BOOK IX. XXX. 64-xxxi. 67 



part. For the rest, there are several kinds of mullet. 

 For it feeds on seaweed, bivalves, mud and the flesh 

 of other fish ; and it is distinguished by a double 

 beard on the lower lip. The muUet of cheapest kind 

 is called the mud-mullet. This variety is always 

 accompanied by another fish named sea-bream, and 

 it swallows down as fodder mire stirred up by the 

 sea-bream digging. The coast mullet also is not in 

 favour. The most approved kind have the flavour of 

 an oyster. This variety has the name of shoe-mullet, 

 which Fenestella thinks was given it from its colour." 

 It spawns three times a year — at all events that is 

 the number of times that its fry is seen. The 

 leaders in gastronomy say that a dying muUet 

 shows a large variety of changing colours, turning 

 pale with a complicated modification of blushing 

 scales, at all events if it is looked at when contained 

 in a glass bowl. Marcus Apicius, who had a natural 

 gift for every ingenuity of luxury, thought it specially 

 desirable for mullets to be killed in a sauce made of 

 their companions, garum^ — for this thing also has 

 procured a designation — and for fish-paste to be 

 devised out of their liver. XXXI. With a fish of PHceapaid 

 this kind one of the proconsular body, Asinius Celer, ■^'^ '"^""^*- 

 in the principate of Gaius, issued a challenge — it is 

 not so easy to say who won the match — to all the 

 spendthrifts by giving 8000 sesterces '^ for a mullet. 

 The thought of this side-tracks the mind to the con- 

 sideration of the people who in their complaints 

 about luxury used to protest that cooks were being 

 bought at a higher price per man than a horse ; but 

 now the price of three horses is given for a cook, 

 and the price of three cooks for a fish, and almost 

 no human being has come to be more valued than 



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