Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

—;268 THE NINE FISH MOST HIGHLY PRIZEDbeing found to contain food.for by the great length of its gut,This perhaps may be accountedthroughout which the filmygarbage and vegetable matter forming its chief diet are inconspicuouslydisposed. " The Cestreus is fasting " evenbecame a proverb and was appUed to men who lived with strictregard to justice, because—as Athenaeus explains—the fish isnever carnivorous. ^(F)The use in cases of adultery of the Cestreus in Greeceand the Mugil at Rome, if not singular among fish, is striking ;for it survived into the civilised age of Catullus (" percurrentraphanique mugilesque," 2) and of Juvenal (" Quosdam moechoset mugilis intrat," ^). Indeed, traces of the same barbariccustom still exist among certain tribes on the West Coast ofAfrica.Gifford writes :" the being clystered (as Holyday expressesit) by a Mugil was allowed by no written law, but it seems tohave been an old and approved method of gratifying privatevengeance. Isidorus thinks that the fish was selected forthis purpose on account of its anti-venereal properties, but heconfounds the Mugilis with the Mullet." *From The Fisheries of the Adriatic, a most elaborate Reportby Faber on the kinds and market values of the fishes of thatsea, I give the class allotted to the fish of my list. It mustonce more be impressed on the reader that these eight fish(for of course Faber does not deal with the kuttpoq), were themost renowned in Greece and Rome. Of these, five onlythe Mullet, Acipenser, Rhombus, Lupus, and Sole—are in Class I.the Asellus and MurcBna in II. ;the Scarus, and it could notbe lower, in III.sThe classification disappoints and depresses, especially inthe case of the vaunted and lovable Scarus. It tempts, however,to an insoluble sum in proportion. If about these and^ Aristophanes, and half a dozen other comedians cited by Athen., VII. 78.* XV. 19.3 Sat., X. 317.* Further details must be sought in Robinson Ellis, A Commentary onCatullus (Oxford, 1876), p. 46, and Schneider, op. cit,, 69.^ Although these five must be reckoned in the first class everywhere, noneof the five or other Mediterranean fishes can compare in taste with theirnorthern represeiatatives»