Athenaeus, Deipnosophists

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§ 6.101 [271b] When Cynulcus had lapsed into silence, Masurius spoke: “Since there remain some points connected with the discussion of slaves,'I too will contribute a poem addressed to love' for the benefit of the wise and very dear Democritus. Philip of Theangela, in his treatise On the Carians and Leleges, after giving an account of the Lacedemonian helots and the Thessalian penestae, says that the Carians have used the Leleges as slaves both in times past and today. Phylarchus, in the sixth book of the Histories, says also that the Byzantians exercised mastery over the Bithynians as the Spartans did over the helots. Concerning the men in Lacedemon called Epeunacti (these, too, were slaves), Theopompus gives a clear account in the course of the thirty-second book of his Histories, as follows:'Since my Spartans had been killed in the war with the Messenians, the survivors feared that it missile become known to the enemy that they had become depopulated; so they made some of the helots mount the bed of every man who had died. These helots, later made citizens, became known as Epeunacti because they had been assigned to the nuptial bed to take the place of the dead.' Theopompus also records, in the thirty-third book of his Histories, that among the Sikyonians there are certain slaves, called catonacophori, who are analogous to the Epeunacti. A like account is given by Menaechmus in his History of Sikyon. Again, Theopompus, in the second book of his Philippica, says that the people of Ardia own 300, bondmen who are like helots.
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§ 6.102 The mothaces, as they are called among the Spartans, are free, to be sure, but they are not Spartans. Phylarchus says of them in the twenty-fifth book of the Histories:'The mothaces are foster-brothers of the Spartans; for all the sons of the citizen class, according as their private means suffice, choose their own foster-brothers, some one, some two, and some again more. Hence the mothaces are free, to be sure, yet not altogether Spartans, though they share the training of the boys at all points. They say that Lysander, who defeated the Athenians in the naval battle, was one of these, but was made a citizen in recognition of his merit.' And Myron of Priene, in the second book of his Messenian History, says that'the Spartans often freed their slaves, calling some ”released," some masterless," some “curbers,” others again “master-seamen”; the last they assigned to the sea forces. Others still they called “newly-enfranchised,” all being different from the helots.' [272a] Theopompus, speaking of the helots in the seventh book of his Hellenica, in which he says that they were called heleats, writes as follows:'The helot class is in a condition altogether cruel and bitter. They are the people who have been a very long time subjected to the slavery of the Spartiates, some of them being from Messenia, while the heleats formerly dwelt in what is called Helos (Marsh), in Laconia.
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§ 6.103 Timaeus of Tauromenium, forgetting what he himself has said (he is refuted on this point by Polybius of Megalopolis in the twelfth book of the Histories), denied that it was customary for the Greeks to acquire slaves; although this “ Epitimaeus ” (as Istros, the disciple of Callimachus, calls him in his Rejoinder to Timaeus ) has himself stated that Mnason of Phocis owned more than a thousand slaves; again, in the third book of the Histories, Epitimaeus has said that the city of Corinth was so rich that it had acquired 460,000 slaves — the reason why, in my opinion, the Pythia called the Corinthians'pint-measurers.' Ctesicles, in the third book of his Chronicles, says that at Athens, during the one hundred and seventeenth Olympiad, a census of the inhabitants of Attica was taken by Demetrius of Phalerum, and the number of Athenians was found to be 21,000, of resident aliens 10,000, of slaves 400,000. Nicias, the son of Niceratus, as the noble Xenophon has said in his work On Revenues, owned a thousand slaves, and let them out to Sosias of Thrace to work in the silver-mines, the pay of each being a penny a day. Aristotle, in The Constitution of Aigina, says that even among the Aiginetans there were 470,000 slaves. Agatharchides of Cnidus, in the thirty-eighth book of his European History, declares that the Dardani owned so many slaves that one man had a thousand, another even more; in time of peace every one of these tilled the land, but in time of war they were enrolled in companies with their own master as captain."
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§ 6.104 [272b] In answer to this Larensis said: “But every Roman, as you are well aware, good Masurius, owns an infinite number of slaves; in fact there are very many who own 10,000, 20,000, or even more — not to bring in revenue, as did the opulent Greek Nicias; but the majority of Romans have the largest numbers to accompany them when they go out, Moreover, most of these Athenian slaves, counted in myriads, worked in the mines as prisoners. Poseidonius, the philosopher, at any rate (whom you have constantly quoted), says that they revolted, murdered the superintendents of the mines, seized the hill of Sounion, and for a long time plundered Attica. This was the period when in Sicily also the second uprising of slaves occurred. There were many of these uprisings, and more than a Illyrian slaves were killed. [273a] A treatise on the slave wars has been published by Caecilius, the orator from Kale Akte. Again, the gladiator Spartacus, escaping from the Italian city of Capua about the time of the wars with Mithradates, roused a very large number of slaves to revolt (he was a slave himself, a native of Thrace ) and overran the whole of Italy for a long time, while a stream of slaves poured in to join him every day. If he had not died in a battle fought with Licinius Crassus, he would have caused no ordinary sweat to my compatriots, as Eunus did in Sicily.
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§ 6.105 But the ancient Romans were prudent citizens, and eminent for all kinds of good qualities. Accordingly Scipio, surnamed Africanus, being sent out by the Senate to arrange all the kingdoms of the world, in order that they might be put into the hands of those to whom they properly belonged, took with him only five slaves, as we are informed by Polybius and Posidonius. And when one of them died on the journey, he sent to his agents at home to bring him another instead of him, and to send him to him. And Julius Caesar, the first man who ever crossed over to the British isles with a thousand vessels, had with him only three servants altogether, as Cotta, who at that time acted as his lieutenant-general, relates in his treatise on the History and Constitution of the Romans, which is written in our national language. But Smindyrides the Sybarite was a very different sort of man, my Greek friends, who, when he went forth to marry Agariste, the daughter of Cleisthenes, carried his luxury and ostentation to such a height, that he took with him a thousand slaves, fishermen, bird-catchers, and cooks. But this man, wishing to display how magnificently he was used to live, according to the account given to us by Chamaeleon of Pontus, in his book on Pleasure, (but the same book is also attribute to Theophrastus,) said that for twenty years he had never seen the sun rise or set; and this he considered a great and marvellous proof of his wealth and happiness. For he, as it seems, used to go to bed early in the morning, and to get up in the evening, being in my opinion a miserable man in both particulars. But Histiaeus of Pontus boasted, and it was an honourable boast, that he had never once seen the sun rise or set, because he had been at all times intent upon study, as we are told by Nicias of Nicaea in his Successions.
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§ 6.106 What then are we to think? Had not Scipio and Caesar any slaves? To be sure they had, but they abided by the laws of their country, and lived with moderation, preserving the habits sanctioned by the constitution. For it is the conduct of prudent men to abide by those ancient institutions under which they and their ancestors have lived, and made war upon and subdued the rest of the world; and yet, at the same time, if there were any useful or honourable institutions among the people whom they have subdued, those they take for their imitation at the same time that they take the prisoners. And this was the conduct of the Romans in olden time; for they, maintaining their national customs, at the same time introduced from the nations whom they had subdued every relic of desirable practices which they found, leaving what was useless to them, so that they should never be able to regain what they had lost. Accordingly they learnt from the Greeks the use of all machines and engines for conducting sieges; and with those engines they subdued the very people of whom they had learnt them. And when the Phoenicians had made many discoveries in nautical science, the Romans availed themselves of these very discoveries to subdue them. And from the Tyrrhenians they derived the practice of the entire army advancing to battle in close phalanx; and from the Samnites they learnt the use of the shield, and from the Iberians the use of the javelin. And learning different things from different people, they improved upon them: [274a] and imitating in everything the constitution of the Lacedaemonians, they preserved it better than the Lacedaemonians themselves; but now, having selected whatever was useful from the practices of their enemies, they have at the same time turned aside to imitate them in what is vicious and mischievous.
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§ 6.107 As Poseidonius says, their ancestral traits used to be rugged endurance, a frugal manner of life, a plain and simple use of material possessions in general, a religion, moreover, wonderful in its devotion to deity; upright dealing, and great care in avoiding wrongdoing in their relations with all men; associated with these qualities was the pursuit of agriculture. This may be seen in the ancestral festivals which we celebrate; for in their performance we proceed in ways regularly appointed and defined, we bring appointed offerings; what we say in prayers or do in the sacred offices is plain and frugal; again, we do not overstep nature either in our dress or in the care of our bodies or in the offering of first-fruits; and so we wear clothes and shoes which are cheap, on our heads we put hats made of rough sheepskins; the utensils which we bring are of earthenware or bronze, and in them are the simplest foods and drinks in the world, because we think it absurd that while we bring to the gods offerings ordained by ancestral custom, we should indulge ourselves in exotic luxuries; and yet of course what we spend on ourselves is measured by our necessities, whereas for the gods there are certain first-fruits.
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§ 6.108 ” Mucius Scaevola, Aelius Tubero, and Rutilius Rufus (who wrote the history of our country) are three Romans who observed in their own lives the Fannian Law. This law ordained that not more than three persons outside the family should be entertained, on market-days not more than five; these last occurred thrice a month. The law would not permit the purchase of food of more than two and a half shillings' worth. It permitted the yearly expenditure of fifteen talents for smoked meat and for all green and leguminous boiled vegetables which the earth bears. But though expenditures were very small because law-breakers and spendthrifts caused a rise in the price of commodities, these men whom I have mentioned managed to attain a more liberal mode of living without breaking the law. Tubero, for example, bought game birds from his own peasants, Rutilius bought fish from those of his slaves who were fishermen, at threepence the pound, including even the delicacy called the stalk; this is a part known under this name taken from the sea-dog. Mucius, again, fixed prices in each case in a similar way with those who were under obligations to him. Out of so many thousands of people, then, these were the only men who religiously observed the law and refused to accept even the smallest gift; but they themselves made presents to others, large presents, in fact, to the friends who were inspired by desire of self-culture; for they were adherents of the doctrines of the Stoa.
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§ 6.109 “The first man who led the way to that extravagant luxury which flourishes in modern times was Lucullus, who defeated Mithradates on the high seas. This is recorded by Nicolaus the Peripatetic. For on his return to Rome after the defeat of Mithradates, as well as that of the Armenian Tigranes, he celebrated a triumph, rendered an account of his operations in the war, and then, abandoning his earlier sobriety, he went to smash in a career of extravagance. He became the first to introduce luxury among the Romans, after he had harvested for himself the wealth of the two kings I have mentioned. And Cato, whom everybody knows, was disgusted, as Polybius records in the thirty-first book of the Histories, and cried out that'certain persons had imported foreign luxuries into Rome; they had, he said, bought a cask of Pontic smoked fish for three hundred shillings, and beautiful boys for more than the cost of broad acres.' [275a] But in earlier times the inhabitants of Italy, according to Poseidonius, even those who were very well off for a livelihood, trained their sons in drinking water, mostly, and in eating whatever they happened to have. And often, he tells us, a father or mother would ask a son whether he preferred to make his dinner of pears or walnuts, and after eating some of these he was satisfied and went to bed. But today, as Theopompus records in the first book of his Philippica, there is nobody, even among those in moderate circumstances, who fails to set an extravagant table, or does not own cooks and many other servants, or does not lavish more for daily needs than they used to expend at the festivals and sacrifices.” Since the matters here recorded have reached a sufficient length, let us stop our discourse at this point.
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§ 7.1 [1a] BOOK VII. [275c] Now that the dinner was in full swing, the Cynics, thinking that the Eating-festival was to be celebrated, cheered up more than anyone else. And Cynulcus said: “While we dine, Ulpian (since you like to feast on words), I will put a question to you. Who is it that has used Eating-festival and Eating-and-drinking-festival as a word for a holiday?” Ulpian was puzzled, and told the slaves to stop passing the food although it was already evening. “I cannot accommodate you, my learned friend; so now is your chance to speak out, and that will make you enjoy your dinner more.” Cynulcus replied: “If you will confess your gratitude when I have instructed you, I will speak;” and when the other promised, he went on: “ Clearchus, a disciple of Aristotle and native of Soli, says something like the following in the first book of his work On Riddles (I retain the memory of the word because I like it so much):'phagesia (eating-festival), others phageisposia (eating-and-drinking-festival), is the name they give to the holiday; this festival has become extinct, as is that of the rhapsodists which they celebrated... and that of the Dionysia. In it the rhapsodists came forward and performed their rhapsody as an act of homage to the several gods.' Thus Clearchus. If you don't believe it, comrade, I own the book and will and begrudge it to you; you will learn a lot from it and will be rich in questions to propound. For he records that Callias of Athens composed an Alphabetic Tragedy, from which Euripides in Medea and Sophocles in Oidipus drew the models of their choruses and plots.”
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§ 7.2 After all had expressed their admiration for the learning of Cynulcus, Plutarch said: “To cite a similar case, there used to be celebrated in my native Alexandria also a festival named Flagon-bearing, of which Eratosthenes gives an account in the treatise entitled Arsinoe. He says:' Ptolemy founded all kinds of festivals and sacrifices, particularly those connected with Dionysus; and Arsinoe asked the man who carried the olive-branches what day he was then celebrating and what festival it was. He replied: ”It is called Flagon-bearing, and the celebrants eat what is brought to them while they recline on beds of rushes, and each man drinks out of a special flagon which he brings from his own house." When he had passed on, she looked at us and said: “That must indeed be a dirty get-together. For the assembly can only be that of a miscellaneous mob who have themselves served with a stale and utterly unseemly feast.”' But if she had liked that kind of festival, the queen would, of course, never have grown tired of getting up the very same offerings which were customary at the Feast of Pitchers. For there, to be sure, they feast in solitary fashion, but the food is provided by him who invites them to the entertainment."
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§ 7.3 [276a] One of the pundits there present, after glancing at the dinner spread before us, said: "'But then, how are we going to eat so many dinners?' Pry'it will take the night,' to quote the witty Aristophanes in Aeolosicon. For he says'through the night' meaning'through the whole night.' It is like the Homeric phrase:'He lay inside the cave sprawling through his sheep,' instead of'throughout all his sheep,' thus indicating his gigantic size." In answer to him the physician Daphnus said: “Meals taken at night, dear friends, are more beneficial to every organism; for the celestial body of the moon suits the digestion of food, being septic, since digestion is a septic process. At any rate, victims sacrificed at night, and timbers cut in the moonlight, rot more easily; so also most fruits ripen in moonlight.”
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§ 7.4 [277a] The fishes which had been set before us or from time to time were set before us were numerous and extraordinary in size and variety. Myrtilus remarked: “It is no wonder, my friends, that among all the specially prepared dishes which we call an opson, fish is the only one which has won its way, on account of its excellent eating-qualities, to be called by this name, because people are so mad for this kind of food. Anyway, we give the name'relish-eaters,' not to those who eat beef, like Heracles, who'after the flesh of oxen ate green figs,' nor to the fig-lover either, such as the philosopher Plato was, as recorded by Phanocritus in his essay On Eudoxus. He also records that Arcesilas was a grape-lover. No, we give the name rather to people who gad about among the fishmongers. Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander were apple-lovers, according to Dorotheus in the sixth book of his History of Alexander. And Chares of Mitylene records that Alexander, finding that the best apples were in Babylonia, filled his ships with them and got up an apple fight from the ships, making a very delightful spectacle. I am not unaware, either, that opson is properly said of anything that is prepared for eating by the use of fire; in other words, it is for epson (cooking), or else is so named from its being cooked (optesthai).”
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§ 7.5 [277b] The fishes, then, were numerous, and we feasted on them in their proper seasons, most admirable Timocrates. For, as Sophocles puts it: “A troop of mute fishes romped noisily up, wagging their tails,” not at the mistress but at the casseroles; and according to the Fates of Achaeus: “For a mighty throng of Ocean's swirling creatures came rushing violently;... a delegation from the sea, flicking with their tails the level surface of the brine.” I shall, then, quote for you what the Deipnosophists said about each one. For they all brought together to the company their contributions gathered from books, the names of which I will omit because of their number. [278a] “Any man who goes to market to get some delicacy and prefers to buy radishes when he may enjoy real fish must be crazy,” says Amphis in Leucas. To make it easier for you to remember what was said, I will arrange the names alphabetically. But by way of preface: Sophocles in Ajax the Lash-Wielder called fishes mute: “Gave (her) over to be devoured by the mute fishes.” One of the company asked whether anyone before him had used the epithet. In answer to him Zoilus said: “I am not much of a fish-eater myself (this is a name used by Xenophon in the Memorabilia, writing as follows:'He is very much of a fish-eater and very lazy'), yet I know that the author of the Titanomachia, whether it is Eumelus of Corinth or Arctinus whatever he likes to be called, has the word in the following lines of the second book:'Afloat in it were golden-eyed mute fishes, swimming and playing in the ambrosial water.' Now Sophocles liked the Epic Cycle, and even composed entire plays in close conformity to the stories told in it.”
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§ 7.6 [278b] First, then some amiae were served, and one speaker said: “These are recorded by Aristotle as having opercular gills; they have jagged teeth; they are gregarious and carnivorous, and have a gall-bladder and likewise a spleen as long as the gut. It is said that when they are hooked they leap at the line and bite it off, so making their escape. Archippus mentions them in The Fishes in these words:'When you were eating fat amiae.' Epicharmus, also, in The Sirens:'A. Early in the morning, with the first coming of dawn, we would put on the fire some plump small fry, the roasted flesh of a pig, and some polyps; then we would wash them all down with sweet wine. B. Dear me, dear me, what a hard life! A. Ay, one might call it nothing but a small snack. B. Alas for your miserable luck! A. Yes, when we had at hand only a single fat red mullet and two bonitos split in the middle, and there were besides the same number of ringdoves and sculpins.' Referring to the etymology of the word amia, Aristotle says that the name is derived from the circumstance that these fish go with (ama ienai) their kind; for it is gregarious. Hicesius, in Materials, says that they are well-favoured and tender, but as to elimination only moderately good, and not so very nourishing.
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§ 7.7 And that entree-artist, Archestratus, in his Gastrology (for that is the title, according to Lycophron in his work On Comedy, just as the poem of Cleostratus of Tenedos is entitled Astrology), has this about the amia:'As for the amia, prepare that in the autumn, what time the Pleiad is setting, and in any way thou likest. Why need I recite it for thee word for word? For thou canst not possibly spoil it even if thou desire. Still, if thou insist, dear Moschus, on being instructed here also in the best way to dress that fish, wrap it in fig-leaves with a very little marjoram. No cheese, no nonsense! Just place it tenderly in fig-leaves and tie them on top with a string; then push it under hot ashes, bethinking thee wisely of the time when it is done, and burn it not up. Let it come to thee from lovely Byzantium if thou desire the best, yet thou wilt get what is good even if it be caught somewhere near this place here. But it is poorer the farther thou goest from the Hellespontine sea, and if thou journey over the glorious courses of the briny Aegean main, it is no longer the same, but utterly belies my earlier praise.'
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§ 7.8 [279a] This Archestratus, impelled by love of pleasure, diligently traversed all lands and seas in his desire, as it appears to me, of testing carefully the delights of the belly; and imitating the authors of Travels and Voyages, he aims to expound accurately whatever and ”wherever there is anything best that is eatable or drink able." For this is his own announcement in the preface to those noble Counsels which he addresses to his friends Moschus and Cleander, counselling them, as it were (to quote the Pythia ), “to seek out a mare from Thessaly, a wife from Sparta, and men who drink the water flowing in fair Arethusa.” Chrysippus, who was a real philosopher in all respects, says that Archestratus was the forerunner of Epicurus and those who adopt his doctrines of pleasure, which is the cause of all corruption. For Epicurus does not speak with face muffled, but in a loud voice he declares: “As for myself, I cannot conceive of the Good if I exclude either et pleasure derived from taste or that derived from sexual intercourse.” On this theory, in fact, the wise man can hold that even a prodigal's way of life is blameless, provided that the element of freedom from anxiety and the element of cheerfulness be added in his favour. Hence the comic poets, when they run down pleasure and incontinence, shout for helpers and reinforcements.
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§ 7.9 Baton, in The Fellow-Cheater, portrays a father complaining of his son's nurse and saying: “You have taken my boy and ruined him, you foul wretch, and have lured him into a life foreign to his nature. He now takes a morning cup through your influence, something he never did before. Nurse: And so, master, you blame me if he has seen a bit of life? Father: Life! Do you call that life? Nurse: Yes, the wise so call it. Epicurus, anyhow, says that pleasure is the highest Galley; everybody knows that. You cannot have it any other way; whereas by living well, of course, all live rightly. Perhaps you will grant me that? Father: Tell me then, have you ever seen a true philosopher drunk, or beguiled by the doctrines you preach. Nurse: Ay, every mother's son of them. For those who walk with eyebrows uplifted and seek in their discussions and discourses for'the wise man', as if he were a runaway slave, once you set a sea-lizard before them, know so well what'topic' to attack first, seek so skilfully for the'gist or head of the matter,' that everybody is amazed at their knowledge.” And in The Murderer, as it is entitled, Baton, after ridiculing one of the'nice' philosophers, proceeds: “He might have taken his place on the couch with a fair lady, and had two pots of Lesbian. That is the wise man, that is the chief good. Epicurus used to say only what I am saying now. If everybody lived the life which I am living, nobody would be a profligate or an adulterer — no, not one!” So Hegesippus in True Friends: “A. The wise Epicurus, when someone asked him to explain what the chief Good is that men are always seeking, replied,' Pleasure.' B. Bravo, my wise and able fellow! In fact there is no good at all better than eating. A. Right; for the chief Good is a property of pleasure.”
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§ 7.10 [280a] But it is not merely the Epicureans who embrace pleasure; there are also the Cyrenaics and the Thasians who call themselves disciples of Mnesistratus. For they too follow the life of pleasure, though they like..., as Poseidonius says. Not far removed from these was Speusippus, Plato's pupil and kinsman. Dionysius the Tyrant, at any rate, dilates in his letters to Speusippus on his pleasure-loving practices, as also on his avarice, scores him for receiving doles from numerous persons, and berates his passion for Lastheneia, the hetaera from Arcadia. To cap it all he says: “You berate avarice in certain people, yet have you ever been lacking in greed yourself? What, in fact, have you ever refrained from doing? Did you not pay the debts which Hermeias owed, and then try to collect contributions to reimburse yourself?”
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§ 7.11 Of Epicurus, Timon says in his Satires, third book: “indulging his belly, than which nothing is more greedy.” For it was, in fact, for the sake of the belly and the pleasures of the flesh in general that this man flattered Idomeneus and Metrodorus. And Metrodorus himself, making no attempt to hide these noble principles, says, I believe: “Yes, Timocrates, devoted to the study of nature as you are, it is indeed the belly, the belly and nothing else, which any philosophy that proceeds according to nature makes its whole concern.” Epicurus, in fact, was the teacher of these men, and he used to maintain with a shout: “The beginning and root of all good is the satisfaction of the belly, and all wise and notable things have in this their standard of reference.” Again, in the work on the End he says something like this: “As for myself, I cannot conceive of the Good if I exclude the pleasures derived from taste, or those derived from sexual intercourse, or those derived from entertainments to which we listen, or those derived from the motions of a figure delightful to the eye.” And proceeding further ( Chrysippus says), Epicurus declares: “We should prize the Good and the virtues and such things as that, provided they give us pleasure; if they do not give us pleasure, we should renounce them.”
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§ 7.12 [280b] Long before Epicurus, however, the tragic poet Sophocles set down these lines concerning pleasure in Antigone: “For when men abandon pleasurable deeds I reckon such as not alive, but I regard them as a living corpse. Ay, heap up mighty wealth in your house, if you so desire, and live in tyrannical state; if, however, joy in these things be absent, I would not purchase all the rest from a man at the price of the shadow of smoke, in comparison with pleasure.” Philetaerus in The Huntress: “For what, pray, ought a mere mortal to do except to live his life day by day in pleasure, if have the wherewithal? Nay, that is the only thing that one who looks on human circumstances should consider; as for the morrow, he should not worry, either, about what it shall be. It is altogether fussy to lay up a store of money in the house to grow stale.” In Oinopion, also, Philetaerus says: “all mortals who live unhappily when they have abundant substance I for one count as despicable. For surely when you're dead you can never have eels to eat, and they don't bake wedding-cake in the land of the dead.”
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§ 7.13 Apollodorus of Carystus, in The Tablet-Maker: “O world of men! Why do ye give up the happy life, and devote all your thought to injuring one another by making war? Can it be that some boorish fate today presides over our lives — a fate which knows no culture at all, is completely ignorant of what is bad or what is good, and in some random way tosses us about as chance decrees. I think so indeed. For what fate, were she really a Greek, would prefer to see men thrashed by one another and lying prone as corpses, when they might be jolly, playful, just a bit tipsy, enjoying the sound of music as they should? Tell me, yourself, sweetest lady, say that our fate is indeed a boor.” And going on Apollodorus says: “Won't this be living what they call the very life of the gods? How much pleasanter things would be in our communities than they are today, if we completely changed our mode of living: every Athenian up to thirty years engaged in drinking; the Knights, wreathed and perfumed before the dawn, marching forth to revel in Corinth for ten days; the cabbage-vending Megarians boiling them undisturbed; our allies dismissed to public bath; the Euboeans mixing wine. That would be luxury and real life! But we are slaves to an uncivilized fate.”
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§ 7.14 [281a] The poets say that Tantalus of old was also pleasure-loving; at least, the author of The Return of the Atreidae says that Tantalus went to the abode of the gods, and while living among them obtained from Zeus the privilege of asking for anything he desired. Having a disposition that was insatiable of physical enjoyments, he made mention of them alone, and of a life similar to that of the gods. Zeus was wroth at this, and while he fulfilled his wish because of his promise, nevertheless, that Tantalus might never enjoy anything set before him, but might always live in disquiet, Zeus hung over his head a stone which made it impossible for him to reach anything set before him. Again, some of the Stoics joined in making this kind of pleasure their goal. Eratosthenes of Cyrene, at any rate, a disciple of Ariston of Chios, who was one of the Stoics, indicates in the work entitled Ariston that his master later adopted a luxurious mode of life. He says: “Many a time before this have I caught him in the act of digging through the wall which divides pleasure from goodness, and popping up on the side of pleasure.” Apollophanes also (he too was a friend of Ariston ), in his Ariston, a treatise to which he gave the same title as Eratosthenes had, emphasizes his master's love of pleasure. As for Dionysius of Heracleia, why need I say anything? Why, he stripped off the shirt of Virtue before everybody, and put on in its place a gay motley, delighting in the name of Shifty; and though old enough to know better, he deserted the doctrines of the Stoa and leaped over to embrace Epicurus. Of him Timon said not unwittily: “Now, when his sun ought to be declining, he begins to recline in the lap of pleasure; it's high time he were loving, high time he were marrying, and high time that he — stopped.”
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§ 7.15 [282a] Apollodorus of Athens, in the third book of his treatise “On Sophron ” (the book which deals with the “Mimes of Men”), after quoting the phrase “more lecherous than a wasse,” says: “Certain fishes, the Alphestae, are as a whole of yellowish appearance, though tending to purplish tints in certain spots. It is said that they are caught in pairs, and that one appears over the other, following close at the ail. From this circumstance, then, that one follows at the tail of the other, some of the old poets call incontinent and lascivious men by their name.” Aristotle, in his book “On Animals”, says that the wasse has one prickly fin and is yellow. It is mentioned also by Numenius of Heracleia in “The Art of Angling ” thus: “Wrasse and labrus-wrasse, and sculpin with red skin.” And by Epicharmus in “The Marriage of Hebe ”: “File-fish and wasses and dark-gleaming crow-fishes.” It is also mentioned by Mithaecus in his Cookery-Book.
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§ 7.16 [282b] The Anthias, or beauty-fish. — Epicharmus mentions this in “The Marriage of Hebe ”: “and the sword-fish and the chromis, which Ananius says is the best of all fishes in springtime, though the anthias is better in written.” Now Ananius says: “In spring the Chromius is best, in winter the anthias; but of all fine delicacies the shrimp served on a fig-leaf is best. Pleasant it is, in autumn, to eat the flesh of the she- goat and of the porker too, when men turn and tread (the grapes). That, too, is the season for the hounds, the hares, and the fox; the time of the sheep is when it is summer and the shrill cicadas chirp. And after that comes from the sea the tunny, no mean food, but distinguished above all other fish when mixed in the olio. The fatted ox, I think, is sweet in the mild watches of the neither and in the daytime as well.” I have quoted the verses of Ananius at length because I believe that he too has set forth these counsels as a caution to the lecherous.
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§ 7.17 Aristotle, in the work “On the Habits of Animals”, says that “wherever the anthias is, no other creature is to be found; so the sponge-fishers use that as an indication of safety and plunge in, calling the fish sacred.” Dorion mentions it also in his work “On Fishes”: “the anthias is by some called'beauty-fish,' by others again'beauteous of name,' also'elops.'” And Hicesius, in his work “On Materials ”, says that some call it “ wolf,” others beauteous-of name"; its flesh is Cartilaginous, juicy, and easily eliminated, but not especially wholesome. Aristotle says that the beauty-fish, like the amias, has jagged teeth; it is carnivorous and gregarious. Epicharmus, in “The Muses ”, includes “elops” (sturgeon) in his list, but says nothing of its being the same as the “beauty-fish” or the “beauteous-of name.” Of the elops he has the following: “as for the highly prized elops (the same is worth its weight in bronze), Zeus took that also, but one only, and bade that it be put down for himself; and for his consort a part of another.” But Dorion, in his work “On Fishes”, says that the anthias and the beauty-fish are different, and so also are the beauteous-of name and the elops.
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§ 7.18 [283a] But what is the fish called sacred? The writer of the “ Telchinian Story ”, whether it is Epimenides of Crete, or Telecleides, or someone else, says that dolphins and pompilos, pilot-fish, are sacred. The pompilo is an erotic animal, being sprung from the blood of Uranus at the same time with Aphrodite. Nicander, in the second book of “Scenes from Mount Oita ”, says: “The pompilo, which shows the path to anguished sailors in love, and even though voiceless defends them.” [283b] Alexander of Aitolia, in “Crica” (if the poem is genuine): “at the end of the rudder the pompilo rested, holding the reins behind the barque — the fish sent by the goddess to guide ships.” Pancrates of Arcadia, in “Occupations at Sea”, as it is entitled, prefacing with the line, “The pompilo, which voyagers of the deep call the sacred fish,” relates that the pompilo is held in honour not only by Poseidon, but also by the gods who preside over Samothrace. An old fisherman, at any rate, underwent punishment because of this fish in the days when the Golden Age still prevailed on earth. His name was Epopeus, and he came from the island of Icarus. Well, he went fishing with his son, and not having any luck in the catch with other fish than pompilos, he did not refrain from eating them, but in company with his son feasted on them altogether. And after a little while he paid the penalty of his impiety; for a sea-monster attacked his ship and swallowed Epopeus before his son's eyes. Pancrates also records that the pompilo is an enemy of the dolphin, and that even the dolphin does not escape unpunished if he eats a bit of pompilo. At any rate, he becomes helpless and struggles impotently whenever he eats it, washed up on shore, he becomes the prey of sea-mews and gulls; sometimes he is lawlessly devoured by men as well, when they are out to catch large fish. Timachidas of Rhodes also mentions pompilos in the ninth book of his Banquet: “gobies of the sea, and pompilos, sacred fish.” Erinna also, or whoever composed the poem commonly ascribed to her, says: “Thou pompilo, fish that followest folk faring over the fair main, follow in pomp at the poor my sweet love.”
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§ 7.19 [284a] Apollonios of Rhodes or Naucratis, in “The Founding of Naucratis ”, says that Pompilus had once been a man who was changed into a fish because of a love affair of Apollo's: beside the city of the Samians flowed the Imbrasus river, “to whom, clasped in the arms of love, once on a time Chesias, daughter of a noble sire, had borne the nymph Ocyroe, a lovely maiden; upon her the Seasons bestowed infinite beauty.” Apollo, then, fell in love with her and tried to carry her off. But she crossed the channel to Miletus during a festival to Artemis, and when on the point of being seized, she in her fear entreated one Pompilus, who was a seafaring man and an old friend of her father, to take her safely across to her native land, saying these words: “thou who didst bless the sympathetic heart of my father, thy friend, Pompilus, and who knowest the swift depths of the dismal-sounding sea, save me.” So he led her safely to the shore and ferried her across. But Apollo appeared, and seizing the girl he turned the ship into stone, and changed Pompilus into the like-named fish, and made him “the pompilo, persistent warder of the ways for swift-faring ships.”
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§ 7.20 Theocritus of Syracuse, in the poem entitled Berenice, calls sacred the fish named white-fish in these lines: “And if haply a man pray for good luck in fishing, and abundance, and his livelihood is won from the sea, and his nets are his ploughs, and at nightfall he sacrifices to this goddess the sacred fish which they call white-fish (for that is most sacred, above all others), then will his nets be taut, and he will draw them teeming from the sea.” And Dionysius, surnamed Iambus, writes as follows in the work “On Dialects”: “We have heard, at any rate, an Eretrian fisherman, and indeed many other fishermen, calling the pompilo a sacred fish. It inhabits the deep sea and often appears beside a ship, looking like a young tunny, and speckled. Anyway, it is this fish which a man in the Poet hauls in:'Seated on a jutting crag, he hauls in a sacred fish,' unless there is some other fish denominated sacred in the same way.” But Callimachus in Galateia terms the gilt-head so: “Or rather the sacred fish, which is golden over its eyes, or the perch, or whatever other creatures the boundless depths of the salt sea bring forth.” And in the Epigrams the same poet says: “Sacred, ay sacred, is the hyces.” Others understand the term sacred fish (hieron) to be the same as consecrated; still others say it means great, like “the sacred might of Alcinous ”; some, again, explain the word (hieron) as meaning that which rushes (hiemenon) up stream (roun).
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§ 7.21 Cleitarchus, in the seventh book of his Glossary, says that sailors call the pompilo a sacred fish because it escorts ships from the high seas into the haven; hence it is called pompilo, being really a gilt-head. And Eratosthenes in Hermes says: “They left a portion of their catch — wasses still alive, or a barbed mullet, or the hawk-wrasse, or the swift-coursing sacred fish which is golden over its eyes.” In the light of our dissertation on fish, let the noble Ulpian ask what Archestratus, in his excellent Counsels, means when he says of the smoked fish of the Bosporus: “Of Bosporus the whitest that sail forth; but let nothing be added thereto of the tough flesh of the fish which grows in the Maeotic lake — the fish which may not be mentioned in verse.” Now what is that fish which, he says, it is impossible to mention in verse?
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§ 7.22 [284b] Aphyae. This word is also used in the singular (aphye). Thus Aristonymus in “Shivering Helios ”: “It's come to such a pass that there simply isn't a minnow left any more.” Of the Aphye there are several kinds. There is first the kind called foam-fish, which, according to Aristotle, is not hatched from spawn, but from the foam on the surface of the sea, whenever it forms thickly after severe showers of rain. A second kind is that called gudgeon; this comes from the small and paltry gobies which live in the sand, and from precisely this small fry others are generated which are called encrasicholi. Another kind of small fry are the young fish hatched from sprats, another from the anchovy, and still another from the small grey mullets which grow in the sand and slime. Of all these kinds the foam-fish is the best. Dorion, in his work “On Fishes”, speaks of a hepsetus made of gudgeons, as also of smelts; for smelt is the name of a small fish. He also says that the triglitis is a kind of small fry. Epicharmus, in The Marriage of Hebe, enumerates with anchovies and lobsters the different kinds of small fry, distinguishing what is called gonos. Hicesius says: “Among small fry there is the white, very tenuous and foam-like, which some call gudgeon; another, which is less translucent than this, and thicker; the translucent and thin is superior.” And Archestratus, the inventive genius of cookery says: “Count all small fry as abomination, except the Athenian; I mean gonos, which Ionians call foam; and accept it only when it is caught fresh in the sacred arm of Phalerum's beautiful bay. That which is found in ocean-washed Rhodes is good, if it be native. And if you desire to taste it, you should at the same time get at the market some nettles — sea-anemones crowned with leafy tentacles. Mixing them with it, bake it in a pan, after you have made a sauce of the fragrant tops of choice greens mixed in oil.”
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§ 7.23 [285a] Clearchus the Peripatetic, in his work “On Proverbs”, says of small fry: “Because of the small amount of heat required in the pan, the disciples of Archestratus direct that small fry be put into a hot pan and taken off sizzling; no sooner does it catch the heat than it sizzles immediately, like oil. Hence the saying,'The small fry have seen the fire.'” And the philosopher Chrysippus, in the tract “On Things to be chosen for their own Sake”, says: “In Athens they despise small fry on account of their abundance, and declare that they are beggars' food; but in other cities people like small fry extravagantly, though much inferior to the Athenian. Again (he continues), people here take great pains to grow Adriatic fowls, though they are less useful because they are much smaller than those in our own country. Contrariwise, the people up there import the fowls bred here.”'Small fry' is used as a collective singular by Hermippus in Demesmen: “But today, it seems, you can't even stir up small fry.” Callias in “The Cyclopes ”: “in the name of sweetest small fry!” Aristonymus in “Shivering Helios ”: “It's come to such a pass that there simply isn't a minnow left any more.” The diminutive aphydia is found in Aristophanes's “Masters of the Frying- Pan ”: “Not even these tiny little Phaleric small fry.”
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§ 7.24 But Lynceus of Samos, in his “Letter to Diagoras ”, praises Rhodian small fry, and contrasting many products of Athens with those of Rhodes he says: “With Phaleric anchovies she can match the anchovies which hail from Aenus; with the sea-lizard, her sturgeon and sea-perch; and over against the Eleusinian sole, or the mackerel, or any other fish of the Athenians, she rises superior to the glory of Cecrops you producing instead the thresher shark. As to this the author of ”High Living " recommends that anyone unable to achieve his desire by paying the price should get it dishonestly." Lynceus means the epicure Archestratus, who in his celebrated poem says this of the Dogfish: “In Rhodes there is the Dogfish, or thresher shark. And even if you must die for it, if they won't sell it to you, take it by force. The Syracusans call it fat dog. Once you have got it, submit patiently to whatever doom is decreed for you.” B"
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§ 7.25 [285b] Sea Bass." — Callias in “The Cyclopes ”: “Here are baked turbot, a ray, and the head of a tunny; eels and crawfish, and mullet, and this sea-bass.”
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§ 7.26 “Ray, Fishing- frog, Skate.” — The ray and the fishing- frog are mentioned by Aristotle in his work “On Animals”, who enumerates them among the selachian fishes. Eupolis says in “The Flatterers ”: “There is much merry-making in the house of our friend Callias here; for in it are crawfish and rays, sea hare stone ladies with rolling gait.” And Epicharmus in The Marriage of Hebe: “There were torpedoes, rays, and there were hammer-heads, raw-fish, bonitos, skates, and rough-skinned monk-fish.” Also in “The Woman from Megara ”: “Sides like the ray thou hast, Theagenes, tailpiece stiff as the skate's, head of bones like the stag, not the ray, and may a sea sculpin sting thy flank!” Sannyrion in Laughter: “O ye rays! O thou sweet grey-fish!” Aristotle, in the fifth book of “Parts of Animals ”, says that the selachian fishes are the skate, sting-ray, horned ray, shark, eagle -ray, electric ray, fishing- frog, and the entire shark family. Sophron in “Mimes of Men” calls a certain fish botis in these words: “Spet-fish gulping down a botis.” And maybe he means some kind of plant. With regard to the fishing- frog, the learned Archestratus gives the following advice amid his general counsels: “Wherever thou seest a fishing- frog, buy it... and dress the belly-piece.” And of the ray he says: “Eat a boiled ray in the season of mid-winter, with cheese and silphium on it. And so, whatever offspring of the ocean have a flesh that is not too fat should be dressed in this way. I tell you this again for the second time.” The comic poet Ephippus, in the play Philyra ( Philyra is the name of a courtesan), says: “A. Shall I cut the ray in slices and boil it? What say you? Or shall I bake it in Sicilian fashion? B. That's it, in Sicilian fashion.”
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§ 7.27 [286a] “The Box.” — Aristotle, in the work entitled “Pertaining to Animals”, or “On Fishes ”, says: “Those with dorsal markings are called box, those with oblique markings, colias.” Epicharmus, in The Marriage of Hebe: “And added to these, again, were box, picarels, small fry, crayfish.” Numenius in “The Art of Angling ” has the plural form boeces in this line: “Or a white dentex, boeces too, and Trinci.” But Speusippus and all the other Attic writers have boaces. Aristophanes, in “Women who get the best Places ”: “However, with my belly full of boaces, I went back home.” The box got its name from its grunt. Hence the fish is said to be sacred to Hermes, just as the turbot is sacred to Apollo. Pherecrates in Ant-men says: “Yet, they say, a fish hasn't any voice at all.” He then goes on: “By the two goddesses, there is no other fish but Grunter.” Aristophanes of Byzantium says that it is wrong for us to call the fish box, its real name being boops; for though it is small, it has large eyes. It must be then, that the boops has ox -eyes. In answer to him it may be said that if we are wrong in giving it the name of box, why do we say coracinus (crow-fish) instead of corocinus? For this got its name from the motion of its eyes. Again, why do we not say seiurus instead of silurus (sheat-fish)? For that too got its name from the constant shaking (seio) of its tail (ouros).
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§ 7.28 [286b] Bembrades. — Phrynichus in “The Tragedians”: “O golden-headed anchovies of the sea!” Epicharmus calls them bambradones in The Marriage of Hebe: “Bambradones and wasses, sea-hares and valiant weevers.” Sophron, too, in Mimes of Men: “With a fat bambradon.” Numenius, in “The Art of Angling”: “With a poor little shrimp — or an anchovy (bembras), it may be — may you go a-hunting for that kind of livelihood; see to it, then, that you have that bait.” Dorion is his work “On Fishes ” says: “If the bembras be rather well-grown, cut off the head, wash the fish in a little salt and water, and boil it in the same way you would a small red mullet.” It is only from the bembras, he says, that the dressing called bembraphye is prepared. This is mentioned by Aristonymus in “Shivering Helios ”: “That Sicilian, the one who walks like a crab, is exactly like a dish of membraphye.” Attic writers, however, say bembrades. Aristomenes in Quacks: “Fetching some bembrades for a penny.” Aristonymus in “Shivering Helios ”: “There simply isn't a minnow left any more, nor a damned bembras.” Aristophanes in “ Old Age ”: “She was nursed on hoary-skinned bemberades.” Plato in “The Envoys ”: “ Heracles, what bembrades!” But in “The Goats ” of Eupolis one may find it spelt with m. So Antiphanes in “The Man from noethe”: “A silly proclamation they are advertising in the fish-market. One man was just now loudly bawling that he had membrades to sell sweeter than honey. If that is so, there is nothing to prevent the honey-dealers in their turn from saying and shouting that the honey they have to sell is rottener than membrades.” Alexis also, in “The Service Lady”, was the word with an m: “Why! All he could serve to the merry-makers for them to eat, the other day, was some pease-porridge, membrades, and pressed olive skins.” And in “The Premier Danseur”: “A harder job, so help me Dionysus, I have never had since I became a parasite. I'd rather have a dish of membrades with somebody who can talk plain Attic. That would have brought some profit.”
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§ 7.29 [287a] “The Blenny.” — This is mentioned by Sophron in the mime entitled “Fisherman against Farmer”: “With the suckling blenny.” It is a fish similar in appearance to the goby. And Epicharmus, in The Marriage of Hebe, calls certain fishes baiones in this line: “So he brought some squirming mullets and disgusting baiones.” There is also a proverb among the Athenians: “No baion for me! It's a poor fish.”
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§ 7.30 “The Ox-Tongue.” — Archestratus, a veritable Pythagorean for frugality, says: “Then buy a large flounder, and the roughish ox -tongue; but this last only in summer, when it is good at Chalcis.” Epicharmus in The Marriage of Hebe: “There were ox -tongues and a turbot among them.” But different from the ox -tongues are the dog -tongues, of which also Epicharmus says: “Speckled-beauties and floaters, and dog -tongues, and maigres too, were in it.” The Athenians call the ox -tongue psetta.
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§ 7.31 [287b] [288b] Conger-eels. — These, as Hicesius says, are tougher than lake eels, have a more spongy flesh, are less nourishing and much inferior in flavour, but are wholesome. The epic poet Nicander, in the third book of his Glossary, says that they are also called grylli. Eudoxus, in the sixth book of his “Description of the Earth ”, says the many are caught in Sikyon as large as a man can carry; in some instances one of them even fills a cart. And Philemon, the poet of the New Comedy, also mentions the excellent conger-eels of Sikyon; he represents a cook boasting of his art, and saying the following in the play entitled “The Soldier ”:
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§ 7.32'For a yearning hath crept upon me to come forth and tell to earth and sky how I dressed the dainty. Yes, by Athena, sweet it is to succeed in all things. What a tender fish I had, how perfectly did I serve it! Not drugged with cheese, not decked on top with herbs, but even when baked it looked exactly like what it was when alive. So mild and gentle was the fire I gave it when I baked the fish, I shall not even be believed. It was exactly as when a hen catches something too big for her to swallow. She runs round and round, holding it fast, and is all eagerness to swallow it. Then other birds begin to chase her. So it was then. The First man to discover the delights of the dish jumped up and ran in flight all round, holding fast to the dish, while others followed close at his heels, I had a right to exult; for some of them seized a bit, others got nothing, others all. And yet I had merely taken some river fish, which eat mud. If I had, then, got something rare, an Attic sea-lizard — O Saviour Zeus! — or Argive boar, or conger-eel from loved Sikyon, which pox carries to heaven as an offering to the gods, then all who ate would have become gods. I have found the elixir of life: men already dead, once they but catch a whiff from the dish, I cause to live again."
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§ 7.33 [288a] This boast, Athena is my witness, would not have been ventured even by the Syracusan Menecrates, surnamed Zeus, who prided himself greatly on being the sole cause of life to mankind through his skill in medicine. He used, at any rate, to compel those whom he cured of the so called sacred diseases to sign a bond that they would obey him as his slaves if they were restored to health. And one man who became his attendant wore the dress and went by the name of Heracles; he was Nicostratus of Argos, who had been cured of the sacred sickness. Ephippus mentions them in “The Peltast”, speaking as follows: “Did not Menecrates assert that he was Zeus, a god? And Nicostratus of Argos, that he was another Heracles?” Another attendant, with the riding-cloak and herald's staff, “and wings besides,” was called Hermes, like Nicagoras of Zeleia, who became tyrant of his native city, according to the account given by Baton in his “History of the Tyrants in Ephesus ”. and Hegesander says that Astycreon, who had been cured by him, was called Apollo. Still another of his patients who had been restored to health moved about in his company clad in the garb of Asclepius. As for Zeus himself, dressed in purple, with a gold crown on his head and carrying a sceptre, his feet shod with slippers, he walked about attended by this divine choir. In a letter to King Philip he wrote as follows:
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§ 7.34 “ Zeus - Menecrates to Philip, greeting: You are kind of Macedonia, but I am king of Medicine. You can destroy healthy people whensoever you wish, but I can save the ailing, and the robust who follow my prescriptions I can keep alive without sickness until old age comes. Therefore, while you are attended by a bodyguard of Macedonians, I am attended by all posterity. For I, Zeus, give them life.” In answer to him Philip wrote, treating him as a crazy man: “ Philip to Menecrates, come to your senses!” In similar vein Menecrates wrote also to Archidamus, king of Sparta, and in fact to all his correspondents, never refraining from the name of Zeus. Once Philip invited him, along with his own peculiar band of gods, to a dinner, and made them all recline together on the central couch, which was raised very high and decked in a way befitting the most elaborate ritual. He then set before them a table on which lay an altar and first-fruits of all kinds of products of the earth. And when the food was brought in for the rest of the company, the slaves would burn incense and offer libations before Menecrates and his crew, until at last this new Zeus, derided as he was, fled with his subject gods from the symposium. This is narrated by Hegesander. But Menecrates is also mentioned by Alexis in Minos.
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§ 7.35 Again, Themison of Cyprus, the favourite of King Antiochus, was proclaimed at the festivals as Themison of Macedon, the Heracles of King Antiochus, according to Pythermus of Ephesus in the eighth book of his Histories. Not only that, but all the inhabitants also sacrificed to him, calling upon him by the name of Heracles - Themison; and whenever any distinguished person offered sacrifice, Themison was always present in person, reclining on a separate couch and clad in a lion's skin; he also carried a Scythian bow and held a club. However that may be, Menecrates, for all that he was the kind of person I have described, never ventured a boast at all approaching that of the cook just mentioned: “I have found the elixir of life; men already dead, once they but catch a whiff from the dish, I cause to live again.”
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§ 7.36 [289a] But the whole tribe of cooks is given to boasting, as Hegesippus represents them in Brothers; he brings on a cook who says: “A. My good sir, much has been said by many men on the subject of cookery. Either, then, you must prove that you can say something novel, as compared with the other authorities, or else stop making me tired. B. Not so, Syrus. You had better believe that I am the only one in the world who has discovered the finishing touch in the art of cookery. I didn't learn it casually, by merely wearing an apron for a couple of years, but I have spent my whole life in studying and testing the art in all its branches; all the kinds of vegetables there are, the varieties of small fry, every kind of lentil-soup. Ay, the finishing touch, I tell you. When I chance to be the caterer serving at a funeral-feast, the moment they return from the funeral clad in garments dyed black, I take the lid from the pot and make the mourners laugh. Such is the titillation which courses inside their bodies, as though they were at a wedding. A. What, you mean by serving them lentil soup and small fry? Tell me! B. They are mere side-issues with me. But if I get what I require, and can once arrange the kitchen to suit myself, you shall now, Syrus, again see the self-same thing which happened in the time of the Sirens of old. The fragrance is such that, to put it simply, not a man of them will be able to pass through this alley. Every passer-by will immediately come to a stop at the front door, open-mouthed, nailed to the wall speechless; until finally one of his friends, some other person who has stopped up his own nostrils, comes running up and pulls him away. A. You are a mighty artist. B. You don't know the man you are speaking to. Why, I know of many persons seated here in the audience who have eaten up their estates for my sake.” In the name of the gods, what is the difference, think you, between this fellow and the Keledones (Charmers) in Pindar, who, like the Sirens, caused those who listened to them to forget their mother-cities and wither away in pleasure.
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§ 7.37 [290a] Nicomachus, in Eileithyia, also introduces a cook who beats the actors at boasting. Anyway, this fellow says to the man who has hired him: “A. You indicate a character that is, to be sure, very charming and gentle, but you have been negligent in one detail. B. What is that? A. You have failed to scrutinize carefully our importance as artists. Or have you, before hiring me, asked of those who know me well? B. No, by Zeus, I have not. A. Then look you! You have no notion, perhaps, of how one cook differs from another. B. But I shall know if you tell me. A. To take a fish purchased by someone else and dish it up with an artistic dressing is not within the capacity of any ordinary servant, is it? B. Heracles defend us! A. The complete cook is made on a different plan. You must acquire many arts held in high esteem, which anyone that wishes to learn them properly should not approach offhand; no, you must first grasp the art of painting. Then there are other arts, too, which you must learn before the art of cookery, and which it would have been better for you to know about before you spoke to me. They are astrology, geometry, and medicine. For from these you will learn the potencies and tricks of fishes; you will carefully observe the seasons, to see when any fish, in each case, is served untimely or in season. For in pleasures the divergences are it. Sometimes a boax proves to be better than a tunny. B. That may be so. But what business have you with geometry? A. We regard the kitchen as a globe. We must divide it into segments, and after finding one locus separate it into specific parts as the advantage of the art decrees. These are processes borrowed from geometry. B. Stop! I believe you even if you don't tell me the rest. But what about medicine? A. There are foods which in some cases cause winds and dyspepsia and bring dire vengeance, not nourishment. Every one who dines on hostile food becomes quarrelsome and loses his self-control. For such foods, then, you must find the antidote in the art of medicine, and it's a borrowing of art. Again, it is a matter of military tactics as well — this use of reason and harmony, the knowing just where in cookery each unit is to be posted in number and in quantity. In that respect no one else can be enrolled as my equal. B. Now listen to a few things in answer in my turn. A. Say on. B. Don't bother yourself about me, but go spend the rest of the day at your ease!”
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§ 7.38 [291a] The cook described by Philemon the Younger is inclined to be rather schoolmasterish when he says lines like these: “Let it alone, just as it is. For things that are to be baked, just see to it that the fire is night too slow (for that is right for boiling but not for baking) nor yet too hot; for then in turn it burns up whatever it touches on the outside, but does not penetrate to the flesh. A man isn't a cook merely because he comes to a customer with soup-ladle and carving-knife, nor even if he tosses some fish into a casserole; no, Wisdom is required in his business.”
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§ 7.39 But the cook in “The Painter”, by Diphilus, tells us to whom he should let himself out for hire in se words: “A. No, Draco, I won't take you on for a job anywhere unless you are likely to spend the day as a table-maker with a lavish abundance of good materials. For I never go to a man until I first make sure who is giving the sacrificial feast, or why the dinner is given, or what people he has invited. I have a diagram of all classes, those to whom I should let myself out, and those of whom I must beware. Take, for example, the class that belongs in the Port. A sea-captain offers sacrifice to pay a vow; he has lost the mast or rudder of his ship and completely wrecked it, or has tossed the cargo overboard when he was full of water. I let that kind of man alone, because he never does anything for pleasure, but only through custom. While the libations are poured he is calculating how big a share of the loss he can levy on the passengers, reckoning it all up; and so each of them must eat his own vitals. But another man has sailed into port from Byzantium; only a two days' voyage, without a scratch; he has made money, and is overjoyed that he has made a profit of ten or twelve per cent. He is full of talk about his fares, he belches forth his loans, celebrating a debauch with the help of tough panders. Up to him I sidle purring, that moment he disembarks; I put my hand in his, I remind him of Zeus the Saviour, I am all engrossed in the thought of serving him. That's my way! Again, a lad is gobbling up his patrimony in a love affair, he's a fast worker when it comes to spending. I go to him. Other lads, perhaps, get up a subscription dinner. God save the mark! They put into the urn what money they can find, and as they tightly clutch the fringes of their clothes they cry:'Who's willing to get up a cheap little dinner in the market?' I let them bawl. For to go there means getting a lot of blows besides, as well as serving the whole night through. If you ask them for your fee, they say,'First bring me the pot.''The lentil soup didn't have any vinegar in it.' Again you ask.'You'll be the foremost cook to get — a beating.' I might recite an unending list of other customers like these. But where I am taking you now is to a brothel. There a courtesan is celebrating the Adonis festival sumptuously in company with other harlots. You will stuff yourself lavishly, and the folds of your tunic as well, when you amble from there.”
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§ 7.40 And in “The Treasure ”, by Archedicus, another little cook-professor has this to say: “First the guests arrive while the fish are still lying uncooked.'Give employ water for the hands,' they demand.'Take the fish and be off!' I put the casseroles on the fire, sprinkle the coals with oil thoroughly, and make a blaze. While the greens and the pungent smells from the side-dishes cheer my patron, I boil the fish nicely with all its juices in it and just the right strength of brine, into which any gentleman might dip. Thus, by the sacrifice of a small cup of cheap oil I have saved for my benefit perhaps fifty feasts.” Philostephanus, in “The Man from Delos ”, gives even the names of distinguished cooks in these lines: “I know that you, Daedalus, excel all men in your profession and in your keen intelligence, next to Thibron, the Athenian cook surnamed Perfection; and so I have come to pay the price you demanded and fetch you hither.”
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§ 7.41 [292a] Now Sotades (not the poet of Maroneia, author of the “ Ionian Songs”, but the writer of the Middle Comedy) also represents a cook speaking in language of this tenor in “Locked Up” (for thus he inscribes his play): “First I took some shrimps; I fried them all to a turn. A huge Dogfish is put in my class; I baked the middle slices, but the rest of the stuff I boiled, after making a mulberry sauce. Here I fetch two very large pieces of grey-fish cut near the head, in a big casserole; in it I have added sparingly some herbs, caraway-seed, salt, water, and oil. After that I bought a very fine sea-bass. It shall be served boiled in an oily pickle with herbs, after I have served the meats roasted on spits. Some fine red mullets I purchased, and some lovely wasses. These I Italy tossed upon the coals, and to an oily pickle I added some marjoram. Besides these I bought some cuttle-fish and squids. A boiled squid stuffed with chopped meat is nice, and so are the tentacles of a cuttle-fish when roasted tender. To these I fitted a fresh sauce of many vegetables, and after them came some boiled dished, for which I made a mayonnaise to give them flavour. To top this I bought a very fat conger-eel. I smothered it in a fresher pickle. Some gobies, and some rock-fish of course; I snipped off their heads and smeared their bodies in a batter of flour, just a little, and sent them on the same journey as the shrimps. Then a widowed bonito, a very fine creature, I soaked just enough in oil, wrapped in swaddling-bands of fig-leaves, sprinkled it with marjoram, and hid it like a firebrand in a heap of hot ashes. With it I got some small fry from Phalerum. Half a gill of water poured over this is generous. I then cut up some herbs very fine and abundantly, and even if the jug holds a quart, I empty it all. What remains to be done? Nothing at all. That is my art; I need no written recipes and no memoranda.”
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§ 7.42 [293a] Well, enough of cooks. I must speak of the conger-eel. For Archestratus, in the Gastronomy, describes in these words where each part of it should be purchased: “In Sikyon, dear friend, you have the head of the conger-eel, fat, vigorous, and large; also all the belly parts. And so, boil it a long time in salt water, after you have sprinkled it over with herbs.” Continuing, this noble explorer describes the Italian regions and again says: “And you can catch a nice conger-eel, which is as much superior to all other fishes as the fattest tunny is superior to the poorest crow-fish.” Alexis, in “The Seven at Thebes ”: “And served therewith were pieces of fat conger-eel piled high to overflowing.” Archedicus, in “The Treasure ”, brings on a cook who talks about the purchases he has made: “For three shillings, a sea-lizard.... The head parts of a conger-eel, with the first cuts next it, five shillings more. Alas, times are hard! Necks, a shilling; yet the Sun is my witness, if I had been able to get another neck for myself, and it had been possible to buy it somewhere, I should have hanged myself by the neck which I have before I had ever brought home this stuff. Nobody has ever had a tougher job rendering service. At one and the same time, to purchase so much and at such a very high price! At one and the same time, too, if I bought anything good, I am like to be ruined for it.'Those fellows will eat' — that phrase I repeat to myself.'Such good wine they will spew on the floor!' Oh me!”
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§ 7.43 [293b] [294c] Dogfish. — Hicesius, in his work On Materials, says that the kind called asteriae are better and more tender than the galeoi. Aristotle says that there are several kinds of Dogfish: spiny, smooth-skinned, spotted, cub, thresher, and monk. Dorion, in his work On Fishes, says that the thresher shark has a single fin near the tail, but none at all on the back. Aristotle, in the fifth book of The Parts of Animals, says that one kind of Dogfish carries a goad, another has a sharp-pointed dorsal fin. Epaenetus, in his Art of Cookery, calls the latter epinotideus; he says that the goad-shark is inferior, and has a bad smell; it may be recognized from its having a goad at the frontal fin, other fish of the same family not having it. These fish have no fait either hard or soft, because they are cartilaginous. The spiny shark is peculiar in having a heart of fifth legion shape. The Dogfish in general spawns three times a year at most; it takes the young just hatched into its mouth and emits them again. This is particularly true of the spotted and the thresher sharks. The others cannot do that because of the roughness.
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§ 7.44 Archestratus, who affected a mode of life like that of Sardanapalus, speaking of the Rhodian Dogfish, expresses the belief that it is the same as that which is carried about at Roman banquets to the accompaniment of pipes and wreaths; it is, he thinks, the fish called Accipesius. But the latter is small, longer of snout, and more triangular in shape than the former, and the cheapest and smallest of them is sold for not less than a thousand drachmas, Attic currency. The grammarian Apion, in the work On the Luxury of Apicius, says that the fish called elops is this Accipesius. But, anyway, Archestratus, speaking of the Rhodian Dogfish, gives a sort of paternal advice to his comrades when he says:'In Rhodes there is the Dogfish, or thresher shark. And even if you must die for it, if they won't sell it to you take it by force. The Syracusans call it fat dog. Once you have got it, submit patiently thereafter to whatever doom is decreed for you." Quoting these verses, Lynceus of Samos, in his Letter to Diagoras, says that the poet quite rightly urges that anyone unable to count out the price should win the object of his desire by dishonesty. In fact, I imagine, says Lynceus, when Theseus grew up to be so handsome, he yielded his favours because Tlepolemus gave him this fish. And Timocles says in The Ring: “Dogfish and rays, and all the kinds of fish which are dressed with a mayonnaise sauce.”
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§ 7.45 [294a] The Glaucus. — Epicharmus in The Marriage of Hebe: “Sculpins speckled, and horse-mackerel, and fat grey-fish.” Numenius in The Art of Angling: “A hyces or a beauty-fish, or at times a chromis or a sea-perch, or a grey-fish moving through the glistening seaweed.” In praise of the grey-fish's head Archestratus says: “Rather, buy me the head of a grey-fish in Olynthus or in Megara, be it is caught in lagoons of the august earth.” And Antiphanes in The Sheep-owner says: “ Boeotian eels, mussels from Pontus, tunnies...., Megarian grey-fish, Carystian sprats, Eretrian breams, crawfish from Scyros.' And the same poet also says this in Philotis: ”A. Very well, I tell you to cook the little grey-fish in salt water, as at other times. B. And the little bass. A. Roast whole. B. The dog -study? A. Should boil in a sour sauce. B. The little eel A. Salt, marjoram, and water. B. The conger-eel? A. The same way. B. The ray? A. Green herbs. B. We've got besides a cutlet of tunny. A. You will broil that. B. Kid meat/ A. Broil. B. The other meat? A. Just the opposite — boil. B. The spleen? A. Stuff it well. B. The empty intestine?..."
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§ 7.46 Eubulus in The Hunchback: “And that dish of lovely countenance!... carrying a head more noble than that of this sea Glaucus here... and a boiled bass... one in brine.” Anaxandrides in Nereus: “He that was the first to discover the large, sumptuous sliced head of a grey-fish, the carcass of the blameless tunny, and other foods out of the watery brine — Nereus, is the dweller in all this place.” Amphis, in The Seven at Thebes: “Grey-fish entire, and the meaty portions split from the head.” Also in A True Friend: “To have simply a nice little eel, or heads of a grey-fish, or cutlets of bass.” Antiphanes in Cyclops outshoots the epicure Archestratus when he says: “Let's have a sliced mullet, a stewed electric ray, a split perch, a stuffed squid, a baked smooth-tooth, the first cut of a grey-fish, the head of a conger-eel, the belly of a fishing- frog, the flanks of a tunny, back of a ray, loin of a spet-fish, a mite of a sole, a sprat, a shrimp, a red mullet, and a wasse. Let none of these dishes be absent.”
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§ 7.47 [295a] Nausicrates in The Skippers: “A. Two sons, they say, gentle and fair, of the god who before this has often appeared in the ocean's embrace to seafaring folk, and who, they say, foretells the fortunes of mortals. B. You mean Glaucus. A. You've got it.” Now the sea-god Glaucus, as Theolytus of Methymna says in his Epic of Dionysos, fell in love with Ariadne when she was carried away by Dionysus on the island of Dia; overpowered by Dionysus, he was bound hand and foot in the withes of a grape vine, but released when he entreated him in these words: “A city, then, there is by the side of the sea, Anthedon, over against Euboea, hard by the currents of Euripus. There is my birthplace, and the father who gat me was Copeus.” But Promathidas of Heracleia, in his Hemiambi, derives the birth of Glaucus from Polybus, the son of Hermes, and Euboea, the daughter of Larymnus. And Mnaseas, in the third book of his European History, derives his descent from Anthedon and Alcyone; having proved himself a good seaman and diver, Glaucus came to be called Pontius. He carried away Syme, the daughter of Ialysus and Dotis, sailing back to Asia, and settled the island, which was deserted, near Caria, giving it the name Syme from his wife. The epic poet Euanthes, on the other hand, in his Hymn to Glaucus, says that he was a son of Poseidon and the nymph Nais, and that, falling in love with Ariadne, he lay with her in the island of Dia when she had been deserted by Theseus. Aristotle, in The Constitution of Delos, says that Glaucus settled in Delos in company with the Nereids, and gives prophecies to those who desire them. Possis of Magnesia, in the third book of his Account of the Amazons, says that Glaucus was the architect of the Argo and was its pilot at the time when Jason fought in company with the Etruscans, being the only one who escaped without a wound in the naval battle; but by Zeus' decree he disappeared in the depths of the ocean, and in this way became a sea divinity. He was seen only by Jason. Nicanor of Cyrene, in Changes of Name, says that Melicertes had his name changed to Glaucus.
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§ 7.48 Alexander Aetolus also gives an account of him in the poem entitled The Fisherman. He says that Glaucus was engulfed in the sea “after he had eaten an herb which the untilled earth bears in springtime for shining Helios in the isles of the Blest. And Helios tenders that herb unfailing, as a soul-satisfying supper to his steeds, that they may accomplish their course unwearied, and no distress may overtake any in their mid-journey.” Aeschrion of Samos, in one of his iambic poems, says that the marine Glaucus fell in love with Hydne, daughter of Scyllus, the diver of Scione. He also has his own story to tell about the herb, which if eaten made one immortal: “Thou hast found even the food of the gods, dog's-tooth grass which Cronus sowed.” Nicander, in the third book of Europia, records that glaucus was loved by Nereus. Again, in the first book of his Aitolian History, Nicander says that Apollo was taught the art of prophecy by Glaucus; and that Glaucus was once hunting on Oreia, which is a high mountain in Aitolia, when he caught a hare; since it was faint after the pursuit he took it to a spring, and just as it was breathing its last gasp he rubbed it with the grass which grew about. The hare completely revived with the help of the herb; and Glaucus, recognizing the virtues of the herb, tasted of it and was seized with a divine madness; and when a storm arose by Zeus' decree, he cast himself into the sea. But Hedylus of Samos (or Athens ) declares that Glaucus cast himself into the sea through love of Melicertes; and Hedyle, this poet's mother, who was the daughter of Moschine, the Attic poetess of iambic verse, records in the poem entitled Scylla that Glaucus, in love with Scylla, entered her cave carrying “gifts, either cockleshells from the Erythraean Sea crag, or the still wingless young of halcyons — toys for the nymph before whom he was diffident. But even the Siren, virgin neighbour, pitied his tears; for she was swimming back to those shores and the borders of Aetna.”
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§ 7.49 [296a] The Gnapheus. — Dorion, in his work On Fishes, says that the liquid taken from the boiling of the gnapheus removes any stain. It is mentioned also by Epaenetus in The Art of Cookery.
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§ 7.50 The Eel. — The sea eels are mentioned by Epicharmus in The Muses; and Dorion, mentioning those from the Copaic lake, praises the Copaic eels, for they grow to an enormous size. Agatharchides, at any rate, in the sixth book of his European History, says that the Boeotians sacrifice eels which are of surpassing size, putting wreaths on them, saying prayers over them, and casting barley-corns on them as on any other sacrificial victim; and to the foreigner who was utterly puzzled at the strangeness of this custom and asked the reason, the Boeotian declared that he knew only one answer, and he would reply that one should observe ancestral customs, and it was not his business to justify them to other men. We need not wonder that they sacrifice eels like other victims, seeing that Antigonus of Carystus also, in his work On Diction, says that the Halaians, when they celebrate a festival to Poseidon in the tunny season, offer to the god in the event of a good catch the first tunny caught; and this offering is called a thynnaion.
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§ 7.51 Even preserved fish (tarichoi) are offered in sacrifice by the Phaselites. Heropythus, at any rate, when describing the founding of Phaselis in his Chronicles of Colophon, says that Lacius, the organizer of the colony, gave as the price of the territory preserved fish to Cylabras, a shepherd pasturing his sheep there, since that was what Cylabras demanded. For when Lacius offered him his choice of barley or tarichos for the region, he chose the preserved fish; and for that reason the Phaselites annually sacrifice tarichoi to Cylabras to this very day. Philostephanus, in the first book of his work On the Cities of Asia, writes thus: “ Lacius of Argos was one of those who came with Mopsus. Some say he was a native of Lindus and a brother of Antiphemus, who founded Gela. He was sent to Phaselis by Mopsus with a company of men in obedience to a prophecy of Manto, the mother of Mopsus. At this time the sterns of their own vessels collided and were crushed to pieces off the Chelidonian promontory, those under command of Lacius being late and hitting them in the dark. Lacius, I say, purchased the land where the city stands today, according to Manto's command, from a certain Cylabras, giving him, it is said, preserved fish. For that is what he chose to receive from among the goods which they brought with them. Hence the Phaselites offer each year preserved fish as a sacrifice to Cylabras, honouring him as a hero.”
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§ 7.52 Returning to the subject of eels: Hicesius says, in his work On Materials, that eels are juicier than all other fish, and that in wholesomeness they surpass most; for they are filling and nutritious. He puts Macedonian eels in the class of preserved fish. Aristotle says that eels like the cleanest water. Hence the keepers of eel-hatcheries keep pouring in clean water for them, since they are suffocated in turbid water. Therefore eel-catchers muddy the water to kill them by suffocation. Having small gills, the breathing-passages are immediately choked up by the mud. Hence even in a storm, when the water is tossed about by winds, they die by suffocation. They copulate by mutual interlocking, and afterwards emit a glutinous substance which, after it has been in the slime, hatches out the young. The keepers of eel-hatcheries say that they feed by night, but by day lie motionless in the mud; they generally live for eight years. In another passage, again, Aristotle records that they generated neither from eggs nor viviparously, in fact not by copulation at all, but by a decomposition occurring in the mud and slime, as is said to happen in the case of earthworms. Hence, Aristotle says, Homer distinguished the nature of eels from that of fishes when he uttered the line: “Sore afflicted were the eels and also the fishes beneath the eddies.”
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§ 7.53 [297a] Thereupon a certain devotee of Epicurus in the company of diners, when an eel was served, cried: “Here comes the Helen of all feasts; I, therefore, shall be Paris.” And before anybody had as yet stretched out hands to take it, he set upon it and stripped off the sides, reducing the creature to a mere spine. This same fellow, when a hot flat-cake was set before them and all the rest held aloof from it intoned: “And against him I will go forth, though his hands be even as fire.” He then set upon and devoured it precipitately, and was like to be carried out to his funeral for the blaze that was in him. And Cynulcus said: “This greedy gull takes the prize in the throat-contest.” Now concerning the eel Archestratus records this: “I praise all eels, to be sure; but much the best is the eel caught in that part of the sea which is opposite the straights of Rhegium. There you, citizen of Messina, have the advantage over all other mortals, for you can put such food as that to your lips. And yet the Copaic and Strymonian eels bear a very mighty repute for excellence; for they are large and wonderfully fat. In general, it is my belief that the eel is king of all viands at the feast and guides the way to pleasure, though it is the only fish to which nature has given no scrotum.”
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§ 7.54 [298a] When Homer said, “Sore afflicted were the eels and also the fishes,” he used a declension to which Archilochus conformed: “And thou hast received many blind eels (enchelyas).” But Attic writers, according to Tryphon, although when they use the singular number they know the form in y, nevertheless do not carry out the plural cases to match the singular. For example, Aristophanes says in The Acharnians: “Look, my church, at this most valiant eel (enchelyn).” And in The Lemnian Women:" Boeotian eel (enchelyn)." He has the corresponding nominative in Men of Dinnerville: “And as smooth as an eel (enchelys).” SO Cratinus in The Plutuses: “ Tunny, sea-perch, grey-fish, eel (enchelys), and dogfish.” But they no longer make the plural cases as Homer does. Thus Aristophanes in The Knights: “In fact, what ails you is exactly what the catchers of eels (encheleis) experience.” And in the second edition of The Clouds: “Plagiarizing my similes about the eels (encheleon).” The dative plural occurs in The Wasps: “But I don't like rays, and I don't like eels (enchelesin) either.” So Strattis in Men of Riverside: “Own cousin to the eels (encheleon).” Semonides in Iambic Poems: “Like an eel (enchelys) down in the slime.” And the accusative singular: “For a heron found a buzzard eating a Maeandrian eel (enchelyn) and stole it from him.” But Aristotle, in his work On Animals, has a form with i, encheli. Yet when Aristophanes says in The Knights: “in fact, what ails you is exactly what the catchers of eels experience. When the pond is still, they catch nothing; but if they roil the mud this way and that, they can catch them. And you make your catch only when you put the city in a turmoil” — he plainly shows that the eel is taken from the slime. Hence the name ended in -ys. Homer, therefore, wishing to show how deeply the fire descended into the river, expressed himself thus: “Sore afflicted were the eels and also the fishes.” More especially, and by way of peculiar emphasis, the eels are mentioned in order to show the depth of the water which was ablaze.
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§ 7.55 [299a] Antiphanes, ridiculing the Egyptians in Lycon, says: “They say the Egyptians are clever in other ways too, but especially in recognizing the eel as equal to the gods. In fact she is much higher priced than the gods. For merely by offering prayers we may reach the gods, but to get just a smell of eels we must spend at the least a dozen shillings or more. So altogether sacred is the beast.” And Anaxandrides, expatiating on the Egyptians in Island-Towns, says,'I couldn't bring myself to be an ally of yours, for neither our manners nor our customs agree, but stand a long distance apart from each other. You worship the cow, but I sacrifice it to the gods. You hold the eel to be a mighty divinity, we hold it by far the mightiest of dainties. You eat no pork, but I like it very much. You worship the bitch, I beat her when I catch her eating up my best food. Here in our country, it is the custom to have our priests whole, but with you, so it appears, it is the custom to cut off their best parts. If you see a cat in any trouble, you mourn, but I am very glad to kill and skin it. The field- mouse has power with you, with me he doesn't count at all." And Timocles in The Egyptians: “Well then, what succour could an ibis or a dog render? When, in fact, people who sin against those gods whom all confess don't pay the penalty straightway, who will be struck down by a mere cat's altar?”
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§ 7.56 [300a] That they used to eat eels wrapped in beets is abundantly attested in the poets of Old Comedy; and Eubulus also says in Echo: “A bride unwedded will come, her skin fair, her form hidden in beet — the eel. O light, to me mighty, to thee mighty, how radiant it is!” Again, in Ion: “After this, opulent belly-pieces from baked tunnies came sailing in, and the viper -bodied Boeotian eels were there, goddesses robed in beets.” Also in Medea:'Robed in beets, the Boeotian virgin of the Copaic Lake; for I scruple to give a goddess a vulgar name." But that the eels from the Strymon river were also in repute, Antiphanes declares in Thamyras: “And a certain river, famed in the reports of men, that waters the Thracians, shall give its name to thee — the Strymon, rich in eels of largest size.” So also in the neighbourhood of the Euleus river (mentioned thus by Antimachus in the poem entitled The Tablets: “Having come to the sources of the eddying Euleus ”) there are excellent eels, according to Demetrius of Scepsis in the sixteenth book of The Trojan Battle-order.
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§ 7.57 [301a] The Elops. — Some remarks have been made about this fish before. But Archestratus also has this to say of it: “As for the elops, eat that chiefly in glorious Syracuse, since it is the best. For that fish, again, comes from there, its native place. Wherefore when it is caught off the islands, or the Asian land perchance, or off Crete, it comes to you thin and tough and wave-battered.”
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§ 7.58 The Erythrinus. — Aristotle, in the treatise On Animals, and Speusippus say that the braize, the Erythrinus, and the liver-fish are similar. The like is stated also by Dorion is his work On Fishes. But the people of Cyrene call the Erythrinus hyces, as Cleitarchus says in his Glossary.
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§ 7.59 Encrasicholi. — These also are mentioned as being very small fishes by Aristotle in his treatise On Animals. Dorion, in his work On Fishes, mentions the encrasicholi among the fish that are boiled. He says: “Fish which should be boiled are the encrasicholi, iopes, smelts, gobies, little mullets, small cuttle-fish, small squids, and small crabs.”
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§ 7.60 [301b] Hepsetus. — A term used for tiny fishes. Aristophanes in Anagyrus: “There isn't a dish of minnows left.” Archippus in The Fishes: “The minnow met the anchovy and swallowed him whole.” Eupolis in The Goats: “O ye Graces, busied with little fishes.” Eubulus in Attachment, or The Swan: “Satisfied if he can but see a dish of little fish cooking in beets once in twelve days.” Alexis in The Man with a Cataract: “For we had some little fishes worthy of Daedalus.” All beautiful works of art, be it noted, they ascribe to Daedalus. Again Alexis says: “Won't you try the crow-fishes or the anchovies, to say nothing of the little fishes?” As a rule they use the term little fishes in the plural. Aristophanes in Dramas, or Niobus: “I tell you I don't want a dish of little fishes.” Menander in The Girl from Perinthus: “The slave came in, carrying some little fishes.” But Nicostratus has the singular in Hesiod: “Anchovy, small fry, little fish.” Poseidippus in Locked Out: “Buy some little fish.” In my own Naucratis they give the name of little fish to the minnows left behind in the canals when the Nile recedes from its overflowing.
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§ 7.61 The Liver-fish, or Lebias. — Diocles says that this is one of the rock fishes. Speusippus says that the liver-fish is like the braize. According to Aristotle it is solitary, carnivorous, and has jagged teeth. Its colour is black, and it has disproportionately large eyes and a triangular white heart. Archestratus, the company-commander of banquets, says: “And buy a lebias, the liver-fish, Moschus, when you are in Delos or Tenos, washed by the sea all about.”
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§ 7.62 Spindle-fishes. — Mnesimachus in The Horse-Breeder: “Mackerel, tunny, goby, spindle-fishes.” " They are cetacean, well-adapted for preserving. Menander says in The Flatterer: “Goby, spindle-fishes, a slice cut from a Dogfish's tail.” Mnaseas of Patrae says: “Of Ichthys and his sister Peace were born Galene (Calm), Lamprey, and the Spindle-fishes.”
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§ 7.63 [302a] The Tunny. — Of this fish Aristotle says that when it enters the Black Sea it keeps close to shore; it can see with its right eye, but is dim-sighted in the left. Under the fins it carries the oestrus, as it is called. It likes warm places, and for that reason keeps close to the sand. It becomes edible after it is relieved of the oestrus. Coition takes place after hibernation, according to Theophrastus, and so long as the embryo remains small the tunny is hard to catch, but when that becomes larger, it can be taken because of the oestrus. The tunny hibernates in spite of the fact that it is full-blooded. Archestratus says: “But round the sacred and spacious Samos thou wilt see the mighty tunny caught with eager zeal. The Samians call it horse-mackerel, but elsewhere it is called whale. Of this you must needs buy in summer the cuts which suit you, without hesitation, and haggle not over the price. It is fine, too, in Byzantium and in Carystus as well. But in the glorious isle of Sicily, the shores of Cephaloedium and Tyndarium nurture far better tunnies; and if ever though go to hipponium, in sacred Italy, that abode of Persephone with the fair diadem, by far, yea, by far the best of all are there, and the heights of victory are theirs. The tunnies which lose their way in our parts have come from there, having passed through many stretches of deep sea. Wherefore we must hunt for them when they are out of season.”
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§ 7.64 [302b] Now the tunny (thynnos) got its name from its darting (thyein), that is to say, its excited motion. For the tunny is inclined to be excited because at a certain season it has a bot-fly on its head, by which, according to Aristotle, it is driven forth. He writes as follows: “ Tunnies and sword-fishes are excited by the bot-fly about the time when the Dog-star rises. For both, at that season, have beside their fins a creature like a small maggot, which is called the oestrus, resembling a scorpion, but in size like a spider. This causes statement to leap out of the water as high as a dolphin leaps, and they often throw themselves into the fishing-boats.” Theodoridas also says: “And tunnies will dart on their frenzied course through the strait of Gadeira.” Polybius of Megalopolis, in the thirty-fourth book of the Histories, when discussing the country of Lusitania, in Iberia, says that there are acorn-bearing trees planted deep in the adjacent sea, on the fruit of which tunnies feed and grow fat. Wherefore one would not make a mistake if he said that tunnies were sea- swine. For the tunnies are like swine if they grow fat on acorns.
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§ 7.65 The belly-pieces of this fish are esteemed, as Eubulus tells us in Ion: “After this, opulent belly-pieces from baked tunnies come sailing in.” Aristophanes in The Lemnian Women: “No Boeotian eel, no grey-fish, no belly-piece from a tunny.” Strattis in Atalanta: “The belly-piece of a tunny, and a pig's trotter worth a shilling.” And in The Macedonians: “And sweet belly-pieces of tunnies.” Eriphus in Meliboea:"These things the poor cannot buy — the belly-piece of a tunny, or the head of a sea-bass, or a conger-eel, or cuttle-fishes, which I fancy not even the blessed gods despise." Now when, also, Theopompus says in Callaeschrus: “And belly-pieces of fish? O Demeter!” — one should note that the term belly-pieces is used of fish, but rarely of pigs and other animals. It is uncertain of what creatures Antiphanes used the word belly-piece when he said in The Man from Pontus: “Why! he has gone and bought with equal magnificence some belly-pieces for these damned women (whom may Poseidon destroy!), and he is getting ready too generously to boil a rib with them.” Alexis, in Odysseus at the Loom, says in praise even of the head of the tunny: “A. And let me cast the fishermen, too, into the pit; they catch for me only fish fit for freedmen, bony anchovies, little cuttle-fish, and some small fry. B. If this fellow ever got a tunny head in the old days, he thought he had eels and tunny steaks.” They also esteemed what they called the keys of tunnies, as Aristophon shows in Peirithous: “A. Look you, the dish is utterly spoiled. Two roasted keys all prepared. B. You mean those they lock the doors with? A. No, tunny -keys! B. A portentous dish, that. A. And a third, Laconian key.”
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§ 7.66 [303a] Antigonus of Carystus, as we have remarked before, says in his treatise On Diction that a tunny is sacrificed to Poseidon. Heracleon of Ephesus says that tunny (thynnus) is the name given to the orcynus (horse-mackerel) by the Attic writers. But Sostratus, in the second book of his work On Animals, says that the young tunny is called thynnis; when it becomes larger, thynnus; when still larger, orcynus; and when it grows to excessive size, cetus (whale). The tunny is mentioned by Aeschylus, says: “To receive the blows of hammers, to forge the red-hot blocks of iron; for he endured without a groan, like a tunny uttering no sound.” And in another passage: “Casting awry his left eye upon it, like a tunny.” For the tunny cannot see with the left eye, as Aristotle says. Menander in The Fishermen: “And the miry sea, which feeds the mighty tunny.” The word tunny -catcher occurs in Sophron... which some people call Thynni, while Athenians call them thynnides.
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§ 7.67 [303b] The Female Tunny. — This, according to Aristotle, differs from the male in having a belly-fin which is called athera. differs from the male in having a belly-fin which is called ather. In The Parts of Animals, when distinguishing the thynnis from the male tunny, he says that it spawns a sack-like substance in the summer, about the month of Hecatombaeon (July); in it are contained a large number of small eggs. Speusippus also distinguishes the thynnis from the tunny, in the second book of Similars; so also Epicharmus in The Muses. And Cratinus says in The Plutuses: “For I am your black she- tunny, your he- tunny, sea-perch, grey-fish, eel, and Dogfish.” Aristotle, in his treatise On Fishes, says that the tunny is gregarious and migratory. The meticulous Archestratus says: “And have a tail-cut from the she- tunny — the large she- tunny, I repeat, whose mother-city is Byzantium. Slice it and roast it all rightly, sprinkling just a little salt, and buttering it with oil. Eat the slices hot, dipping them into a sauce piquante; they are nice even if you want to eat them plain, like the deathless gods in form and stature. But if you serve it sprinkled with vinegar, it is done for.” And Antiphanes in The Paederast: “The middle slice of the very best Byzantian tunny is hiding in the torn coverings of a beet.” But Antiphanes also commends the tail-cut of a tunny in The Hairdresser, thus: “A. This fellow here, reared in the country, eats nothing out of the sea except what comes close to shore, a conger-eel, maybe, or an electric eel, or the ground parts of a tunny. B. What do you mean by that? A. The lower parts, I say. (to C.). You would eat such things as those? C. Why, yes; for I account all other fish as cannibals. B. But you would eat the — the — the — c. What? B. All that's left in Boeotia. C. You mean Copaic eels? Ay, savagely. My farm, as it happens, is by the lake. But I shall indict the eels for deserting the ranks; for there haven't been any anywhere.” Some of these verses are to be found also in The Sempstress and in The Farmer, or Butalion. Hipponax, as Lysanias quoted him in his books on Iambic Poets, says: “For one of them, feasting undisturbed and noisily on tunny and an olio every day, like a eunuch of Lampsacus, has thus devoured his estate and therefore must go dig... of a mountain rock, eating small measures of figs and a barley roll, fodder for slaves.” The she- tunnies are mentioned also by Strattis in Callippides.
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§ 7.68 [304a] Horse-tails. — Aristotle, in the second book of his work On the Parts of Animals, says that the horse-tails produce eggs, and that these, from being very small, grow to be very large, like those of the murry; they are produced in springtime. Dorion, in his work On Fishes, says that the horse-tail is called Coryphaena. Hicesius uses the form hippureis in denominating them. They are mentioned by Epicharmus in The Marriage of Hebe: “And needle-fishes with sharp snouts, horse-tails too, and gilt-heads.” Numenius, in his book On Angling, describes the nature of this fish and says that it constantly leaps out of the water, hence it has also the name of acrobat. He speaks of it thus: “Either a large synodon or an acrobat horse-tail.” Archestratus says: “The horse-tail from Carystus is the best, as in general Carystus is a region very rich in fish.” Epaenetus, in The Art of Cookery, says that it is called Coryphaena.
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§ 7.69 Horse-fish. — Perhaps these are what Epicharmus calls horselings when he says: “and dark-gleaming crow-fishes... fat maigres, smooth horselings, shrimps that feed in sea-weed.” Numenius, in The Art of Angling: “Or a parrot-fish, or fat and very shameless goby, sea-perch and eels, and darkling bottle-fish; or mussels, or horse-fishes, or the blue young tunny.” Antimachus of Colophon also mentions the horse-fish in the Thebais, as follows: “Or sea-bream or horse-fish, or that which they call a thrush.”
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§ 7.70 The Rainbow-wrasse. — Of these Dorion says in his work On Fishes: “Boil wasses in sea-water, but bake them in a pan.” Numenius: “Look about you now for that drug which shall avert even the very ravenous wasse and the poison-darting scolopendra.” But the same author gives to earthworms a similar name (iuli) in these lines: [305a] “And be sure you are mindful of the bait which you can find along the tops of the hills by the shore. Some are called iuli — dark, earth-eating earthworms. Or the long-footed centipedes, found when the sandy cliffs are washed at the topmost break of the surf, where you can dig them out and put them together in a jar.”
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§ 7.71 Thrushes and Blackbirds. — Attic writers end the form kichle (thrush) with an eta, and this is according to analogy. For feminines ending in la have a second L before the first L: Scylla, Squilla, kolla (glue), bdella (leech), Hamilla (contest), amalla (sheaf). But this rule does not extend to words ending in le: Homichle (mist), phytle (tribe), genethle (family), aigle (gleam), Trogle (hole). Accordingly we also have trigle (mullet). Cratinus: “And if he should prove to have eaten a mullet, that marked him as an epicure.” Diocles, in the first book of his Hygiene, says: The so called rock fishes have soft flesh. They are the blackbirds, wasses, perches, gobies, hake, labrus." Numenius in The Art of Angling: “Grey-fishes, or race of sea-perch in the waters, or dark-skinned blackbird, or thrushes with hues of the sea.” And Epicharmus in The Marriage of Hebe: “Anchovies and wasses, sea-hares and valiant weevers.” Aristotle, in his work On Animals: “And those with black spots, like blackbird, those again with vary-coloured spots, like the thrush.” Pancrates of Arcadia, in Occupations at Sea, says that the thrush is called by many names: “To these we now add the wine-coloured thrush, which men of the rod call lizard and speckled-beauty, or pretty perch, fattest at the head.” Nicander, in the fourth book of Things that Change: “Or a parrot-fish or thrush of many names.”
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§ 7.72 The Boar-fish and the Cremys. — Aristotle says in the work On Animals: “Others, again, are toothless and smooth, such as the needle-fish. And one class have a stone in the head, like the cremys, the other are very hard and rough-skinned, like the boar-fish. Some have two stripes like the Seserinus, others have many stripes and red lines like the saupe.” The boar-fish is mentioned by Dorion and by Epaenetus. And Archestratus says: “Again, if thou go to Ambracia's happy land and chance to see the boar-fish, buy it and abandon it not, even though it cost its weight in gold, lest haply the dread wrath of the deathless ones shall breathe upon thee. For that fish is the flower of nectar. Yet to eat of it or even to catch a glimpse of it with the eyes is not ordained for all mortals, but is possible only for those who carry in their hands the hollow plaited texture of swamp-grown rope, and are skilled in the practice of tossing pebbles in eager contention, and throwing the bait of sheep's joints.”
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§ 7.73 The Citharus. — Aristotle, in either the work On Animals or that On Fishes, says that the citharus has jagged teeth, is solitary, feeds on sea-weed, has a detached tongue and a heart there is white and flat. Pherecrates in The Slave-teacher: [306a] “A. (Methought) I had turned into a citharus, and as a citharus I went to market. B. Surely the citharus is a good thing, and has great favour with Apollo. A. But what bothers me, my good woman, is that they say there is evil in the citharus.” Epicharmus, in The Marriage of Hebe: “There was a supply of puntazzo, and there were soles too, and a turbo among them.” That it is regarded as sacred to Apollo because of its name we know on the authority of Apollodorus. Callias (or Diocles ) in The Cyclopes: “Here are baked turbot, a ray, and the head of a tunny.” Archestratus in High Living: “as for the citharus, if it be white and hard and large, I bid you put it in leaves in clean salt water and boil it. But if it be red in appearance, and not too large, bake it after you have stabbed its body with a straight knife, freshly sharpened. Then smear it with abundance of cheese and oil. For it likes to see people who spend money, and it is prodigal.”
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§ 7.74 The Cordylus. — This creature, Aristotle says, is amphibious, and dies when dried by the sun. Numenius, in The Art of Angling, calls it curylus: “Anything with which you can arm yourself is suited to these as bait — tadpole (curylus) or water- spider or centipede that lives in the sea.” He also mentions a cordylis in these words: “Or mussels, or horse-fishes, or the blue young tunny (Corydylis).”
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§ 7.75 Lobsters. — Epicharmus, in The Marriage of Hebe: “And added to these again, were bogues, smelts, small fry, crayfish.” Sophron also mentions them in Mimes of Women. It is a kind of prawn (karides) and by the Romans is so called.
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§ 7.76 Sharks. — Numenius of Heracleia in The Art of Angling says: “At one time a shark, at another, a guttling sand-fish.” Sophron in The Tunny -catcher: “Your belly is a shark's when ye want aught.” Nicander of Colophon in his Glossary says that the shark is called both lamia and scylla.
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§ 7.77 [306d] The Mullet. — Hicesius says: “There are several kinds of leucisci (white mullets), as they are called. Some, namely, are called cephali, others cestreis, others chellones, still others myxini (slime-fish). The best are the cephali as regards both taste and flavour. next to these come the so called cestreis, while the myxini are inferior; poorer than any others are the chellones (although those called bacchi are of very good flavour), and they are not nourishing, and are easily eliminated.” Dorion, in his work On Fishes, while he discusses in detail the sea mullet, does not recommend the river mullet. The prickly protuberance on the head of the cestreus he calls a drum, and says that the Cephalinus, also called blepsias, is different from the cephalus. Aristotle, in the fifth book of The Parts of Animals, says that “among the mullets, the chellones begin to gestate in the month of Poseideon (December); so also the sarg, the so called myxus, and the cephalus. The period of gestation is thirty days. But some of the mullets are not propagated by copulation, but grow out of the slime and the sand.” [307a] In another place Aristotle says: “The mullets, although a jagged-toothed fish, do not eat one another, since they are not carnivorous anyway. There is one kind called chellon, another Pheraeus; the chellon feeds close to shore, the Pheraeus does not. The Pheraeus uses as food the mucus which comes from itself, but the chellon eats sand and slime. It is even said that no creature eats the spawn of mullets because the mullets, in turn, eat no other fish.” Euthydemus of Athens, in his treatise On Salt Meats, says that the kinds of mullets are cephalus, spheneus (wedge-fish), and dactyleus (inch-fish). Now the cephali, he says, are so called because they have a rather heavy head, the wedge-fishes, because they are narrow and four-square. As to the inch-fishes, they have a breadth of less than two inches. The mullets caught off Abdera are admirable, as Archestratus says, and next to them are those which come from Sinope.
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§ 7.78 By some the mullets are called plotes (floaters), as Polemon says in his book On the Rivers of Sicily. In fact Epicharmus, also, gives them this name in The Muses: “Speckled-beauties and floaters, and dog -tongues, and maigres too, were in it.” Aristotle, in his work On the Habits and Lives of Animals, says that mullets stay alive even after their tails are removed. The mullet is eaten off by the sea-bass, the conger-eel by the lamprey. The well-known proverb, “a mullet goes hungry: is said of men who practise just dealing, since the mullet is not carnivorous. Anaxilas in The Recluse says of the sophist Maton, whom he decries for gluttony: ” Maton has snatched away and eaten up the mullet's head, and I am undone. And the noble Archestratus says: “Buy a mullet in seagirt Aigina, and you will have the company of charming men.” Diocles, in The Sea: “He leaps with joy, like a mullet.”
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§ 7.79 That the fasters are a kind of mullet is shown by Archippus in Heracles takes a Wife: “Faster-mullets, and cephali.” Antiphanes, in Lampon: “You have, as it happens, faster-mullets instead of soldiers.” Alexis, in The Phrygian: “And I, like a faster-mullet, trot off home.” Ameipsias, in Playing at Cottabus: “A. But I will go to the market-place and try to find a job. B. Ay, in that case you won't have to follow me about, as empty as a faster-mullet.” Euphron, in The Ugly Duckling: “midas is a mullet: he goes about fasting.” Philemon, in Dying Together: “I bought a small baked faster-mullet.” Aristophanes, in Gerytades: “Is there a colony of mullet-men within? For that you are fasters is well-known.” Anaxandrides, in Odysseus: “One who usually goes about dinnerless is a Fasting-mullet.” Eubulus, in Nausicaa: “Why! This is the fourth day he has been soaking himself, wearing out the fasting life of a wretched mullet.”
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§ 7.80 When these remarks over this noble dish had at last come to a conclusion, one of the Cynics who had arrived during the evening said: “It cannot be, my friends, that we are celebrating the middle day of the Thesmophoria, seeing that we fast like mullets? For as Diphilus says in The Lemnian Women:'These fellows have had a good dinner, whereas I, poor devil, [308a] shall be an empty-bellied mullet through this extreme fasting.'” Then Myrtilus broke in: "'And stand ye there in order (to quote Theopompus's Hedychares, my fasting band of mullets, entertained, like geese, only on boiled greens.' For you shall not have a portion of anything until either you or your fellow-disciple Ulpian explains why the mullet is the only fish that is called faster." And Ulpian answered: “Because he eats no live bait, and when he has been pulled in is not baited by meat or by any other living thing, as Aristotle records. He says that en when he is empty he makes poor food, and that when he is frightened he hides his head as if he were hiding his whole body. And so Plato says in Holidays:'For as I was coming out, a fisherman met me with a load of mullets — fish that fast and are poor food, at least in my judgement.' But do you tell me, you tricky Thessalian Myrtilus, why fish are called ellopes by the poets” myrtilus replied: “Because they are voiceless; by strict analogy of course, the term would be illopes, since they are barred from uttering a sound; for illesthai means'be barred,' and ops is'voice.' You don't know this, to be sure, being ellops (dumb) yourself.” “But I answer, since the Cynic's explanation is nonsense, in the words of the clever Epicharmus:'That which it took two men to say before me, I can answer sufficiently alone'; and I assert that fish are ellopes because they have scales. I will also explain, even if the question has not been asked, why the Pythagoreans, who eat moderately of other live animals, some of which they even sacrifice, nevertheless utterly refuse to touch fish alone. Is it because of their silence? They regard silence, in fact, as divine. Since then you also, Molossian hounds, are altogether silent though you are no Pythagoreans, we will proceed to the discussion of other fish.”
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§ 7.81 The Crow-fish. — The sea crow-fishes, says Hicesius, give little nourishment and are easily eliminated; they are moderately well-flavoured. Aristotle, in the fifth book of The Parts of Animals, says that it so happens that practically all fish have a rapid growth, but the crow-fish most of all. It spawns close to shore, in places full of sea-weed and leaves. Speusippus, in the second book of Similars, says that the black-tail and the crow-fish resemble each other. Numenius, in The Art of Angling, says: “Easily may you pull in also the speckled crow-fish.” Perhaps, therefore, the speckled-beauties mentioned in Epicharmus's Muses are crow-fishes. He says: “Speckled-beauties and floaters, and dog -tongues.” Yet, in The Marriage of Hebe, he mentions the speckled-beauties as though they were different: “File-fish and wasses and dark-gleaming crow-fishes, speckled-beauties and floaters, and dog -tongues.” Again, Euthydemus, in his work On Salt Meats, says that the crow-fish is by many called saperda. A similar statement is found in Heracleon of Ephesus and again in Phylotimus's Art of Cookery. But that the saperda, like the crow-fish, is also called platistakos, is attested by Parmenon of Rhodes in the first book of his Instruction in Cookery. Aristophanes speaks of “black-finned crow-fishes” in The Telmessians. A diminutive form of the noun (Coracinus) occurs in Pherecrates' Forgetful Man: [309a] “Keeping company with your crow-fishlets and your spratlets.” Amphis in Lamentation: “Anyone who eats a crow-fish from the sea when he can have a grey-fish has no brains.” But the experienced know that the Nile crow-fish are sweet and fleshy and have a good flavour besides. They got the name Coracinus from the continual motion of their eyes (corae). But the Alexandrians call it broad-fish from its extraordinary contour.
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§ 7.82 The Carp. — This also, according to Aristotle's account, is of the carnivorous and gregarious type. It has a tongue which is attached to the top, not the under part, of the mouth. Dorion, who enumerates it among lake and river fish, writes as follows: “Scaly, which some call carp.”
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§ 7.83 Gobies. — Very juicy, as Hicesius says, excellent in taste, easily eliminated, of little nourishment, and full of humours. The whiter varieties are better than the black in taste. The flesh of the yellow gobies is rather loose and skinny; they also produce in digestion less and thinner juice, but they are more nourishing on account of their size. Diocles says that those of them which inhabit rocky waters are soft-fleshed. Numenius, in The Art of Angling, calls them cothi: “Or a parrot-fish, or fat and very shameless goby (cothus).” And Sophron in The Rustic speaks of “goby-cleaners,” and perhaps from this word gave the name Cothonias to the tunny -chaser's son. Moreover, it is the Sicilian Greeks who call the goby cothon, according to Nicander of Colophon in his Glossary and Apollodorus in his work On Sophron. But Epicharmus has the usual name (cobios) for them in The Marriage of Hebe: “Spike-tailed sting-rays and very fat gobies too.” Antiphanes, while commending gobies, also shows where the best come from in these lines from Timon: “I have just returned, after making lavish purchases for the wedding celebration. The Pennyworth of frankincense I shall distribute among all the gods and goddesses; to the heroes, the honey-cakes. But for us mortals I have bought some gobies. And when I asked that burglar, the fishmonger, to throw in an extra one free, he replied,'I'll throw in its — deme; those fish come from Phalerum! Others would try to sell you, I'm sure, gobies from Otryne.'” Menander, in The Man from Ephesus: “One of the fishmongers was just now pricing his gobies at four shillings... too much.” River gudgeons are mentioned by Dorion in his work On Fishes.
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§ 7.84 Pipers. — Epicharmus: “And glistening pipers, all of which we split along the back, then bake and season them and eat in little bits.” Dorion, also, says that they should be split along the back and baked, seasoned with herbs, cheese, silphium, salt, and oil; they should be turned and basted with oil, sprinkling a little salt under it, and when taken off should be sprinkled with vinegar. Numenius calls it red from the fact that it is red, thus: “At one time a red piper or a few small fry, at another time a sea-lizard.”
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§ 7.85 [310a] Dog-shark. — Concerning these the Hesiod or Theognis of epicures, Archestratus, speaks. (Now Theognis also was interested in high living, as he himself testifies in these lines: “When the Sun in the sky directs his steeds with uncloven hoofs and announces midday, then may we pause from our dinner, abundant as the heart's desire bids one, indulging the belly in every good thing. And let the comely Laconian maid quickly carry out the hand-basin, and bring in the chaplets in her soft hands.” And this poet does not even disown paederasty. At any rate he says: “If, Academus, you should propose a contest in singing a lovely hymn of praise, and as prize set before us a lad with the fair bloom of youth, who should be mine or thine after we had fought for the meed of poetic skill, then would you discover how much better mules are than asses.”) Well, as I was saying, Archestratus, in those delightful Counsels of his, advises “In this city of Torone you should buy the belly-slices of the dog -shark, cut from the hollow parts below. Then sprinkle them with caraway-seed and a little salt, and bake. Put nothing else, my friend, upon it, unless it be yellow oil. But after it is baked, you may then fetch a sauce and all those condiments which go with it. But whatsoever you stew within the ribs of the hollow casserole, mix no water from a sacred spring, nor wine-vinegar, but simply pour over it oil and dry caraway and some fragrant leaves all together. Cook it over the hot embers without letting the flame touch it and stir it diligently lest you unwittingly scorch it. Nay, not many mortals know of this heavenly viand or consent to eat it — all those mortals, that is, who possess the puny soul of the booby-bird, and are smitten with palsy because, as they say, the creature is a man-eater. But every fish loves human flesh if it can but get it.' A part taken from this fish is what the Romans call tursio; it is the sweetest and most luxurious part.
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§ 7.86 Sea-bass. — These fish, according to Aristotle's account, are solitary and carnivorous. They have a bony tongue, closely attached, and a triangular heart. In the fifth book of The Parts of Animals he says that they, like the mullets and the gilt-heads, spawn chiefly where rivers flow. They spawn in the winter and spawn twice. Hicesius says that sea-bass are well-flavoured but not very nourishing, and inferior as regards elimination, but are rated first in excellence of taste. The fight got its name (labrax) from its voracity (labrotes). It is said, too, that it is superior to all other fishes in sagacity, showing cunning in contriving its escape. Hence the comic poet Aristophanes says: [311a] ”Sea-bass, the clever est of all fish." Alcaeus, the lyric poet, says that it swims on the surface of the water. And the wise Archestratus: “But when thou comest to Miletus, take from the Gaeson a mullet of the cephalus variety, and the sea-bass, child of the gods. For they are at their best there; that is the nature of the place. Many others there be that are fatter, in glorious Calydon, or in wealth-bearing Ambracia, or in Lake Bolbe. But they have not the fragrant fat of the belly, or fat so pungent. The Milesian, my comrade, are of wonderful excellence. When cleaned of their scales, bake them whole gently and serve without any greasy pickle. But let no Syracusan or Italian Greek come nigh thee when thou art busy with this dish, for they understand not how to treat good fish, but they spoil them by wrongfully putting cheese over all, and sprinkling them with flowing vinegar and a pickle of silphium. For all the thrice-damned rock fishes, they are the best at disposing of them understandingly, and they can prepare for a dinner, with refined skill, many kinds of fish in greasy fol-de-rol of sauces.”
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§ 7.87 Aristophanes, in The Knights, also mentions the sea-bass of Miletus as superior when he speaks as follows: “You shall not go on the rampage after devouring Milesian sea-bass.” And in The Lemnian Women: “To buy no head of sea-bass, no crawfish,” evidently because the brain of the sea-bass is excellent, as is that of the grey-fish. And Eubulus also says in The Nurses: “Not sumptuously, but simply; whatever is required for piety's sake — some little cuttle-fish or squids, small tentacles of a polyp, a mullet, a paunch, a haggis, some beestings, the head of a sea-bass, of good size.” Now the Gaeson mentioned by Archestratus is the Gaesonian Marsh, which unites with the sea between Priene and Miletus, as Neanthes of Cyzicus records in the sixth book of his Hellenica. But Ephorus, in his fifth book, says that the Gaeson is a river which flows into a marsh in the neighborhood of Priene. Archippus mentions sea-bass in The Fishes, and says:'An Egyptian, Hermaeus, is the most rascally pedlar of fish. Why! He forcibly peels off the skin of monk-fish and Dogfish and offers them for sale, and he disembowels sea-bass."
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§ 7.88 The Latus. — This fish, according to Archestratus, is best in Italy. He says: “ Scylla's strait in wooded Italy contains the glorious latus, a wonderful food.” Yet the lati which grow in the Nile river are found to have a size which extends even to more than two hundred pounds. This fish is very white and sweet, no matter how it is prepared, being similar to the sheat-fish found in the Danube. The Nile also produces many other kinds of fish all of them very good, especially the crow-fish. There are, in fact, many kinds of these. [312a] The Nile produces as well the fish called Maeotae, mentioned by Archippus in The Fishes in these words: “The Maeotae and salted crow-fishes and sheat-fishes.” There are many Maeotae round the Black Sea, deriving their name from the Maeotic Marsh. The fishes of the Nile, if I can still recall them after many years' absence from the country, are: Belectric ray (sweetest of all), schall, mackerel, bream, pike, allabes, sheat, shilbe, gudgeon, eel, herring, mullet, blind-fish, scale-fish, globe-fish, and grey mullet. But there are many others besides.
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§ 7.89 The Ray. — This is also called file-fish. Its flesh is white, according to Epaenetus in The Art of Cookery. Plato, in The Sophists: “Though it be a Dogfish, or a ray, or an eel.”
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§ 7.90 Murries. — Theophrastus, in his work On Land Animals, says that the eel and the murry can live a long time out of water because they have small gills and take in but little water. Hicesius says that murries are as nourishing as eels, not even excepting conger-eels. Aristotle, in the second book of The Parts of Animals, says that the murry takes on a rapid growth from a small beginning, that it has jagged teeth, and that it spawns small eggs in any season. Epicharmus in The Muses calls them myraenae without the s in these words: “Naught of fat conger-eels or murries (myraenae) was absent from his store.” Similarly also Sophron. But Plato (or Cantharus ), in The Alliance, has it with the s: “There's a ray and a murry ( Smyraena ) besides.” Dorion, in his work On Fishes, says that the river murry has only one spiny fin, similar to that of the oniscus known as gallarias. Andreas in his treatise On Poisonous Animals, says that only those murries have a fatal bite which come from a viper, and they are less round and speckled. Nicander, in Theriaca: “But there is the terror of the murry, since it often bites the wretched fisher-folk and sends them in headlong flight from their skiffs into the sea when it suddenly darts up from the hold; if, to be sure, it is true that the murry leaves her pasturage in the sea and consorts with venomous vipers on dry land.” But Andreas, in his work On Popular Superstitions, says that it is not true that the murry moves into lagoons and there mingles with the viper; for vipers do not feed in a lagoon, preferring sandy deserts. Nevertheless Sostratus in his work On Animals (it is in two books) agrees as to this mingling.
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§ 7.91 The Male Murry. — The male murry, as Aristotle declares in his fifth book of The Parts of Animals, is different from the Smyraena. For she is speckled and not so strong, but he is smooth-skinned and powerful, and has a colour like that of the wryneck, and teeth both inside and outside. Dorion says that the male murry has no spiny bones in its flesh, but is available for use throughout, and extraordinarily tender; that there are two kinds of them; some are black, others rather reddish, the black being superior. And Archestratus, the philosopher-voluptuary, says: [313a] “Between... and Italy, under the waves of the narrow strait, lives the murry called the floater. If it ever be caught, buy it, for it is a wonderful food.”

Via ToposText (topostext.org), a project of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation created by Brady Kiesling. Translated by Charles Burton Gulick (1868-1962). Composed ca. 228 CE. Licence: public domain. Source.