Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

^222 FISH IN SACRIFICES—VIVARIA—ARCHIMEDESalthough itasdid not bulk so big in early Mediterranean religionL. Siret would make out. iThe taxes or duties derived from fish or fishing furnished thepeculiar of the Temples at Delos, Ephesus, and elsewhere : atByzantium and some other places they went to the city. Afterthe Roman conquests these imposts were paid not to the cities(Cyzicus and other places were the exceptions), but to the State,and were gathered by the intermediary " publicans." 2With stories before him, such as those of the suppers recordedby the dozen in Athenaeus, and given to and by the EmperorVitellius, for which the fish were brought in ships of war fromthe Carpathian Sea and the Straits of Spain, it is no wonderthat a modern author isdriven to conclude that the ancientsthought more of the edible than the sporting qualities of thefish. They ransacked the habitable globe for side-dishes, butdid not trouble themselves about the precepts of Mrs. Glasse.Apart from this ransacking of the globe, the Romansdeveloped, as the demand for fish by rich and poor alike grewever greater, the Egyptian and Assyrian vivarium to a marvellousextent.Built at first (as Columella avers ^) simply for the purposeof supplying fresh fish for the table, they found such favourthat no self-respecting Roman could afford to be without hisvivarium. With the rich they were the occasion of most costlyostentation and extravagant expenditure.Whether Sergius Aurata (or Grata) took or not his cognomenfrom the fish Aurata, all writers identify him as the first tobuild a vivarium for oysters. From their sale, from the incomederived from the vapour baths {pensiles balineas), of which hewas also the pioneer, and from the villas erected on his property,close to Baiae, the baths, and the oysters, he amassed an- L. Siret, Questions de chronologic et ethnographic ibe'riques (Paris, 1913),Index, s.v. Poulpe.*'^ Cf. Tacitus, Annals, XII. 63.' De Re Rustica, VIII. 16, " Our ancestors shut up saltwater fishes also infresh waters. For that ancient rustic progeny of Romulus and Numa valuedthemselves mightily upon this and thought it a great matter, that, if a rurallife were compared with a city hfe, it did not come short in any part of richeswhatsoever."* " Orata," according to Festus, p. 196, 26 ff. Lindsay, " genus piscisappellatur a colore auri, quod rustici ornm dicebant."