204 Rev. W, Houghton on the Silurus 



when he used to hawk about siluri for sale in the streets of 

 Alexandria : — 



lam princeps Equitum, magna qui voce solebat 

 Vendere municipes fricta de merce siluros. 



(Sat. iv. 32, 33.) 



And the miser puts hy for to-morrow's dinner the summer bean, 

 a bit of lizard-fish, with half a stinking silurus : — 



nee non difFerre in tempora csenae 

 Alterius conchem sestivam cum parte lacerti 

 Signatam vel dimidio putrique siluro. 



(>S'«^. xiv. 130.) 



Several kinds of Siluri are now found in the Nile ; and it is 

 probable that Juvenal is referring to some small-sized fish of 

 that family which was much used by the poor people. Both 

 the lacertus and the silurus were salted and sent over to Rome, 

 just as we have seen the black fish from the lake of Apameia 

 were salted and sent to Aleppo, as recorded by Burckhardt and 

 Russell. The "fricta de merce" appears to allude to the mode 

 in which the fish were prepared. " Pisces fricti," says Apicius, 

 ''ut diu durent, eodeni momento quo friguntur et levantur, aceto 

 calido perfunduntur." Both Diodorus and Lucian tell us that 

 the Egyptians used to export large quantities of salt fish. 

 "The Nile," says Diodorus (i. 36), " produces all kinds of fish 

 in great abundance ; it not only supplies abundant food which 

 is eaten fresh by the natives, but an endless number {TtXrjdo^: 

 aviKXeiTTTOv) which are salted and sent abroad." Lycinus 

 (in Lucian, Navigium, cap. xv.) implores his friend " by Isis, 

 to remember to bring him from Egypt the little salted fish of 

 the Nile, or ointment from Canopus, or an ibis from Memphis, 

 or" (he jocularly adds) "■ if his ship was big enough, even one of 

 the pyi-amids." 



The " stinking siluri " of Athen^us and Juvenal th erf ore no 

 doubt allude to salted fish which, from being often hastily and 

 carelessly prepared and hawked about the streets of Rome or 

 other towns in the hot month of September, would merit the 

 epithet applied to them. 



Pausanias (Grgeciee Descrip. iv. cap. xxxiv.) says that " the 

 Grecian rivers do not produce creatures destructive to man, as 

 the Indus, the Egyptian Nile, the Rhine, the Ister, Euphrates, 

 and Phasis ; for these rivers nourish creatures which devour 

 men, and in form they resemble the gJanides of Hermus and 

 the Mteander, excepting that they are blacker and stronger." 



From the passages quoted it seems that various kinds of 

 Siluri were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, some- 

 times under the name of silurus, sometimes under that of glanis. 



