2o6 FISH MANIA— VITELLIUS—APICIUS— COOKS 



lampoon the gluttony and extravagance connected with 

 opsophagy, or the eating of fish. This limitation of the word 

 is explained by Plutarch {Symp., IV. 4), " fish alone above all 

 the rest of the dainties is called o^Ijov, because it is more 

 excellent than all the rest," and characteristically defended 

 by Athen., VII. 4.1 



The banquets of the Greeks 2 seem to have outdone even 

 those of Imperial Rome. Both must have weighed heavy, 

 alike on table and on chest. 



At these, writes Badham, " although all flesh was there, 

 although quadrupeds mustered strong, and a whole heaven 

 of poultry, still it was the flesh of fishes that ever bore 

 away the palm ; they were the soul of the supper, and the 

 number of kinds brought together at one repast was surprisingly 

 great. From the poetic bills of fare preserved by Athenaeus 

 I have verified twenty-six species of fish in one Attic supper, 

 and not less than forty at another ! 3 On the fish course being 

 brought in, the appearance of the banqueting hall soon became 

 more splendid : hardware made way for solid silver : gold 

 breadbaskets were now handed round : the flower of youth 

 of both sexes entered bearing bits of pumice, drugs against 

 drunkenness, and trays full of chaplets of Violets and Amaranth, 

 while others hung up that mystic flower, the present of the 



1 Xenophon, in speaking of a man as " an opsophagist and the biggest 

 dolt possible," evidently does not subscribe to the pleasant theory that fish- 

 food increases the grey matter of our brain. Holland's translation of Plutarch 

 is not complimentary : " hence it is we call those gluttons who love belly- 

 cheer so well opsophagists." 



* In charity to the Greeks may I hazard the plea (the rules of even the 

 Law Courts are now sensibly relaxed) that their delight in Brobdingnagian 

 meals may have originated in the days when their gods walked with men 

 on earth, or grew up later as the sincerest form of flattery ? No one in 

 Homer keeps his eye more skinned or his nose more active than a god, when 

 hecatombs " are about." The Olympians flit constantly to .(Ethiopia and 

 are impatient of any business, mundane or heavenly, which interferes with a 

 trip thither, when with the keen scent (or vision ?) of vultures, they smell 

 (or see ?) hecatombs in preparation in the heart of the Dark Continent, where 

 the inhabitants, as a scholiast tells us, kept a feast for twelve days, one for 

 every god! See A. Shewan's Homeric Games at an Ancient St. Andrews 

 (Edinburgh, 1911), p. 116 — a most delightful and destructive skit at the 

 expense of The Higher Criticism of Homer ! 



» The greatest number of fish which I can count at any feast mentioned 

 in Athenaeus (in Bk. IV. 13) amounts to only thirty-two ! Badham (p. 587) 

 omits to state that the whole poem is nothing but a parody, chiefly of Homer, 

 by Matron, and is not a " Bill of fare of an Attic supper " in any sense. 



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