CHAPTER XVIII 



THE NINE FISH MOST HIGHLY PRIZED 



I SUBJOIN a list of the nine fish which found most favour in 

 Greece and Rome. This, although necessarily rough and tenta- 

 tive, can (I believe), be justified by an examination of our 

 authors. 1 To anyone who on the strength of one author may 

 be dissatisfied with the place allotted to a particular fish, I 

 would point out that since the oracles of taste vary with the 

 ages, it is essential to hold in mind the exact date at which a 

 passage was written. 



Then, again, the Greek saw not eye to eye, or ate not 

 tooth to tooth, with the Roman. The verdict of the opsopha- 

 gists or, as these often differed, of the plain people of one 

 century not infrequently reversed that of the last. 



As with us at the present day it is hardly feasible to adjudge 

 definitely to what fish belongs the primacy of palate, so was 

 it with the ancients. In the case of the Greeks the task is 

 impossible. Every one of our nine can boast at least half a dozen 

 champions. Then, again, as regards the epoch of individual 

 supremacy we are without any guiding statement, such as Pliny's 

 that in his time the Scams was reckoned the king of fish. 2 



^ Any apparent resemblance in this list, or in this book, to Badham's book 

 is easily accounted for by the fact that both derive much from the same source, 

 he without any, I with due acknowledgment to the httle known volume by 

 Nonnius (Antwerp, 1616), which itself draws largely from Athenaeus, Xenocrates, 

 etc. The sequence of sentences, turns of expression, choice of epithets in 

 Badham sometimes so strongly suggest Nonnius, that it is a case of yet another 

 miracle of unconscious absorption' — -from a rare book written in Latin 238 

 years pre^'/iously ! — or of — well, iElianism. I hesitated for a long time from 

 even hinting such unacknowledged extraction by an author to whom two 

 generations have owed much pleasure and more knowledge. Were it not 

 for the inadequacy of his references and for his bursting, Wegg-like, into 

 poetry, which doubles the length and sometimes obscures the sense of the 

 original Greek or Latin, Badham would be delightful reading. 



* Bk. IX. 29. 



254 



