70 PEOSE HAXIBTJTICS. 



devoured it greedily^ and every Roman* lady, mouth- 

 agape, might say, with the Lucrine oyster, ' nobUe nunc 

 sitio luxuriosa garum/ As the price was very exorbi- 

 tant — PHny says, 500 sesterces a gallon — those who made 

 presents of a flask, generally took care, like Martial, to 

 allude to its value : 



Of scomber's precious blood I send 

 A gamm'd bottle to my friend; 

 Costly and thick, the last that dript 

 From bleeding gills and entrails ript. 



In Greece, the taste for garum was quite as predo- 

 minant as at Rome : those stately tragedians ^schylus 

 and Sophocles do not fear to lower the dignity of their 

 muse by mentioning anchovy sauce ; Aristophanes tells 

 us, in a passage preserved by Athenseus, 



That all the topers, to prepare 'em 

 Drank every man his glsiss of garum; 



and another, in the "same savoury pages, says. 



With garum our cruets run over, 



which (however it might have damaged the damask at 

 table) does not present the unpleasant image he else- 

 where brings before us, when 



Adown a gourmet's grisly beaxd. 

 It ran, and all his throat besmear'd, 



like the ointment on that of the patriarch. 



Alec, like garum, was at once the name of a fish and 



sauce. As Vopisous, in his life of Auxelian, uses the word liqua- 

 men in place of garum, which, till the time of Elagabalus, was 

 universal; and as Apicius uses the same word with Vopisous, 

 Dr. Lister's argument that the author of the Ars Coquinaria 

 could not have flourished under Hadrian, but considerably later, 

 seems to be well founded. 



* Die quotas et quanti cupias coenare, nee tmum 

 Addideris verbum ; coena parata tibi est. 

 Cum te sex cyathis orat amioa gari. 



