24 ANGLING LITERATURE OF 



in the plain on the right bank of the Tiber, and were 

 conducted by the Praetor Urbanus, on behalf of the 

 fishermen of that river who made the day a holiday. 



Among the Romans the love of fish, as an article of 

 food, was likewise quite a passion. Pliny tells us that 

 the great epicures among this people preferred the scams 

 to every other kind of fish. The eel-pout, or lotos-liver, 

 was the next in estimation. The red mullet was in high 

 favour, from the fact that when the scales are removed 

 from this fish, it still retains a fine pink colour. " The 

 fops of Rome having remarked that, at the death, this 

 colour passed through a succession of the most beautiful 

 shades, the poor mullet was served alive, inclosed in a 

 glass vessel ; and the guests, attentive and greedy of 

 emotions, enjoyed this cruel spectacle, which presented 

 to them a gradation of colours which insensibly dis- 

 appeared." u It is further stated, in reference to this fish, 

 that " the greatest sensualists killed it in brine, and 

 Apicius was the first who invented this kind of luxury; 

 The brine most in use, in such cases, was made with the 

 blood of mackerel, and that was one of the varieties of 

 that famous garum, so highly praised by the Latin authors, 

 and which was to them, at that period, what the fish sauces 

 of the English are now." 16 



Apicius offered a prize to any one who would invent a 

 new brine, made with the liver of red mullets. Juvenal 



15 Seneca, Qusest. Natural. 3, 17, 18. 

 . 16 Soyer's Pantropheon, p. 213. 



