Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

2:ANTONIA'S RECORD—FISH-BREEDING 229its savage nature no other could inhabit the same vivarium, themany stories of its tameness and dociUty ?—that one of thedirest of imprecations ran that in the underworld your enemy's^lungs should be mangled by Murcence !In times preceding these infatuated extravagant ages, thepurpose for which vivaria were first created was steadfastlykept in mind and wonderfully advanced by practical pisciculturists.From being a mere pond for keeping fish alive tillneeded for the table, vivaria developed in the course of time intospawning grounds.The pisciculturists went even farther. They turned lakesand rivers into natural vivaria by depositing in them not onlyadult fish, but the spawn of all such species as are in the habit,although born at sea, of pushing some distance up estuariesand streams. Columella instances specially the rivers Velinus,Sabatinus, Ciminus, and Volsinius as examples of the greatsuccess of this experiment in fish propagation.Comacchio on the Adriatic, from its extraordinary advantagesof position and of fish-food, can hardly have escapedbeing utiHsed for similar purposes by the Romans. For many1 Aristophanes, Frogs, 474 f., Taprriala (xvpaiva, a great dainty (Varro,ap. Gell., 6. 16. 5), is of course meant to suggest Tartarus. Contrast with this,the popularity of the fish, as attested by its frequent mention, especially inPlautus, and by the fact which Helbig {Camp. Wandgemdlde (Leipzig, 1868),Index, p. 496, 's.v. " Murane ") brings out, that on the mural decorations ofPompeii no fish finds more frequent representation.2 De Re Rustica, VIII. 16, " Quamobrem non solum piscinas, quas ipsiconstruxerant, frequentabant sed etiam quos rerum natura lacus feceratconvectis marinis seminibus replebant. Et lupos auratasque procreaveruntac siqua sint alia piscium genera dulcis undae tolerantia."" What fish Columella meant by Aurata is not settled : it is certainly notthe " goldfish." as some translate, for they are not sea-fish. Facciolati, aftersaying that the name came from the fish having golden eyebrows, goes on that" some folk deny that he can be identified with the gilthead or dory.' "' ' *Perhaps the fish is one of the Sparidcs group, which pass at certain seasons ofthe year from the Mediterranean into salt-water fish marshes, as observed byAristotle, and confirmed by M. Duhamel. Or can it be the smelt ?Faber, pp. 37, 38, " of fresh- water fishes, twenty-one species, among themthe fresh-water Perch, are also common to the sea : amongst the sea fishes,the flounder frequents brackish water, and sometimes enters the riversothers only occasionally frequent the lagoons and brackish waters, among themthe Gilthead," a statement incidentally confirmed by Martial (Ep. XIII. 90)in his helluous pronujxiamento, that practically the only really good Aurata wasthat whose haunt was the Lucrine lake, and whose whole world was its oyster !of which fish Martial (XIII. go) seems only appreciative,"... cui solus erit concha Lucrina cibus."