228 FISH IN SACRIFICES— VIVARIA— ARCHIMEDES 



Antonia, to whom the lands and villa of Hortensius 

 descended, even stripped herself of her earrings to put them on a 

 murcena. This lady, apart from this anecdote, was no ordinary 

 person. We find her passing from the positive of celebrated 

 renown for her beauty, her virtue, her chastity (no mean feat 

 in that day !), through the comparative of being the mother of 

 Germanicus Caesar and Claudius, and the grandmother of 

 Caligula (which last, in slang parlance, " wanted a bit of 

 doing ! "), unto the superlative of deathless fame in Pliny's 

 " Nunquam exspuisse " (never spat !).i 



The savage use, to which Vedius Pollio put his vivaria, can be 

 learnt from the pages of Pliny 2 and Seneca. ^ A slave, for 

 breaking a crystal decanter at a banquet given to Augustus, 

 was ordered to be thrown instantly into a piscina, there to be 

 eaten alive by the nibbling voracious MurcencE. Escaping 

 from his guards he threw himself at the Emperor's feet, 

 " beseeching nothing else except that he should die otherwise 

 than as food for fish " *. Caesar moved " novitate crudelitatis " 

 (lie little knew that this was his host's cheery custom) com- 

 manded the crystals of Pollio to be smashed on the spot, the 

 slave to be freed, and all the fishponds to be filled up. 



As conducive to la joie de vivre of the other slaves, the 

 command was commendable, for the bite of the Murcena's 

 serrated teeth, according to Nicander's Theriaca — that " nullius 

 fidei farrago " — owing to its mating with the viper, dealt 

 poisonous death and destruction to the fishermen driven by 

 its pursuit " headlong from their boats," and was only curable 

 by a mixture made of ashes from its own burnt head ! So 

 dreaded was this fish — curious is it not, to read, although from 



Chinese proverb. " In Japan fish are summoned to dinner by melodious gongs. 

 In India, I have seen them called out of the muddy depths of the river at 

 Dohlpore by the ringini^ of a handbell, while carp in I3elgium answer at once 

 to the whistle of the monks who feed them, and in far away Otaheite, the 

 chiefs have pet eels, whom they whistle to the surface " (Robinson, op. cit., 

 p. 14). Cf. Athen., VIII. 3, " and I myself and very likely many of you too 

 have seen eels having golden and silver earrings, taking food from any one 

 who 'offered it to them." The Egyptians similarly adorned their crocodiles 

 with gold earrings. Herod. 2. 69. 



1 VII. 18. 



» IX. 39. 



» De Ira, III. 40. 



* For eels devouring the flesh of a corpse, see Iliad, 203 and 353. 



