NONNIJJS— GOURMETS— DOCTORS 163 



because it brings forth its young thrice a year ^ and second, 

 because it eats tlie sea-liare, who bears death to man, 2 



Nonnius (p. 81) informs us that the followers of Pythagoras 

 were forbidden to eat the Scams because it was Tfjvyi]<l)aynr, 

 i.e. an eater of grain or grapes, whence or how obtained he 

 vouchsafes not to inform us.3 It is of interest to read in 

 Faber {op. cit., p. 27) thattlie common seal {Phoca vitulina) is 

 believed at the present time to go ashore in the Ombla Valley 

 in quest of grapes during the vintage, and is also said to commit 

 great havoc in the vineyards of Sardinia and Sicily ! 



But for once Nonnius naps ! Although, according to 

 tradition, Pythagoras proscribed all fish, three kinds only are 

 expressly and by name forbidden (in Symbols 18, 19, 60), viz. the 

 Melamirus, the Erythinius, and the Sepia ; nothing is said 

 about the Scarus. 



I presume that the error arose from Nonnius confusing a 

 passage in Plutarch {Synip., VIII. 8, 3.) where a propos of 

 Pythagoras, Tfwyiicjxiyog is associated with the Scarus, but in 

 exactly the opposite sense, " for we can not call the Mullet 

 corn-destroying, or the Scarus grape-eating," etc. 



Again our Nonnius ! By a passage from Pliny, XXXII. 3, 

 he attempts to clear the Scarus and throw the blame for cholera 

 on the Mullet. 



But Pliny distinctly states that alone of all animals the fish 



^ Cf. Oppian, I. 590. 



2 ^lian, XVI. 19, writes that these sea-hares were so poisonous, that if a 

 man touched one thrown up on the shore with his hand, he shortly died, iinless 

 medicine was at once administered. So poisonous indeed are they, that " if 

 you touch them with but your walking stick, there is the same danger which 

 contact with a lizard evokes," which in II. 5 is described TfQu7)Kev 6 Kvpios rfys 

 Avyou\ Nero, to " mak siccar " (like Kirkpatrick with the Red Comyn), employed 

 the sea-hare as a dainty for friends whose deaths he earnestly desired. Cf. 

 Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, VI. 32. 



=* Nonnius, always the alert defender of his favourite fash, ingeniously 

 suggests that the scarus of Pythagoras was not our famous scarus, because as 

 this fish, even during the Augustan period, \\as extremely rare in Italian 

 waters, there seems little necessity for its being banned by the " Hyperborean 

 Apollo of the Crotoniates " in B.C. 540-510. Numa, apparently influenced 

 by Pythagorean precepts, forbade (according to Cassius Hemina, Pliny, 

 XXX'II. 10) all scaleless fish being offered to the gods. Festus, p. 253, a. 20, 

 however, states that in such offerings it was allowable to present all fish with 

 scales, except the Scarus, which was sacrificiable, and most acceptable to the 

 god of the peasants, Hercules, whose " swinish gluttony | Crams and blasphemes 

 his feeder." For squaram, Midler suggests scaritm, while Lindsay prints 

 squatum, the skate. 



