MULLID^ OE MULLETS. 143 



Still contrives within Ms gullet 

 To keep a corner for a mullet. 



II. 

 To listen to tliy vapid wit, 

 Drawl'd out in pompous strains, 

 I would not be condemn'd to sit. 

 Although, a mullet crown'd my pains. 



III. 

 Of mullets fine and costly wine, 



Sad A bewails the treat : 



His sulph'rous phiz gay neighbours quiz, 

 And two podagric feet ! 



When it was found that the Roman territory could no 

 longer furnish this luxury in sufficient quantity to ineet 

 the perpetually increasing demand, large supplies for 

 stocking new ponds and replenishing the markets were 

 imported from great distances. Juvenal mentions two 

 well-known emporiums for these delicacies — Napoleon 

 and Fieschi^s Isle, and Taormini, in Sicily. 



A mullet enters next, to Virro brought. 

 At T'ormini for him expressly caught. 

 Or Corsica : for now our nets must seek 

 Far distant shores, and scour each foreign creek 

 Our empty marts no native mullets know. 

 Your gluttons suffer not the fish to grow; 

 And lenas* must from coasts remote obtain 

 Gifts to Aurelia sent, to sell again. 



Other localities also were scarcely less run upon. Pol- 

 lux mentions Ionia; ^tius, Syracuse and Gibraltar; 

 Varrinus, Magnesia ; Archestratus, the Campanian coast. 

 In more modern times, Perotti has celebrated those of 

 the Tyrrhine sea between Tarquinii and Corniculum, 

 where they acquire, he says, a brighter hue than else- 

 where; but Jovius declares loudly in favour of the 

 neighbourhood of Rome itself, where the specimens, 



* Fortune-hunters. 



