[431] Cf. H. Mayer, Sport with Rod and Line, Barnet and Phillips, New York.

[432] Jacobs adopts κηρῷ, instead of Gesner’s χρυσῷ, chiefly because it is written thus quite clearly in the Codex Augustanus. It also seems to fit the context better.

[433] Die römischen Privataltertümer (Munich, 1911), pp. 529-30.

[434] Καὶ πτεροῖς, μάλιστα μὲν λευκοῖς καὶ μέλασιν καὶ ποικίλοις. Χρῶνταί γε μὴν oἱ ἁλιεῖς καὶ φοινικοῖς ἐρίοις καὶ ἁλουργέσι, κ.τ.λ.

[435] καὶ πτερὸν λάρου ἑκάστῳ ἀγκίστρῳ προσήρτηται.

[436] If Sandys (antea, 185, note 4) be right about Ælian’s work being “mainly borrowed from Alexander of Myndos,” first century a.d., the artificial fly was probably well known in Martial’s time.

[437] πονηρῷ μὲν ζῴῳ καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν καὶ νύκτωρ ἀνθρώποις ἐχθρῷ καὶ δακεῖν καὶ βοῆσαι.

[438] For size of hooks, see antea, p. 157 and note 1.

[439] Cf. Arist., N. H., V. 19. The σκώληξ of Aristotle is an immature product of generation which grows and finally becomes a pupa, or (so Aristotle believed) an egg giving birth to the perfect animal.

[440] Ep., II. 2; Carmina, XIX. and XXI. Fortunately for Sidonius, Clermont was in the Auvergne, so he could be at once piscator and episcopus.

[441] IX. 32. “In Aquitania salmo fluvialis marinis omnibus prefertur.” To make this clear piscibus should be understood after omnibus. The salmon is the fish most frequently found in the débris of the French caves, many of which are in Aquitania, so Palæolithic and Plinian man at any rate ate tooth to tooth in their preference. See Introduction. It is somewhat amazing, considering their opsophagy and the excellence of the fish, that down to 500 a.d. no Greek, and no Latin writer, except Pliny, Ausonius, and Sidonius, Ep. II. 2, mentions the Salmonidæ. I cannot forgo Ausonius’s epithet—mouth-filling yet appropriate—for us, who dwell in “this blessed Isle, this England,” Aquilonigenasque Britannos.

[442] Salmon appear but infrequently in representations, but Plate 8 in C. W. King’s Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, London, 1879, shows in colours a mosaic dedicated to the god Nodons by Flavius Senilis, an officer in command of the fleet stationed off the Severn: this mosaic includes a number of salmon. King, ib. Plate 13, 2, is a diadem of beaten bronze representing a fisherman with a pointed cap in the act of hooking with undoubtedly a tight line a fine salmon: cf. A. B. Cook’s discussion of these finds in Folk-Lore, 1906, XVI. 37 ff. Nodons was in fact, like Nuada, a fish god, indeed a Celtic understudy for Neptune. If salmon figure little in representations, they bulk large in laws, and in commissariats for campaigns, e.g. 3000 dried salmon were ordered by Edw. II. in his war with Bruce.

[443] From Professor R. C. Jebbs’ Translation, p. 176 (line 240 ff.).

[444] Cf. Plutarch, Symp., IV. 4. “The place where we live is to fish no less than Hell: for no sooner come they unto it, but dead they immediately be.” Holland’s Translation.

[445] For the story of Glaucus, see Æsch., Frag. 28; Paus., IX. 22, 6 and 7; Virgil, Æn., VI. 36; and Athen., VII. 47, 8. Ausonius follows the version according to which Glaucus had been metamorphosed by Circe, and then on tasting the herb regained his human form as the “Old Man of the Sea.” Ovid, Met., XIII. 898 ff.

[446] Mosella, 88. “Purpureisque Salar stellatus tergora guttis,” and ibid., 129 f., “Qui necdum Salmo, necdum Salar, ambiguusque Amborum medio, sario, intercepte sub ævo.”

[447] Mosella, 122 ff. Polemius Silvius, Index Dierum Festorum, more than half a century later, seems the second—such is the infrequency of mention.

[448] C. Mayhoff here prints J. Hardouin’s conjecture isox, which was based on Hesychius’ gloss, ἴσοξ ἰχθὺς ποιὸς κητώδης.

[449] Cuvier and Valenciennes Histoire Naturelle des Poissons, vol. XVIII., pp. 279-80 (Paris, 1846). See Introduction. If the Pike be late in literature, in heraldry it makes amends, for there is no earlier example of fish borne in English heraldry than is afforded by the Pike in the arms of the family of Lucy, or Lucius—a play on words not confined to heraldry but to be found in Shakespeare, Puttenham, and others. See Moule, op. cit., p. 49.

[450] For the attempt to identify the Esox with the Huso made by a French writer, apud Vincentium, XVII. 53, and with the Salmon by other writers, see J. G. Schneider, op. cit., pp. 24 and 126.

[451] Ælian, N. H., XVII. 32.

[452] The epigram on Pope Lucius III. (1181 to 1185 a.d.), who was banished from Rome for his tyranny and exactions, is, both as a comparison and a contrast, apt.

[453] Athen., VII. 86; “The λάβραξ has his name from his voracity, λαβρότης” (cf. Opp., II. 130). It is said also in shrewdness he is superior to other fish, being very ingenious in devising means to save himself, wherefore Aristophanes the comedian writes:

[454] Op. cit. II. 127 ff.

[455] Op. cit. I. 30.

[456] De Virtute B. Martini, III. 13.

[457] The biggest Pike ever caught in the United Kingdom seems to be the 72-pounder mentioned by Colonel Thornton in his “Sporting Tour.” Walton’s ring-decorated fish (see Gesner), three hundred years or so old, was no doubt heavier, if it were genuine. At any rate a Pike of 40-50 lbs. is very exceptional.

[458] The value of the herring (Clupea harengus) was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and so remained generally till the Middle Ages. “Ignorance, presumably of the real nature of the Cetaceans betrayed our forefathers into breaking Lent, for under the impression that the whale, porpoise, and seal were fish, they ate them on fast days. High prices, moreover, were paid for such meats, and porpoise pudding was a dish of State as late as the sixteenth century” (P. Robinson, Fisheries Exhibition Literature, Pt. III. p. 42). Some laxity may, I think, be pardoned, for the very name “porpoise” (in Guernsey pourpeis)—derived apparently from porc-peis (porcum + piscem)—implies that the creature was regarded as a “pig-fish.”

[459] Cf. Chapter IV. Also Plutarch, Symp., VIII. 8, and Aristoph., Ach., 880.

[460] Akin to this we have the special prohibition—unique as far as I know—whereby priests at the temple of Leptis abstained from eating sea fish, because Poseidon was god of the sea, and owner and protector of its denizens. Plutarch, De solert. an., 35, 11. At other of his temples, e.g. in Laconia, the fate awaiting a violator of the sacred fish was that common to poachers of similar holy waters, death.

[461] The Love of Nature among the Romans (London, 1912), p. 300, n. 1.

[462] Passages which at first sight seem to conflict with this summary can often be ruled out from (A) geographical reasons, where (1) the fishing occurs in some non-Greek water, as in the Tiber (Galen, περὶ τροφῶν δυνάμεως, 3), or (2) the locality is not specified, as in Athen., VIII. 56, which is merely a quotation from a treatise of Mnesitheus, concerned with all kinds of fish from a digestive point of view; and (B) from the brackish nature of water.

[463] Dio. Cass. 76, 12, 2, speaks of the Scottish Seas as swarming and crammed with fish.

[464] Damm, p. 465, asserts that the order of eating of fish among the Greeks was (1) Fish from the sea, and then, but much later, (2) Fish from the rapids of a river. Daremberg and Saglio: “Pour les Grecs le poisson d’eau douce comptait à peine dans la consommation du poisson de mer: seules les anguilles du lac Copaïs avaient quelque renom. Mais la pêche maritime eut toujours beaucoup plus d’importance.” Pliny, XXXII. 10: Pisces marinos in usu fuisse protinus a condita Roma. Philemon the comedian makes the cook in his play, “The Soldier” (cited by Athen., VII. 32), bewail having for the feast mere,

[465] See infra, p. 287.

[466] Suetonius (Tib., 34), “Tresque mullos triginta milibus nummum.” A thousand sesterces, in the time of Augustus, equalled £8 17s. 1d., but later only £7 15s. 1d. For convenience I take 1000 sesterces as roughly equivalent to about £8 0s. 0d.

[467] An amusing instance of official interference is recorded in Apuleius, Metamorhp. I. 18. Lucius, the hero of the story, tries to buy some fish for dinner from a fishmonger at Hypata in Thessaly, who demanded 100 nummi (denarii): after much haggling, 20 denarii’s worth is bought and being taken home, when the local ædile intervenes, seizes the parcel on account of the extravagant charge, and destroys the fish in the presence of the seller. The result, which Lucius bewails, was loss of both dinner, and denarii!

[468] See Mayor’s Juvenal and Gifford’s Trans., IV. 15. In Pliny, IX. 31, Mutianus speaks of a mullet which was caught in the Red Sea, weighing 80 lbs. The comment of I. D. Lewis (on Juv., IV. 15 f.) that this fish “is utterly fabulous,” is not the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

[469] IX. 31, “at nunc coci triumphorum pretiis parantur, et coquorum pisces.”

[470] Ep., X. 31 f.

[471] Sat., IV. 23 ff. (Gifford’s Trs.).

[472] VIII. 16. Cf. also Varro, De Re Rust., Bk. III. 3, 10; Ælian, VIII. 4; and Macrobius, Sat., III. xv. 1 ff.

[473] Athen., VIII. 26.

[474] Ibid. VIII. 26.

[475] Xenophon, in speaking of a man as “an opsophagist and the biggest dolt possible,” evidently does not subscribe to the pleasant theory that fish-food increases the grey matter of our brain. Holland’s translation of Plutarch is not complimentary: “hence it is we call those gluttons who love belly-cheer so well opsophagists.”

[476] In charity to the Greeks may I hazard the plea (the rules of even the Law Courts are now sensibly relaxed) that their delight in Brobdingnagian meals may have originated in the days when their gods walked with men on earth, or grew up later as the sincerest form of flattery? No one in Homer keeps his eye more skinned or his nose more active than a god, when hecatombs “are about.” The Olympians flit constantly to Æthiopia and are impatient of any business, mundane or heavenly, which interferes with a trip thither, when with the keen scent (or vision?) of vultures, they smell (or see?) hecatombs in preparation in the heart of the Dark Continent, where the inhabitants, as a scholiast tells us, kept a feast for twelve days, one for every god! See A. Shewan’s Homeric Games at an Ancient St. Andrews (Edinburgh, 1911), p. 116—a most delightful and destructive skit at the expense of The Higher Criticism of Homer!

[477] The greatest number of fish which I can count at any feast mentioned in Athenæus (in Bk. IV. 13) amounts to only thirty-two! Badham (p. 587) omits to state that the whole poem is nothing but a parody, chiefly of Homer, by Matron, and is not a “Bill of fare of an Attic supper” in any sense.

[478] Sammonicus Serenus, a savant of the early third century a.d., states that the acipenser was brought to table to the accompaniment of flutes by servants crowned with flowers. Cf. Macrob. III. 16, 7 f. Cf. Athen. VII. 44, and Ælian, VIII. 28.

In describing this imaginary Attic supper, Badham certainly lets himself go. The allusion to “the present of the God of Love” he may have taken from an anonymous epigram in Burmann’s Anthologia (1773), Bk. V. 217.

These lines, of which several variants exist (notably that of the Rose Cellar in the Rathskeller of Bremen), are founded on the legend that Cupid bribed the God of Silence with his mother’s flower not to divulge the amours of Venus. Hence a host hung a rose over his table as a sign that nothing there said was to be repeated. A quaint and touching legend runs that in the beginning all roses were white, but when Venus walking one day among the flowers was pricked by one of their thorns, these roses “drew their colour from the blood of the goddess,” and remained encarmined for ever. Cf. Natal. Com. Mythol., V. 13. See also A. de Gubernatis, La Mythologie des Plantes (Paris, 1882), II. 323, and R. Folkard, Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics (London, 1884), 516 ff.

[479] Cf. Ausonius, Id., XIV. 39, and 43.

[480] Suet., Vitell. 13.

[481] For Vitellius’s habit, see Dion., 65. 2.

[482] Adrian had the good taste to melt it down.

[483] Thomson’s translation. The mania for expensive bowls obtained in either nation: the philosopher Aristotle owned 70, while Æsop, the tragic actor, paid £8000 for a single ewer. The histrionic, as Æsop and Roscius show, was a most lucrative profession. Cf. Pliny, XXXV. 46.

[484] According to Dion., 65. 4, and Tacitus, Hist., II. 95.

[485] Tac., loc. cit., “noviens milies sestertium paucissimis mensibus intervertisse creditur sagina.”

[486] Herodot., VII. 118-120, Athen., IV. 27.

[487] See Athenæus (V. 46), who is so struck that he quotes the passage twice! The culinary accommodations must have been “prodeegeous!” At the birthday feast of a mere Persian grandee, an ox and an ass, and other animals that were his, even a horse and a camel, were roasted whole in stoves (or ovens). Herodot., I. 133.

[488] V. 25-35.

[489] “The Treatise we now possess is a sort of Cook-Confectioners’ Manual, containing a multitude of recipes for preparing and cooking all kinds of flesh, fish, and fowl. From the solecisms of style it is probable that it was compiled at a late period by one who prefixed the name of Apicius in order to attract attention and insure the circulation of his book.”—Smith’s Dict. Gk. Rom. Biog. and Myth.

Teuffel and Schwabe, History of Roman Literature (trans. G. C. W. Warr, London, 1892), II. 28 f., point out that Cœlius Apicius, the traditional author of the work de re coquinaria, should rather be Cœlii Apicius, i.e. “the Apicius of Cœlius,” Apicius being the title and Cœlius the writer. The book was founded on Greek originals.

In Seneca (ad. Helv., 10), “sestertium milies in culinam consumpsit.” See Martial, III. 22, who flays Apicius with biting scorn in his—

For C. Matius the earliest (in the time of Augustus) and for other Latin writers on Cookery, see Columella, XXI. 4 and 44.

[490] See A. Hayward, Art of Dining.

[491] Anaxandrides, Odysseus, frag. 1. ap. Athen., VI. 11. See also Athen., VI. 4-12; VII. 35-41; Livy, XXXIX. 6: “Tum coquus, vilissimum antiquis mancipium et æstimatione et usu, in pretio esse, et quod ministerium fuerat, ars haberi coepta”; and Martial, XIV. 220.

[492] Porphyra, frag. 1. ap. Athen., VI. 6.

[493] βίων πρᾶσις s. 26. The opening (s. 1) of the auction is not unlike a modern one: “For Sale! a varied assortment of Live Creeds, Tenets of every description. Cash on delivery, or credit on suitable security!” While lot (in s. 26)—The Peripatetic—fetches £80 0s. 0d., the great Diogenes (in s. 11) is knocked down for threepence! Fowler’s Trs.

[494] Ausonius, Epist., 5 and 15. But, after all, our own Keats, addressing his favourite Moon, did not hesitate to write:

[495] Pliny, IX. 79: “Is (Sergius Orata) primus ... adiudicavit quando eadem aquatilium genera aliubi atque aliubi meliora, sicut lupi pisces in Tiberi amne inter duos pontes ... et alia genera similiter, ne culinarum censura peragatur.” See Horace, Sat., II. 2, 31 ff. Also Columella, R.R., VIII. 16, 4: “Fastidire docuit fluvialem lupum, nisi quem Tiberis adverso torrente defatigasset”; and also Juvenal IV. 139 ff.:

More of the same sort is to be read in Macrob., Sat., III. 16, 16-18.

[496] Robinson, op. cit., p. 45.

[497] Æsch., Proteus, frag., 211; Nauck², and Soph., Triptolemos, frag. 606, Jebb, ap. Poll. 6. 65 and Athen., II. 75.

[498] Pauly-Winowa, Real-Enc., VII. 841-9, has nine columns on the subject, ending with a bibliography!

[499] Horace, Sat., II. 4. 73; Martial, III. 77. 5; and V. ii., 94. The greatest delicacy of all these mixtures, the so-called Garum Sociorum, exported all over the Empire from Carteia, New Carthage, etc., was compounded of the intestines of the Spanish Mackerel. The absence of beard in the Mackerel is accounted for by this fish being convicted of treason against the reigning Monarch, and condemned to perpetual loss of beard. Keller, op. cit., 326, omits a reference to this Fischeprozess, but cites the habit of writers—especially Bucolic—explaining any natural curiosity by putting into poetic or other shape a legend or Volkslied dealing with the point, e.g. Æsop’s fable why the Camel lacks horns.

[500] Pliny, XXXI. 43: “singulis milibus nummum permutantibus congios fere binos.” Ibid., 44: “transiit deinde in luxuriam creveruntque genera ad infinitum, sicuti garum ad colorem mulsi veteris, adeoque suavitatem dilutum, ut bibi possit.” Cf. Martial, Ep., XIII. 82. 2: “Nobile nunc sitio luxuriosa garum, and Cælius Aurelianus” (De Chronicis, II.; De Paralysi), on the liquor extracted from the Scomber.

[501] Cf. XXXI. 44, and XXXII. 25.

[502] If O. Keller, op. cit., 338, be right in his authorities, Blakey’s, “the praise of Caviare is frequent,” is far astray. Despite the view of Hullmann’s Handelsgesch. d. Gr., 149, Athenæus deals merely with garum and oxygarum, while the classical cookery books maintain a uniform silence.

[503] Athen., III. 90.

[504] Fasti, VI. 239 ff.

[505] Agatharchides, frag. 1 ap. Athen., VII. 50. In these days of the Science of Comparative Curiosity and International Meddling the answer of the Bœotian to a foreigner asking how so singular a victim and sacrifice originated rings out pleasantly refreshing: “I only know one thing: it is right to maintain the customs of one’s ancestors, and it is not right to explain them to foreigners!”

[506] Athen., VIII. 8.

[507] Ælian, XV. 6.

[508] Athen., VII. 50, and Paulus Rhode, Thynnorum Captura (Lipsiæ, 1890), p. 71. Most of the major deities—e.g. Diana, Apollo, Mercury, Juno, Neptune, Ceres, and Venus—claimed a particular sacrificiable fish or fishes. Sometimes fishes were offered to two or more gods, e.g. the mullet to Ceres and Proserpine. Cf. J. G. Stuck, Sacrorum et sacrificiorum gentil. descriptio, ii. p. 72.

[509] ἰχθύων δὲ θύσιμος οὐδεὶς οὐδὲ ἱερεύσιμός ἐστιν.

[510] Hermes (1887), XXII. 86. 100. The reason here stated for the Eel being sacrificiable was because it could be brought alive to the altar and its blood poured out on it. Stengel’s argument, especially in association with his remark that sacrifices of fish were as scarce as those of game, is not convincing, for why should not other fishes be kept alive in water till the hour of oblation? The belief in the sanctity of the Eel pertains even unto our day, for in the spring at Bergas (between the Dardanelles and Lapsaki) they are or were before the War inviolate.

[511] Fasti, III. 339 ff.

[512] Festus, p. 274, 35 ff. W. Lindsay.

[513] Plutarch, Symp., VIII. 8. 4.

[514] De Lingua Latina, 6. 20 (in his description of the Volcanalia).

[515] F. Boehm, De symbolis Pythagoreis (Berlin, 1905), p. 19, would connect the fish-offering of the Volcanalia with the belief that the soul took the form of a fish. G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer,² (München, 1912), p. 229, m. 13.

[516] Cf., however, Keller, op. cit., 348.

[517] Pliny, IX. 22, and XXXII. 8. Ælian, VIII. 5; XII. 1. Athen. VIII. 8, Plutarch, De soll. Anim. ch. 23. Hesych. s.v. Soura.

[518] Pliny, XXXI. 18.

[519] De Re Rust., III. 17, 4.

[520] Suetonius, Augustus, 96. The subject of oracular fish is dealt with by A. Bouché-Leclercq, Histoire de la divination (Paris, 1879), i. p. 151 f., and also by W. R. Halliday, Greek Divination, p. 168, n. 3.

[521] O. Keller, op. cit., 347.

[522] The cause, sympathy with their owners, mentioned by Robinson, op. cit., 88-9, hardly recommends itself.

[523] The Greek term, ταρίχη, was applied to Conserves de viande et poisson—but chiefly the latter. Salted fish was a food far commoner among the Latins than among the Greeks (Daremberg and Saglio). Sausages—Isicia or Insicia—were made from fish as well as meat. Of both there were, according to Apicius (Bk. II.), many preparations, those from fish being in great demand.

[524] Nonnius, op. cit., p. 155. Apart from fashionable mania, the salsamentum was used for very practical purposes, e.g. as food for the Athenian soldier on campaign. Cf. Aristoph., Ach., 1101, 2. From the frequent notices and quotations in Athenæus, Euthydemus the Athenian seems to have been the most prolific author on pickled fish. On him and his three treatises, see Pauly-Winowa, Real. Enc., VI. 1505.

[525] À propos of the fish-trade of Olbia, Koehler (in the Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences de St. Petersburg, VI^me série, tome 1, p. 347, St. Petersburg, 1832, as quoted by E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks, Cambridge, 1913, p. 440) concludes that preserved fish of every quality, from jars of precious pickle, corresponding to our caviare or anchovy, to dried lumps answering to our stock-fish were all sent to Greece, and later to Rome, from the mouths of Dnêpr and the sea of Azov. As regards some of the small copper coins of Olbia, Mr. G. F. Hill, A Handbook of Greek and Roman Coins (London, 1899), p. 3, writes: “If these are coins, they differ from the ordinary Greek coin only in the fact that, instead of putting a fish type on a flan of ordinary shape, the whole coin was made in the shape of a fish. Another explanation is suggested by the fact that a pig of metal was sometimes called δελφίς. These fish-shaped pieces may be the degenerate representatives of similar-shaped pigs of bronze.” He refers to Ardaillon, Les Mines du Laurin, p. 111, who compares the French saumon with the meaning of “a pig of metal.”

[526] In Pitra, op. cit., pp. 508-512, will be found a list of 156 coins, gems, etc., illustrating the connection of various fishes with deities and places. For the coins of Carteia, see A. Heiss, Description générale des monnaies antiques de l’Espagne, Paris, 1870, p. 331 f., pl. 49, 19-21 (= my Fig. supra). The salsamentum of this town was in special request; its boasted excellence might be perhaps accounted for by Strabo’s statement that the diet of the Tunnies off Carteia consisted of acorns which grew in that sea, just as land acorns with an occasional truffle achieve, according to gourmets, for the Spanish pig the primacy of hams. Alas! for such conjecture, science shows that the Tunny throve on Fucus vesiculosus, not acorns. Cf. Keller, op. cit. 383.