Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

2o6FISH MANIA—VITELLIUS—APICIUS—COOKSlampoon the gluttony and extravagance connected withThis limitation of the wordopsophagy, or the eating of fish.is explained by Plutarch {Symp., IV. 4)," fish alone above allthe rest of the dainties is called o^Ijov, because it is moreexcellent than all the rest," and characteristically defendedby Athen., VII. 4.1The banquets of the Greeks 2 seem to have outdone eventhose of Imperial Rome. Both must have weighed heavy,alike on table and on chest.At these, writes Badham, " although all flesh was there,although quadrupeds mustered strong, and a whole heavenof poultry, still it was the flesh of fishes that ever boreaway the palm ; they were the soul of the supper, and thenumber of kinds brought together at one repast was surprisinglygreat. From the poetic bills of fare preserved by AthenaeusI have verified twenty-six species of fish in one Attic supper,and not less than forty at another 3! On the fish course beingbrought in, the appearance of the banqueting hall soon becamemore splendid : hardware made way for solid silver : goldbreadbaskets were now handed round : the flower of youthof both sexes entered bearing bits of pumice, drugs againstdrunkenness, and trays full of chaplets of Violets and Amaranth,while others hung up that mystic flower, the present of the1 Xenophon, in speaking of a man as " an opsophagist and the biggestdolt possible," evidently does not subscribe to the pleasant theory that fishfoodincreases the grey matter of our brain. Holland's translation of Plutarchis not complimentary ": hence it is we call those gluttons who love bellycheerso well opsophagists."* In charity to the Greeks may I hazard the plea (the rules of even theLaw Courts are now sensibly relaxed) that their delight in Brobdingnagianmeals may have originated in the days when their gods walked with menon earth, or grew up later as the sincerest form of flattery ? No one inHomer keeps his eye more skinned or his nose more active than a god, whenhecatombs " are about." The Olympians flit constantly to .(Ethiopia andare impatient of any business, mundane or heavenly, which interferes with atrip thither, when with the keen scent (or vision ?) of vultures, they smell(or see ?) hecatombs in preparation in the heart of the Dark Continent, wherethe inhabitants, as a scholiast tells us, kept a feast for twelve days, one forevery god! See A. Shewan's Homeric Games at an Ancient St. Andrews(Edinburgh, 1911), p. 116—a most delightful and destructive skit at theexpense of The Higher Criticism of Homer !» The greatest number of fish which I can count at any feast mentionedin Athenaeus (in Bk. IV. 13) amounts to only thirty-two ! Badham (p. 587)omits to state that the whole poem is nothing but a parody, chiefly of Homer,by Matron, and is not a " Bill of fare of an Attic supper " in any sense.i