BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. xi 



These references are made with some particularity, be- 

 cause they show that (though according to Plato, Rep. iii., 

 and others, the Homeric heroes never ate fish), legitimate 

 anslinor with rod hook, and armed line, was common in the 

 Trojan age. 



In later times, fish of various kinds became the food most 

 in demand by the Grecian palate, so much so that oi//ov, their 

 word oriffinallv for cooked food, or food eaten with bread 

 (corresponding nearly to our word victuals), was used em- 

 phatically to mean fish. Athenseus abounds in anecdotes of 

 fish-selling, fish-cooking, and fish-eating, telling us (viii., 81) 

 that a rich gourmand (fish-eater was their word) looked 

 sulkily in the morning, if the wind were not fair to bring 

 the fishing-boats into the Piraeus. The strictest laws were 

 made to prevent the fish-mongers from cheating their cus- 

 tomers : among which was one requiring them to stand 

 (not sit) while offering their fish for sale (a " golden law," 

 Alexis (Ath. vi., 8), terms it) ; and another, forbidding them 

 to ask more than one price. We read also of a " Guide 

 to the Fish-Market," published by one Lynceus of Samos. 

 Fish, except the coarser kinds, were dear, for, at Corinth, 

 if a man, not known to be honestl}- rich, was seen to buy 

 fish often, he was held under the eye of the police, and 

 punished, if he persevered in the extravagance (Athen. 

 vi., 12). 



A curious instance of the luxury to which fish-eating was 

 carried, is given in an account of a ship (or rather galley) 

 built for Hiero of Syracuse, under the auspices of Archi- 

 medes ; which it took six months' labor of innumerable 

 workmen to get ready for launching, and six months more 

 to finish and decorate. Besides a garden, a stable for ten 

 horses, a Triclinium Aphrodisiiun, (fee, there was in the 

 bow a fish-pond of two thousand cubic feet measurement, 

 containing a great variety of living fish. A full account 

 will be found in Athenseus (v. 40, et seq.) of this vessel, the 

 original pattern, no doubt, of the ship of Dover, on board 



