ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 47 



omnibus sufficiens vomitando consuetudine," it is easy to 

 understand bow vast numbers might have been consumed 

 by one oyster-eater. The " dull, unrelenting Tiberius," 

 " the furious Caligula," "the profligate and cruel Nero," 

 were all probably consumers of oysters to a large amount. 



J. J * 



Tiberius, or, as he was sometimes jocularly called, 

 " Biberius," from his drinking propensities, actually 

 presented a person of the name of Asellius Sabinus with 

 200 sesterces for a dialogue, in which he represents a 

 contest between mushrooms, beccaficos, oysters, and 

 thrushes, as to which has the best claim to superiority. 



" When the Emperor Trajan was in Parthia," as we 

 are told by Athenaeus, " at a distance of many days' 

 journey from the sea, Apicius Coelius," who must not be 

 confounded with the writer of a book of cookery which 



j 



bears his name, "sent him fresh oysters, which he had 

 kept so by a clever contrivance of his own ; real oysters, 

 not like the sham anchovies which the cook of Nicomedes, 

 King of the Bithynians, made in imitation of the real fish, 

 and set before the King, when he expressed a wish for 

 anchovies, he, too, at the time being a long way from the 



sea.' 



" This mode," says Mr. M. S. Lovell, in his valuable 

 and interesting " Edible Mollusca," in allusion to Apicius' 

 *' clever contrivance," " may possibly have been the same 

 as that which is practised in Italy at the present day, 

 where, as Poli tells us, they are carried from Tarentum to 

 Naples, in bags, tightly packed with snow, which not only 

 by its coolness preserves them, but also, by preventing 

 them from opening their bivalves, enables them to retain 

 in the shells sufficient moisture to preserve their lives for a 

 long period, (q] 



(q) Poli, " Testacea Utriusque Siciliae." 



