268 THE NINE FISH MOST HIGHLY PRIZED 



being found to contain food. This perhaps may be accounted 

 for by the great length of its gut, throughout which the filmy 

 garbage and vegetable matter forming its chief diet are in- 

 conspicuously disposed. " The Cestreus is fasting " even 

 became a proverb and was appHed to men who lived with strict 

 regard to justice, because — as Athenteus explains — the fish is 

 never carnivorous. ^ 



(F) The use in cases of adultery of the Cestreus in Greece 

 and the Mugil at Rome, if not singular among fish, is striking ; 

 for it survived into the civihsed age of Catullus (" percurrent 

 raphanique mugilesque," 2) and of Juvenal (" Quosdam moechos 

 et mugilis intrat," ^). Indeed, traces of the same barbaric 

 custom still exist among certain tribes on the West Coast of 

 Africa. 



Gifford writes : " the being clystered (as Holyday expresses 

 it) by a Mugil was allowed by no written law, but it seems to 

 have been an old and approved method of gratifying private 

 vengeance. Isidorus thinks that the fish was selected for 

 this purpose on account of its anti-venereal properties, but he 

 confounds the Mugilis with the Mullet." ^ 



From The Fisheries of the Adriatic, a most elaborate Report 

 by Faber on the kinds and market values of the fishes of that 

 sea, I give the class allotted to the fish of my list. It must 

 once more be impressed on the reader that these eight fish 

 (for of course Faber does not deal with the KutrpoQ), were the 

 most renowned in Greece and Rome. Of these, five only — 

 the Mullet, Acipenser, Rhombus, Lupus, and Sole — are in Class I. ; 

 the Asellus and Murcena in II. ; the Scar us, and it could not 

 be lower, in 111.*^ 



The classification disappoints and depresses, especially in 

 the case of the vaunted and lovable Scarus. It tempts, how- 

 ever, to an insoluble sum in proportion. If about these and 



1 Aristophanes, and half a dozen other comedians cited by Athen., VII. 7S. 



« XV. ig. 



» 5a/., X. 317. 



« Further details must be sought in Robinson Ellis, A Commentary on 

 Catullus (Oxford, 1876), p. 46, and Schneider, op. cit., 69. 



6 Although these five must be reckoned in the first class everywhere, none 

 of the five or other Mediterranean fishes can compare in taste with their 

 northern representatives. 



