FISH-SAUCES— MACKEREL'S BEARD 213 



The various sauces known in Latin are too numerous to 

 recite. 1 The two best, although the authorities are far from 

 unanimous, seem to have been made out of the gills and 

 entrails of the Mackerel and Tunny. The components of one 

 recipe justify Robinson. In addition to other odds and ends, 

 its outstanding feature was the gore and entrails of the Tunny, 

 crammed in a vessel hermetically closed, and only drawn off 

 when decomposition was complete ! No wonder Plato the 

 Comedian complains ..." drenching them in putrid garum 

 they will suffocate me." 



Alec, like garum, once the name of a fish (possibly the 

 anchovy), came to signify only the sauce made from it, and 

 subsequently from other cheap fish. It differed from garum 

 chiefly from being thicker, and judging from the recipes 

 probably nastier. You took first the dregs and faeculence 

 remaining after the garum liquor had been decanted : to 

 them, add turbid brine, sodden bodies of the fish, etc., and 

 then you have the semi-solid compound, from which alec was 

 derived, not inaptly yclept " Putrilago." 2 



If, as Badham (p. 69) asserts but not convincingly, garum 

 a double duty served, as a sauce and as a liqueur, the price of 

 the latter was exorbitant, over £3 a gallon. ^ Martial [Ep., XIII. 

 102) in 



" Expirantis adhuc scombri de sanguine primo 

 Accipe fastosum, munera car a, garum," 



calls attention to the expensive nature of his present, for 



1 Pauly-Winowa, Real-Enc, VII. 841-9, has nine columns on the subject, 

 ending with a bibliography ! 



* Horace, Sat., II. 4, 73; Martial, III. 77,5; and V. 11., 94. The greatest 

 delicacy of all these mixtures, the so-called Garum Sociorunt, exported all 

 over the Empire from Carteia, New Carthage, etc., was compounded of the 

 intestines of the Spanish Mackerel. The absence of beard in the Mackerel is 

 accounted for by this fish being convicted of treason against the reigning 

 Monarch, and condemned to perpetual loss of beard. Keller, op. cit., 326, 

 omits a reference to this Fischeprozess, but cites the habit of writers — especially 

 Bucolic — explaining any natural curiosity by putting into poetic or other 

 shape a legend or Volkslied dealing with the point, e.g. ^sop's fable why the 

 Camel lacks horns. 



3 Pliny, XXXI. 43: "singulis milibus nummum permutantibus congios 

 fere binos." Ibid., 44 : " transiit deinde in luxuriam creveruntque genera ad 

 infinitum, sicuti garum ad colorem mulsi veteris, adeoque suavitatem dilutum, 

 ut bibi possit." Cf. Martial, Ep., XIII. 82. 2 : " Nobile nunc sitio luxuriosa 

 garum, and CaeliusAurelianus " {De Chronicis, II.; De Para/ysi), on the liquor 

 extracted from the Scomber. 



