AJSrCIENT ESTIMATION OP FISH. 55 



furnish public entertainments or funeral suppers with 

 scaly, i.e. expensive fish: 'the purport of this restric- 

 tion being/ says Pliny, ' to prevent the purveyors of these 

 luxuries, who stuck at no price, however high, from 

 forestalling the markets, and monopolizing the supplies.' 

 But the taste for fish was far too dominant to be thufe 

 checked ; ' ventre affame n'a point d'oreilles,' and it is 

 with gluttony as with famine; the flood-gates of ex- 

 travagance once thrown open, like those of the Temple 

 of Janus, were not so easily shut again: gourmets would 

 have their tripatina suppers at any price, and lupus, 

 mursena, and myxon smoked on every board; while 

 Domitian had his tvuhot, parvenus irom. the Nile had 

 theirs too: 



Who'd for some Bhining scales a sum devote 

 Enough, to buy net, fisherman, and boat, 

 For which whole roods of ground the province sells, 

 Or a wide sheep-walk in Apulia's deUs. 



One Asturius Celer (Swift) who seems to have adapted 

 his fast rate of living to his name, gave 8000 sesterces 

 for a single mullet ; and it was by no means an unusual 

 thing to compute six pounds sterling outlay for every 

 one pound weight of fish, while some mullet of historic 

 celebrity fetched the seemingly incredible sums of ASl., 

 64^., and 240^. To be rich, in short, and not to taste 

 the best fish, was almost a proverb for one's being with- 

 out taste. Cicero affirms that ' no man not a Stoic can 

 be insensible to the merits of a sturgeon;' and in 

 another place, ' that for some distempers of mind fish 

 will be found a better prescription than philosophy;' and 

 though the same Cicero boasts that he had learnt con- 

 tentment in a state of life which debarred him the en- 

 joyment of mursena and oysters, yet was he far from 

 insensible to the mauvais ton of those entertainers who 

 did not give fish and coquiUage for supper, at whatever 

 price they might be procured, stigmatizing their board 



