C//£FS— JUVENAL— DIOGENES' POLYPUS 205 



Juvenal's scathing invective on Crispinus — who had bought 

 a mullet of 6 lbs. for ^^48 — runs : 



" What ! you, Crispinus, brought to Rome erewhile, 

 Lapt in the rushes of your native Nile, 

 Buy scales at such a price ! You might, I guess, 

 Have bought the fisherman himself for less ; 

 Bought, in some countries, manors at this rate, 

 And, in Apulia, an immense estate." ^ 



The folly of the Roman nobles and millionaires did not 

 exhaust itself in buying iish at insane prices, or squandering 

 their fortunes on Vivaria and similar extravagances. They 

 touched a yet lower depth of infamy by taking their cognomen 

 from fish. 



Thus Columella contrasts the custom of their ancestors of 

 taking a cognomen from some great victory, e.g. Numantinus 

 or Isauricus, with that of their decadent successors such as 

 Licinius Murcena or Sergius Orata.- 



The Greek Comic Poets and Satirists castigate with 

 bitter sarcasms and jeers the frenzied, almost cat-hke devotion 

 to fish. 



Even Diogenes the Cynic came to an untimely end by 

 eating with eager haste a polypus raw.^ Philoxenus the 

 Poet, when warned by his doctor, after " he had bought a 

 polypus two cubits long, dressed it, and ate it up himself all 

 but the head," that he had but six hours left to hve and to 

 arrange his affairs, bequeathed his poems and the prizes of his 

 poems to the Nine Muses : 



" Such is my Will ! But since old Charon's voice 

 Keeps crying out ' Now cross ' : and deadly Fate, 

 Whom none can disobey, calls me away, 

 That I may go below with all my goods, 

 Bring me the fragments of that polypus," * 



The morahsts of the Empire bewail " the costly follies of 

 the patricians." Juvenal, Martial, and other Roman Satirists 



1 Sat., IV. 23 ff. (Gifford's Trs.). 



* VIII. 16. Cf. also Varro, De Re Rust., Bk. III. 3, 10; J£lian, VIII. 4; 

 and Macrobius, Sat., III. xv. i ff. 

 3 Athen., VIII. 26. 

 « Ibid. VIII. 26, 



