156 TURBOT. 



Turbots of tlie largest size; and Martial refers to a feast 



wliere 



the enormous fish 



Was wider than the broadest dish. 



A more remarkable circumstance connected with its ancient 

 history, as significant of foolish desjJotism on the one hand, 

 and on the other of the degradation of a once illustrious 

 assembly, is that in which the Emperor Domitian is said to 

 have summoned a meeting of the Senate, or rather they 

 assembled of their own accord, when the object of the meeting 

 was found to be — that they might advise the sovereign what 

 should be the sort and size of the vessel in which might 

 be cooked a mighty Tiu'bot that had been brought to him. 

 It must be confessed, however, that this oft-repeated story 

 aj^pears to stand in need of confirmation, since, while it is 

 mentioned by a satirist, it is not referred to by Suetonius, 

 who has shewn no reserve in speaking of the bad deeds of 

 this jjrince; and who, if it were true, cannot be believed to 

 have been insensible to the insult thus offered to, or the 

 disgrace incurred by the nobility of the empire. 



For the more ready supply of this much-coveted delicacy, 

 Turbots were joreserved in ponds of salt-water; and this seems 

 to have been the more necessary, since there is reason to 

 believe that this fish is not very generally distributed in the 

 Mediterranean. Dr. Gulia, in his account of the fishes known 

 at Malta, regards it as of casual and rare occurrence in that 

 island; and it is not named by Kafincsque among the fishes of 

 Palermo. 



Attempts have been made to prove that the fish referred to 

 in the satirical poetry of Juvenal, as also in other ancient 

 authors, under the name of Khombus, and among the Greeks 

 as Psetta, was not the Turbot, but the Brill, another species 

 which comes next in the order of our enumeration. There 

 is much probability that these fishes, wliich nearly resemble 

 each other, were often by the ancients confounded together; 

 but the particular reason why the Brill has been judged the 

 more likely to have been the true Rhombus of antiquity 

 appears to be that there were a few fishes, among which 

 were the Phombus and Asellus, which were believed to conceal 

 themselves in the sand or mud at the bottom, and there 



