MUIE^NID^. 397 



choleric friend's remaining stock of glass to be instantly 

 smashed in presence of the assembled guests—' crystallina 

 ante omnia coram se frangi jussit complerique pisciniim.'* 

 Seneca again alludes to this story in his treatise 'De 

 dementia' (a pamphlet dedicated^ with such surprising 

 after-results, to his royal pupil, Nero), -where he incul- 

 cates virtuous sentiments on the mind of the young 

 emperor with all the freedom of a ' Times' leader, and 

 and asks him (!) 'Who could fail to execrate such a 

 monster as this Vedius Pollio, beyond even the aversion 

 felt by his ill-starred slaves, or to deem a wretch who 

 coidd fatten fish npon living men, himself worthy of ten 

 thousand deaths ?' Nor is it to be gainsaid, that this 

 punishment was a most refined species of cruelty, and an 

 invention that would have done no discredit to the Spetnish 

 Inquisition, in the palmy days of that black Pandemo- 

 nium ; for the mursena is a small fish of desperate pluck 

 and insatiable voracity, whose mouth, in open violation 

 of Lord Ellenborough's Act, seems expressly formed 

 for ' cutting and maiming,'t and, by reiterated snaps, of 

 doing grievous bodily harm to every hving being within 

 its reach; there can be therefore little doubt that a 

 score of trained mursense fastening upon a naked man. 



* Seneca, De Ira. 



t This fish is mentioned in a passage of the ' Frogs,' and, in con- 

 sequence no doubt of its fierceness, in company with gorgons and 

 hydras, as a monster equally to be dreaded. Ma.axia, the con- 

 cierge of the Shades, speaking with the voice of a ' royal and in- 

 fernal porter,' after venting a long string of maledictions upon 

 Bacchus, under a mistake that he is Herctdes (who had carried off 

 his favourite triple-headed bull-dog), winds up the anathema by 

 consigning him to be plucked to pieces by mursense. 



Now inexpressible Tartesian monsters 

 Wrenching thy vitals forth, both heart and midriff, 

 With furious fangs shall rend and tear thee. 



The Frogs (Frere's translation). 



