162 THE SCARUS—“ FISHING PROHIBITED ” 
Although Pliny (IX. 29) definitely asserts ‘‘ Nunc scaro datur 
principatus,”’ we find Martial within a few years dismissing the 
fish as of poor flavour—its only redeeming point the trail, 
which is excellent, 
“Hic scarus, equoreis qui venit obesus ab undis, 
Visceribus bonus est, cetera vile sapit.” 
(XIII. 84).} 
In the curious and rare Ichtyophagia (the omission of the 
second ‘h ’ of the theta may bea printer’s error) by the learned 
Doctor Ludovicus Nonnius, published at Antwerp in 1616—a 
treasure-house from which I quote much and take more— 
an attempt is made to explain these diametrically opposed 
estimates. Nonnius asserts that as among the common herd 
only those fish which have fat flesh find favour or yield good 
flavour, and as the Scarus possesses a drier and more flaky 
flesh, ‘‘ a plebis illis palatis spernebatur.”’ 
This deals a nasty knock to poor Martial, who plumed 
himself on his taste as a gourmet, acquired (he fails to add) 
at the banquets and entertainments of his patrician friends 
or wealthy patrons. 
Medical controversy, rarely absent, as to wholesomeness 
for once hardly exists. Galen, Diphilus, Xenocrates all agree 
as to the Scarus, although the last warns us that it is “ hard 
to pass off in perspiration!’ (svo8iapdpnroc).2 Galen pro- 
nounces fish who haunt the rocks the most wholesome ?: of 
these, the Scarus is by far the best. Diphilus the Siphnian 
on the whole agrees, but condemns it as dangerous when fresh (!) 
because it hunts and feeds on the poisonous sea-hare and so 
frequently causes cholera morbus.¢ 
But according to Aélian, IX. 51, the Mullet (rpiyAn) was 
held by the initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries in the greatest 
honour, for one or other of two curious reasons: the first, 
1 Another reading is adesus. Cf. Xenocrates, de Alimento ex Aquatilibus, 
c. 14, of the scarus, which was fresh-caught and not vivarium-kept, being moaadois 
éyxdrois eBoropuos. 
2 See Liddell and Scott. 
3 VI. 718 (Kahn). 
* Athen., VITI. 51. 
