VIYAEIA. 45 



' jewelledhesAs' to admiring crowds ' who resorted to the 

 ponds to see them fed.'* 



Vast sums being thus sunk in keeping up these stews, 

 it is not to be wondered at if their aristocratic owners 

 were rather shy of making presents. ' My friend Hor- 

 tensius,' says Varro, ' would much sooner lend you the 

 carriage-horses from his stable to go and buy muUet 

 where you liked, than send and procure you one out of 

 his own ponds;' and again, ' It often happens in my friend 

 Hortensius's house, when fish is wanted, that in place 

 of levying it from his costly stews, he will send to Puteoli 

 for supplies.' 



Even Csesar, ra the days of his triumph, wishing to 

 entertain his friends on fish, could only obtain from C. 

 Hirtius six hundred lampreys, on the express condition 

 that they were to he a loan repaid by a certain day, not 

 in specie, but in weight and in kind. 



Attachments of an extraordinary character, formed 

 chiefly, on one side at least, through the medium of the 

 nerve of smell, which is largely developed in fish, occa- 

 sionally took place between these cold-blooded creatures 

 and their master or mistress. One of the most remark- 

 able on record is that formed between Hortensius and 

 a lamprey, at whose death the orator nearly broke his 

 heart, and became so morose and unpolite withal as to 

 resent a friend's cajolery on his displaying so much ten- 

 derness for a dead fish, retorting with asperity that this 

 would never have been his case, who was the survivor 

 of seven wives, and had never shed a tear for one of 

 them. Within the same pond, Antonia, the wife of Dru- 

 sus, (unto whom the great orator's estate and grounds 

 fell by inheritance,) entertained so great a liking to an- 

 other lamprey ' that she could find in her heart to decke 

 it, and to hang a paire of golden eare rings about the 



* Pliny. 



