pbecidjE or perches. 123 



banquetj in conjunction with game, sows' dugs, and all 

 the delicacies of the season ; leaving us ,to infer that, 

 but for the extravagance of this luxury, he would not 

 have disapproved of the dish. Juvenal, who lived when 

 the public taste had undergone some revision, speaks 

 disparagingly of lupus ; and Galen recommends to shun 

 a fish which, even when alive, was tainted to the core, 

 and which, however fat, was never, as he tells us, in 

 condition, but always rank iu flavour and prone to run 

 into putrescence immediately; and Jovius, in times 

 much nearer our own, whilst speaking of the preposte- 

 rous price stm paid by the luxurious for these culinary 

 abominations, repeats and abundantly corroborates all 

 that Galen says of their foul feeding, and adds, from 

 his own observation, that besides eatiug offal, they have 

 no objection to snakes, he having sometimes found the 

 inside of a basse stuffed with the coils of a large colu- 

 ber, which had been carried down by the stream near 

 his haunt, and there greedily seized upon and poiiched. 

 Well may we wonder, then, with Macrobius, in what 

 the merit of the Tiber lupus consisted, or whether it 

 had any. 



After this river, many others claimed to breed excel- 

 lent basse : the Timavus (Brenta), near Venice, which 

 runs through the flat marshes of the district, was one ; 

 but here their good condition and rich flavour were due, 

 not to the fat of sinks and cloacas, but to the mixed 

 nature of the waters they frequented : 



Laneus Euganei lupus exoipit ora Timavi, 

 ^quoreo dulces cum sale pastus aquas.* 



Basse from the Acherusian Marsh in Epirus were famed 

 both for size and flavour ; and the same praise was ac- 

 corded to those captured in the Sicilian Elorus. In 



* Martial. 



