CHAPTER XIV 



INFATUATION FOR FISH — EXTRAVAGANT PRICES — COSTLY 

 ENTERTAINMENTS — VITELLIUS — CLEOPATRA — API- 

 CIUS — COOKS — SAUCES 



Leaving now the Lore of fishing among the Greeks and Romans, 

 let us turn, before examining the nature and number of their 

 Lures, to their estimation of Fish as a food. 



We found, it will be remembered, that the Homeric poems 

 make no mention of fish being served at a banquet of the 

 heroes, or even appearing on the tables of people of position. 

 Only poor or starving folk ate fish. Although fish became later 

 an insensate luxury, the Greeks at first apparently abstained 

 from all fish caught in fresh water, except the eels of Lake 

 Copais, then as now far-famed. ^ 



This abstention from fresh- water fish originated (according to 

 Plutarch) in the behef that every spring and every stream was 

 sacred to some god or nymph, to catch whose property or 

 progeny — the fish in them — would be an act of impiety. 2 

 This sounds like a laboured explanation of a fact really due 

 to other causes. One of these is brought out clearly in Geikie. 

 When noticing the difference which existed between the 

 Greek and the Roman interest in and feeling for the sea, he, 

 or rather Professor Mackail, attributes it largely to a question 

 of food supply. 3 



1 Of. Chapter IV. Also Plutarch, 5yw/>., VIII. S. and Aristoph., Ach., 

 880. 



2 Akin to this we have the special prohibition — unique as far as I know — 

 whereby priests at the temple of Leptis abstained from eating sea fish, because 

 Poseidon was god of the sea, and owner and protector of its denizens. 

 Plutarch, De solerL an., 35, 11. At other of his temples, e.g. in Laconia, the 

 fate awaiting a violator of the sacred fish was that common to poachers of 

 similar holy waters, death. 



' The Love vj Nature amoug the Romans (London, 1912), p. 300, n. i. 



