NONNIUS—GOURMETS—DOCTORS 163 
because it brings forth its young thrice a year !, and second, 
because it eats the sea-hare, who bears death to man.? 
Nonnius (p. 81) informs us that the followers of Pythagoras 
were forbidden to eat the Scarus because it was rpvynpayoe, 
#.e. an eater of grain or grapes, whence or how obtained he 
vouchsafes not to inform us.3 It is of interest to read in 
Faber (op. cit., p. 27) that the common seal (Phoca vitulina) is 
believed at the present time to go ashore in the Ombla Valley 
in quest of grapes during the vintage, and is also said to commit 
great havoc in the vineyards of Sardinia and Sicily ! 
But for once Nonnius naps! Although, according to 
tradition, Pythagoras proscribed all fish, three kinds only are 
expressly and by name forbidden (in Symbols 18, 19, 60), viz. the 
Melanurus, the Erythinius, and the Sepia; nothing is said 
about the Scarus. 
I presume that the error arose from Nonnius confusing a 
passage in Plutarch (Symp., VIII. 8, 3.) where @ propos of 
Pythagoras, rpvyngdyoc is associated with the Scarus, but in 
exactly the opposite sense, “ for we can mot call the Mullet 
corn-destroying, or the Scarus grape-eating,”’ etc. 
Again our Nonnius! By a passage from Pliny, XXXII. 3, 
he attempts to clear the Scarus and throw the blame for cholera 
on the Mullet. 
But Pliny distinctly states that alone of all animals the fish 
1 Cf. Oppian, I. 590. 
2 #lian, XVI. 19, writes that these sea-hares were so poisonous, that if a 
man touched one thrown up on the shore with his hand, he shortly died, unless 
medicine was at once administered. So poisonous indeed are they, that “if 
you touch them with but your walking stick, there is the same danger which 
contact with a lizard evokes,’”’ which in II. 5 is described ré@vnnev 5 kipios Tis 
adéyou! Nero, to ‘‘ mak siccar ”’ (like Kirkpatrick with the Red Comyn), employed 
the sea-hare as a dainty for friends whose deaths he earnestly desired. Cf. 
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, VI. 32. 
3 Nonnius, always the alert defender of his favourite fish, ingeniously 
suggests that the scarus of Pythagoras was not our famous scarus, because as 
this fish, even during the Augustan period, was extremely rare in Italian 
waters, there seems little necessity for its being banned by the ‘“‘ Hyperborean 
Apollo of the Crotoniates”’ in B.c. 540-510. Numa, apparently influenced 
by Pythagorean precepts, forbade (according to Cassius Hemina, Pliny, 
XXXII. 10) all scaleless fish being offered to the gods. Festus, p. 253, a. 20, 
however, states that in such offerings it was allowable to present all fish with 
scales, except the Scarus, which was sacrificiable, and most acceptable to the 
god of the peasants, Hercules, whose “ swinish gluttony | Crams and blasphemes 
his feeder.” For squavam, Miller suggests scavum, while Lindsay prints 
squatum, the skate. 
