160 THE SCARUS—“ FISHING PROHIBITED ” 
in the time of Tiberius (or Octavius, according to Macrobius) 
vast quantities at the Emperor’s command were collected by 
an Admiral of the Fleet and planted along the Ostian and 
Campanian shores. 
Careful protection by land and sea rendered poaching 
almost impossible. For the period of five years any scarus 
caught in the nets had, under heavy penalties, to be returned 
straightway to the water. The enforcement of these wise 
regulations effected such mighty thriving of the fish, that ‘‘ postea 
frequentes inveniuntur Italie in litore, non antea ibi capti; 
admovitque sibi gula sapores piscibus satis et novum incolam 
mari dedit.”’ 
This operation commands our comment, not merely on 
account of its big success, but because it is the earliest and (as 
far as I can discover) the only instance in all ancient literature, 
certainly in Greek and Latin, of the acclimatisation of fish (not 
eggs) in the sea, and on a large scale. 
I do not include, though I do not forget, the large lucrative 
planting of oysters in the Lucrine lake by Sergius Orata centuries 
before.!_ Later on we shall read of the Romans carrying eggs, 
naturally fertilised, from one water to another, and of the 
Chinese 2 transporting vast quantities of similar eggs consider- 
able distances. 
But their methods and operations differed from the Emperor’s. 
Pliny expressly states that the Admiral planted fish, not eggs 
of fish, in the sea, not in fresh water, and in a new habitat 
hundreds of miles from the old. 
To this planting or involuntary colonisation, Petronius— 
seemingly, despite controversy, the ‘‘ Elegantiz Arbiter,”’ or the 
not altogether Admirable Crichton, of Tacitus—probably alludes: 
“ ultimus ab oris 
Attractus scarus atque arata Syrtis 
Si quid naufragio dedit, probatur.” 3 
Poets and gourmets have vied in singing the praises of the 
fish as the daintiest of dishes—“ according to the Greeks to do 
1 Pliny, IX. 79. 
2 See J. B. Du Halde, Description géographique . .. de l’Empire de la 
Chine. ... (Paris, 1735), vol. i. p. 36. 
3 Petron., Sat., 93, 2. 
