58 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



favourite article ; and the famous ' vas pelamydum ' was 

 a fish-bribe of such potency as to tamper with the in- 

 tegrity of some of the highest fanctionaries of the law. 

 It would seem almost incredible that any gentleman 

 guest, however much he might fancy fish, should at- 

 tempt to purloin them from his host's table, in order to 

 eat them next day at his own, 6j>pa ol olkuS Iovti irdKiv 

 TTOTiBop-rriov e'ir], had not Martial's experience proved it 

 possible ; as witness the following epigram : — 



Forbear, my friend, 



Those fish, to send 

 Filch'd from my board away ; 



Por present cheer 



I asked you here 

 To dine with me to-day. 



Some indeed, better mannered, thought it the hyperbole 

 of iU-breeding to lay violent hands upon eatables at 

 table, and more especially on a m^ugil's head ;* but these 

 Chesterfields were so small a minority, that they must 

 either on dining out have done as others did, or have re- 

 turned home fasting. 



While the taste for fish was universal in the ancient 

 world, the objects of it varied. Fickleness belongs to 

 man, and ' say if thou canst, in what thou canst not 

 change' is a challenge which no opsophagist would accept. 

 Though both Greeks and fiomans loved the finny race 

 exceedingly, their constancy was that of the Turk to 

 women, an over-addiction to the genus, but an exceed- 

 ing fickleness with regard to the species. 



With our ancestors no fish stood in such high esteem as the 

 sturgeon, which we entirely neglect. Afterwards, according to 

 Liberius and Cornelius Nepos, the labrax entirely superseded 

 him ; latterly, again, the scarus has taken, and still maintains, the 



* 'Yirep^oKfi yacrrpifiapylas to apira^nv iirBiovra, Kol ravra Kpaviov 

 Kearpecos. 



