262 THE NINE FISH MOST HIGHLY PRIZED 



teaching, and fighting I have dealt, was on the menu a most 

 welcome and eagerly anticipated item.^ 



Of the MurcBfiidce, at Athens the Eel, at Rome the Murcena 

 was, as the last chapter shows, the greater favourite. Arch- 

 estratus, it is true, commands men of taste to buy at all hazards 

 the Murcena of "the Straights " 2 ; but the Latin authors 

 sing its praise frequently and fervently. 



The comparative want of appreciation of the Eel at Rome 

 may have been merely masculine, and evolved from the Latin 

 boy {prcetextatus) regarding " this cousin of the snake " not 

 as a dainty for his palate, but as a scourge for his body ! 

 Early association counts for much in later life : so his back's 

 memory of a flogging with a whip made of eel-skins, twisted 

 tightly together, may have caused the male adult to ap- 

 proach dehcately, or not at all, the fish with his freeborn 

 palate. 3 



At the tripatinium, which marked the height of delight at 

 a supper,* the Murcena gave the choicest morsel. Horace, 

 Martial, and others not only sing its fame, but give its proper 

 dressing. To Martial's taste that from Sicily ranked first, 

 but Varro — was it because these, as Suidas asserts, were the 

 largest ? — votes for the Spanish fish. 



While Apicius (X. 8) hands down various recipes for the 

 proper frying and boihng of the other parts, he distinctly 

 discards, on account of its reputed poisonous properties, the 

 head of the Murcena. But among the Greeks direction follows 

 direction for cooking the Conger's " exquisite head." Philemon 

 rhapsodises over — 



^ The Lamprey, Pride, and Mitr<sna are different fish. They are all 

 engraved in Nash's book, who lays down that the Ahircena is not the lamprey — 

 as indeed a representation (from Herculaneum) of the former done with great 

 exactness serves to establish. See T. D. Fosbroke, Encyl. of Antiq. (London, 

 1843), p. 1033, and p. 402, figure 3. 



2 Ap. Athen., VIL 91. 



3 The toga pmiexia was worn by the higher magistrates, certain priests, 

 and free-born children. Isidorus, in Gloss., " Anguilla est qua coercentur in 

 scholis pueri," and PHny, N. H., IX., 39, " eoque verberari sohtos tradit 

 Verrius praetextatos." Under the old law pnvtextati were unamerceable ; iion 

 in cBre, sed in cute solvebant ! Our Saxon forbears adopted the whip of eels ; 

 see Fosbroke, op. cit., p. 303. Rabelais (IL 30) continues the tradition — 

 " Whereupon his master gave him such a sound thrashing with an eel-skin, 

 that his own would have been worth nought for bagpipes." 



* Pliny, A'. H. 35 ; 4G ; quoting from Fenestella. 



