PISH SAUCES. 71 



of a sauce made from it : both Horace and Strabo use 

 the word in the first sense. Columella in the second. 

 This sauce differed from garum only in being thicker; 

 it was formed of the dregs and feculence which remained 

 after the garura liquor had been decanted off clear: this 

 was at first made from the deliquescing bodies of a little 

 fish called aleculse, but many other small species were 

 at length pressed iato the service. The thick turbid 

 brine, undissolved salt, and sodden bodies of the fish, 

 constituted the semi-solid compound yclept putrUago, 

 from which, cleared of scales, bones, and other impuri- 

 ties, alec was immediately derived. That the fish called 

 halecula, of which the alec was originally made, was the 

 anchovy, seems probable from what is elsewhere re- 

 corded of it: the halecula was a small, very common 

 fish, worthless in itself, but affording an excellent sauce, 

 dissolving more readily in brine than any other, in all 

 which respects it accords perfectly with the anchovy; 

 moreover Pliny, speaking of the various scaly fish used 

 in preparing this sauce, mentions that the particular 

 species called by the Greeks aphues, and by the Latins 

 apua, or lupus, was in much request for this purpose. 

 Now one of the small fish included by Aristotle under 

 the above general title of a<l>vrj he elsewhere calls 67- 

 7/3auXt?, and as this iyypavXl<i is generally supposed to 

 mean the anchovy : there seems ground for inferring, 

 first, that the words lupus, apua, and engraulis, are all 

 different synonyms for halecula, and, secondly, so many 

 different designations for the anchovy; but the strong- 

 est presumption in favour of the identity of halecula 

 and the anchovy, is afforded by the modern Italian 

 name of this little clupea — alici, which is obviously 

 nothing but a melting down of alecula into soft bastard 

 Latin; and finally, if alec be not this species, which of 

 the two hundred and seventy names given by Pliny, of 

 those that inhabit the Mediterranean, will represent it ? 



