202 FISH MANIA— VITELLIUS -APICIUS— COOKS 



Greece proper, from its comparative sterility and poverty 

 of water, was very limited in its capacity to grow crops or 

 rear herds. It compulsorily fell back largely on fish. And 

 principally sea-fish, because of their superior palatability, 

 and because of the inadequacy, owing to scarcity of lakes and 

 perennial rivers, of fresh-water fish. 



Whatever be the cause of the early abstention, three points 

 arouse our interest. (A) The passages in Greek writers 

 (previous to ^Uan) that describe angling in Greek fresh 

 waters, reach but a scant half-dozen, ^\■hile those that depict . 

 fishing in such waters — sacred lakes, temple stewponds, and 

 eeling in Lake Copais excepted — can probably be reckoned on 

 both hands. ^ 



(B) The Palatine Anthology (at least in the period from 

 700 B.C. to 500 A.D.) contains no reference (as far as I know) 

 to aught but sea-fishing. 



(C) The Greek comedians, Athenaeus, the Greek opsophagic 

 authors all almost always reserve their appreciations for food 

 from l\Bv6eig irovTog. 



The statement that the Romans abstained, like the JMaeatas 

 or Celts 2 of North Britain, from fresh-water fish from similar, 

 or any motives, cannot be established. It goes far beyond 

 the evidence at our command, although some aversion may 

 be possibly deduced from Ovid {Fast., VI. 173 f.), and as 

 regards shell-fish from Varro. Unlike the Greeks, however, 

 they certainly in a very short period became great consumers 

 of fish from the Tiber, the Po, the ItaUan Lakes, and after- 

 wards from the Danube, Rhine, etc., but in their estimation, 

 as in that of the Greeks, fish from the sea ever held the higher 

 place. 3 



1 Passages which at first sight seem to conflict with this summary can often 

 be ruled out from (A) geographical reasons, where (i) the fishing occurs in 

 some non-Greek water, as in the Tiber (Galen, irtpl Tpo<pwv Swa/ueojj, 3), or 

 (2) the locality is not specified, as in Athen., VIII. 56, which is merely a 

 quotation from a treatise of Mnesitheus, concerned with all kinds of fish 

 from a digestive point of view ; and (B) from the brackish nature of water. 



* Dio. Cass. 70, 12, 2, speaks of the Scottish Seas as swarming and crammed 

 with fish. 



3 Damm, p. 465, asserts that the order of eating of fish among the Greeks 

 was (i) Fish from the sea, and then, but much later, (2) Fish from the rapids 

 of a river. Daremberg and Sagho : " Pour les Grecs le poisson d'eau douce 



