comestible was among both nations early, universal, and pushed to the extreme of madness.[524] In such high esteem was it held that it came to be looked on as an offering meet for the gods. Cato and others testify to the exorbitant prices commanded by Pontic and kindred salsamentum, of which a small flask fetched more than one hundred sheep! Of every kind—and they were as diverse as the countries and towns that furnished them—we find champions ready to go to the stake to prove the superiority of their own pet choice.

Of some towns it was the chief, if not the only, commerce. As modern towns frequently bear for their arms or on their seal some device connected with their history or trade, so ancient seaports which produced salsamentum often stamped their coins with the figures of fish, etc.

Thus Olbia, one of the most important markets for salt or pickled fish, bears on its money an eagle taking a fish,[525] while a copper coin of Carteia[526] depicts an angler, possibly Mercury—a god of fishing. Sinope, and many other places, have left similar numismatic representations. Of most interest from a monetary point of view are the Greek diobols of Tarentum. Those bearing the figure of Taras on his dolphin passed as current token in the fish market.[527]

Famous for the beauty of their execution were some of the Syracusan coins, representing the head of Arethusa surrounded by dolphins. The accounts of the legend vary. Shortly, the lovely maid of the train of Artemis fled the embraces of her lover Alpheus,

and prevailed on Oceanus to open a way through his waves till reaching seeming safety in the Isle of Ortygia, close to Syracuse, she welled forth in the midst of the salt sea a fountain of sweet pure water. Alpheus, not to be outdone, got himself transformed into a river to emerge also at Ortygia and to mix his stream with the spring of the nymph.

Around her head or amidst her hair on Syracusan coins dart dolphins (some hold eels, which were sacred to Artemis), symbolic of the sea, to show that the sweetness of the fountain was still untainted by the surrounding salt of the ocean.[528] Sweet the water may have been, but Athenæus (II. 16) characterises it as “of invincible hardness.” These coins are the work of those great masters, Cimon, Euaenetus, and an unknown third, the ‘New Artist’ of Sir Arthur Evans.[529] On an electrum coin of Syracuse an octopus is well delineated, while the obverse shows a veiled female head in profile.[530]

The octopus, judging by the fact that at Mycenæ in one tomb alone Dr. Schliemann excavated fifty-three golden models of it, and by the many gold ornaments of which the fish forms the chief or only figure, was undoubtedly a very frequent and favourite subject for the craftsmen of the ‘Minoan’ age, although it did not bulk so big in early Mediterranean religion as L. Siret would make out.[531]

The taxes or duties derived from fish or fishing furnished the peculiar of the Temples at Delos, Ephesus, and elsewhere: at Byzantium and some other places they went to the city. After the Roman conquests these imposts were paid not to the cities (Cyzicus and other places were the exceptions), but to the State, and were gathered by the intermediary “publicans.”[532]

With stories before him, such as those of the suppers recorded by the dozen in Athenæus, and given to and by the Emperor Vitellius, for which the fish were brought in ships of war from the Carpathian Sea and the Straits of Spain, it is no wonder that a modern author is driven to conclude that the ancients thought more of the edible than the sporting qualities of the fish. They ransacked the habitable globe for side-dishes, but did not trouble themselves about the precepts of Mrs. Glasse.

Apart from this ransacking of the globe, the Romans developed, as the demand for fish by rich and poor alike grew ever greater, the Egyptian and Assyrian vivarium to a marvellous extent.

Built at first (as Columella avers[533]) simply for the purpose of supplying fresh fish for the table, they found such favour that no self-respecting Roman could afford to be without his vivarium. With the rich they were the occasion of most costly ostentation and extravagant expenditure.

Whether Sergius Aurata (or Orata) took or not his cognomen[534] from the fish Aurata, all writers identify him as the first to build a vivarium for oysters. From their sale, from the income derived from the vapour baths (pensiles balineas), of which he was also the pioneer, and from the villas erected on his property, close to Baiæ, the baths, and the oysters, he amassed an enormous fortune. He posed as the Pontiff of the Palate; his was the final decision, from which lay no appeal, as to which sea or which part of what river produced the best of the various fishes.

From the not unnatural bias of owner and founder he adjudged the Lucrine oysters finest of all. Pliny’s words (IX. 79) that, when Orata “ennobled” the Lucrine, British oysters had not yet reached Rome convey a gratifying compliment to our insular pride, somewhat dashed by Pliny plumping for the Circeian.[535]

Oysters throve with travelling and a change to new waters.[536] The Brundisian oyster when planted in Lake Lucrinus not only kept its own flavour, but took on that of its new home.

Apicius, not our gourmet M. Gabius, but an initialless successor, would have proved an admirable Quartermaster-General.[537] When “Trajan was in Parthia at a distance of many days’ journey from the sea, he sent him oysters, which he kept fresh by a clever contrivance of his own invention; real oysters not like the sham anchovies which the cook of Nicomedes, king of the Bithynians, made for him,” when far inland and yearning for oysters.

In a comedy by Euphron,[538] a chef sings his teacher’s marvellous skill:—

No wonder the king spake to his admiring guests thus:—

To Fulvius Herpinus or Lippinus belongs the credit of being the first—just before the Civil War—to fatten the Cochlea, or sea-snail, in a vivarium. By careful collecting from Africa and Illyrica and skilful feeding, his cockles became renowned for size and number.[539]

In the period between the taking of Carthage and the reign of Vespasian, the taste in fish became a perfect passion; for its gratification Proconsuls enriched, like our Clives from India, beyond the dreams of avarice by the spoils of Asia and Africa, incurred the most lavish expense. Thus Licinius Muræna, Quintus Hortensius, Lucius Philippus constructed immense basins,[540] which they filled with rare species. Lucullus, like the Persian king at Athos, but with unlike motive, caused even a mountain to be pierced to introduce sea-water into his fish-ponds, and for the achievement was dubbed by Pompey, “Togatus Xerxes.”[541]

But in many cases the huge outlay was repaid with interest. Varro[542] avers that Hirrius (who first before all others designed and carried out the vivarium for Murænæ) received twelve million sesterces in rent from his properties, and employed the entire sum in the care of his fishes! At the death of Lucullus the fish in his stew-ponds realised over £32,000.

The rich Patricians were not satisfied with a single pond; their fish preserves were divided into compartments where they kept different kinds. In case any reader, like the Third Fisherman in Shakespeare’s Pericles,

I hasten to endorse the

and to add that the fish confined in these separate ponds found in the waters their business and livelihood from the testaceæ purposely planted.

This passion for piscinæ gradually impoverished the Mediterranean and other seas. Fish in the Tyrrhenian Sea had no time to come to maturity, because as Columella complains, “Maria ipsa Neptunumque clauserunt!”[543] While Varro and Columella give careful directions as to the making and keeping of practical fish stews, they keep silence as to methods of capturing the inhabitants.

I have come across no notice of vivaria among the Greeks:[544] their kinsman in Sicily erected at least one magnificent example. Diodorus Siculus (XI. 2) tells us that the Agrigentines (probably by the labour of the Carthaginian prisoners) “sunk a fishpond, with great costs and expenses, seven furlongs in compass, and twenty cubits in depth: in this water, brought both from fountains and rivers, fish were planted which soon supplied them with an ample stock both for food and pleasure.”

To the great Archimedes is due the unique achievement of a vivarium on board ship. It is impossible here to set forth all the glories of this wonderful vessel, intended for the corn traffic between Egypt and Sicily, and propelled by means of huge sweeps—every sweep worked by a team of twenty men (εἰκοσόρος).

Her Gymnasium, her three Baths, her Flower Garden, her trellised Vineyard, her Temple to Venus, her Library with its floor of mosaics exhibiting a series of subjects taken from the Iliad, and, lastly, in the bow by the side of the huge reservoir of 21,000 gallons, her water-tight well, made of planks lined with lead, and filled with sea-water, in which a great number of fish were always kept—if all these wonders of a ship, launched over 2200 years ago, do not cause us to think a little, and to abate our boasts over our Imperators and Olympics, then to the cocksure conceit of the twentieth century naught is of avail, not even the account given by Moschion.[545]

Disregarding the practical directions of Varro (whom Schneider[546] stamps, with regard to fish, etc., as a mere plagiarist of Greek authors), of Columella, and in a lesser degree of Pliny how to construct and conduct paying stew-ponds, and turning a deaf ear to Varro’s warning that “to build, stock, and keep them up was most costly,” the Romans thought no money, no time, too much to expend on vivaria.[547] Possession and cultivation of fish in vivaria, which were sometimes made in the dining-room, became the one delight of these “Tritones Piscinarum,” as Cicero dubs two of his friends.

The primary cause for their existence, a ready supply of fresh fish in a hot climate, was forgotten. Other owners resembled Hortensius, who (according to Varro) “not only was never entertained by his fish at table, but was scarcely ever easy, unless engaged in entertaining or fattening them.” The death of “his friend,” the Muræna, between whom and himself such a close attachment existed, almost broke his heart.[548]

Macrobius testifies that Crassus, “first among all the greatest men of Rome, mourned a muræna” (probably it of the earrings and necklace of precious stones) “found dead in his vivarium even as a daughter.” It was on the occasion of Domitius twitting him with “Did you not weep when your fish died?” that Crassus got back with “Did you not bury three wives and never weep at all?”[549]

Of Hortensius Varro continues:[550] “His mullet give him infinitely more concern than my mules and asses do; for while I, with one lad, support all my thrifty stud on a little barley, etc., the fish-servants of Hortensius are not to be counted. He has fishermen in fine weather toiling to procure them food; when the weather is too boisterous for fishing, then a whole troop of butchers and dealers in provisions send in their estimates for keeping his alumni fat. Hortensius so looks after his mullet as to forget his men; a sick slave has less chance of getting a draught of cold water in a fever than these favoured fish of being kept cool in their stews in Midsummer.”

The fish often answered to their names when called by their master, or their keeper. The latter, nomenclator, made a very handsome income from the admiring crowds, who flocked to see the fish perform their exercises with wagging tails or heads bedecked with rich jewels.[551]

Antonia, to whom the lands and villa of Hortensius descended, even stripped herself of her earrings to put them on a muræna. This lady, apart from this anecdote, was no ordinary person. We find her passing from the positive of celebrated renown for her beauty, her virtue, her chastity (no mean feat in that day!), through the comparative of being the mother of Germanicus Cæsar and Claudius, and the grandmother of Caligula (which last, in slang parlance, “wanted a bit of doing!”), unto the superlative of deathless fame in Pliny’s “Nunquam exspuisse” (never spat!).[552]

The savage use to which Vedius Pollio put his vivaria can be learnt from the pages of Pliny[553] and Seneca.[554] A slave, for breaking a crystal decanter at a banquet given to Augustus, was ordered to be thrown instantly into a piscina, there to be eaten alive by the nibbling voracious Murænæ. Escaping from his guards he threw himself at the Emperor’s feet, “beseeching nothing else except that he should die otherwise than as food for fish”[555]. Cæsar moved “novitate crudelitatis” (he little knew that this was his host’s cheery custom) commanded the crystals of Pollio to be smashed on the spot, the slave to be freed, and all the fishponds to be filled up.

As conducive to la joie de vivre of the other slaves, the command was commendable, for the bite of the Muræna’s serrated teeth, according to Nicander’s Theriaca—that “nullius fidei farrago”—owing to its mating with the viper, dealt poisonous death and destruction to the fishermen driven by its pursuit “headlong from their boats,” and was only curable by a mixture made of ashes from its own burnt head! So dreaded was this fish—curious is it not, to read, although from its savage nature no other could inhabit the same vivarium, the many stories of its tameness and docility?—that one of the direst of imprecations ran that in the under-world your enemy’s lungs should be mangled by Murænæ![556]

In times preceding these infatuated extravagant ages, the purpose for which vivaria were first created was steadfastly kept in mind and wonderfully advanced by practical pisciculturists. From being a mere pond for keeping fish alive till needed for the table, vivaria developed in the course of time into spawning grounds.

The pisciculturists went even farther. They turned lakes and rivers into natural vivaria by depositing in them not only adult fish, but the spawn of all such species as are in the habit, although born at sea, of pushing some distance up estuaries and streams. Columella instances specially the rivers Velinus, Sabatinus, Ciminus, and Volsinius as examples of the great success of this experiment in fish propagation.[557]

Comacchio on the Adriatic, from its extraordinary advantages of position and of fish-food, can hardly have escaped being utilised for similar purposes by the Romans. For many centuries, at any rate, its valli or breeding grounds have been renowned. Ariosto sings its speciality:

Tasso hands it down as the place where the fish—

At the present day over twelve hundred tons of fish, eight hundred of them eels, are annually captured at Comacchio.[558]

Since the above was printed, new and interesting evidence of the importance of fish, not only as an economic, but also as a hygienic, factor in the nation’s prosperity has been furnished by Prof. J. A. Thomson in his lecture before the Royal Institution, January 6, 1921.

He traced a connection between the decline of Greece and a shortage of little fishes. There was strong reason to believe that one of the causes for the decay of “the glory that was Greece” was that malaria was brought into the State.

The little creature, which caused malaria, lived on the mosquito by whom it was carried. The mosquito spent its larval life in the fresh waters. Little fish were the enemy of the mosquito—particularly the fish known as “millions”—which consumed the pest at a great rate.

The professor suggested, therefore, that what had happened in Greece was that there had not been enough little fish to keep the mosquitos in check. Because of this, malaria had been brought into the country, and that plague helped, if it did not cause, the destruction of the wonderful civilisation of Greece.