MULLIDiE OR MULLETS. 145 



But Jovius refers it more properly to gluttony, and 

 says that the large were more desirable than small, on 

 account of the increased size of the head and liver, 

 which were considered the prime parts of the fish. Ga- 

 len once asked a friend, and perhaps a patient, sufiering 

 under the mullet malady, ' sulphureusque color carnifi- 

 cesque pedes,' what particular reasons he had for paying 

 so high a price for trigla ; the head, his informant told 

 him, was one good reason, and the liver a second. He- 

 liogabalus, more nice than wise, carried his extravagance 

 so far as to eat the barbels only, and to throw away the 

 rest, both of the head and body. 



The modes of dressing so approved a fish were endless. 

 One way was to alecize or halecize it. 



' Apicius,' says Pliny, ' not content with the invention 

 of a garum to drown this fish in, went about to provoke 

 men to devise a certain broth, made from it, like that 

 sauce called alec, which cometh of fishes when they 

 corrupt.' Mullets are too hard to take salt well, but 

 make an excellent souse; the modern Venetians pre- 

 pare it in this manner, keeping the flesh soaking some 

 time in a pickle of capsicum viaegar, before preparing it 

 for the table. 



The usual weight of mullet is from one to two pounds; 

 Martial and Pliny speak of the latter weight as not un- 

 common ; Horace and Seneca record some much heavier 

 specimens. Juvenal, as we have seen above, even men- 

 tions one of six pounds, which last however is probably 

 poetical, not avoirdupois, weight, — a species of license in 

 which, when 



Poussant jusqu'au bout la mordaate hyperbole, 

 he occasionally indulges. Pliny invokes one Licinius 



fully in sea-water, and finally to dust it well with flour, which 

 excludes the air and keeps it fresh — ^the raw fish will not travel 



far. 



B 



