Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

:264 THE NINE FISH MOST HIGHLY PRIZEDwere divinatory pebbles shaken in the glittering caldron ofApollo. These sacred associations are all suggested by thelanguage of our enthusiast" It is not meet for every man to taste,Nor see it with his eyes. Nay, he must holdThe hollow woven-work of marsh-grown wickerAnd rattle pebbles in his glittering count."But the words, though reminiscent of actual cult, have a doubleentendre and are meant to bear a more mundane meaning. Inplain prose, then, " it needs a wealthy man with capaciouscash-box (literally a basket, fiscus) and a rattUng big bankaccount(pebbles to reckon L. S. D.) to afford such a luxuryas this! "Not far behind it among Greek epicures came the Glaucus,possibly the sea-grayling, of whose " most precious head "Anaxandrides is enamoured, and Antiphanes and JuliusPollux write with appreciative gusto. But are not all thingsabout the Glaucus written in the seventh book of the DeipnosophistcB,chapters 45, 46, and 47 ?9. The Buglossus, or Lingulaca {Solea vulgaris, the " Sole " ^),alike at Rome and at Athens the most prized, if not the mostlauded in verse, of the Flatfish, held rank as high as any,actually far higher than its so-called cousin, the Passer.Although Xenocrates and Galen differ as to the firmnessor reverse of its flesh—I wonder whether the latter got holdof a Lemon Sole 1—the ancient agrees with the modern facultyin accounting it " very nourishing, and of most pleasantflavour." 2 It then as now was almost always the first fishordered, " as soon as men be sick or illtime and words.at ease " in Plutarch's1 See Stephanus, Thesaurus GrcBcce Lingucv, ii. 347 c-d,2 Badham (plagiarising Blaikie), on p. 364—in " Galen, Xenocrates,Diphilus speak disparagingly of the Sole," is inaccurate. Xenocrates termsits flesh indigestible. Galen states that it is quite the reverse, and commendsit highly as a diet. Diphilus does not hesitate to declare that the Sole aflordsabundant nourishment and is most pleasing to the taste. Cf. Nonnius, p. 89.In the case of a Sole with its customarily modest dimensions it is not easyto hearken unto the command, which was laid down in the twelfth centuryfor the benefit of Robert, the so-called King of England, " Anglorum Regiscripsit schola tota Salerni," by " the Schoole of Salernes most learned and