204 FISH MANIA—VITELLIUS—APICIUS—COOKS 
his ‘Do not dishonour your gold serving-dish by a small 
mullet : none less than two pounds is worthy of it.” In pro- 
portion as they exceeded this, they grew in value. 
One would imagine that Nature had fallen in with the 
caprice of the Romans, for the fish seems to have grown larger 
in the decline of the Empire, as if to humour the extravagance 
of this degenerate people. Horace thought he had pretty 
well stigmatised the frantic folly of his glutton by a mullet of 
3 Ibs. (Sat., II. 2, 33); but the next reign furnished one of 
44 lbs., which presented to and sold at auction by the Emperor 
Tiberius was bought by Octavius for £40 (Seneca, Ep., XCV. 
42), while in Juvenal, IV. 15 f., we have one of 6 lbs.! 
How long the passion for these big mullets lasted it is 
impossible to tell, but Macrobius, speaking with indignation of 
one purchased by Asinius Celer in the reign of Claudius for 
£56 (in Pliny, N. H., TX. 31, I find the price was £64 !), declares 
that in his time (fifth century A.D.) such mad prices had 
vanished. 
Alongside of Pliny’s caustic comment ? that the price of 
a victorious Triumph equalled that of a cook, or a fish, can 
be set the lament of the Greek comedians that for some fish 
one had to pay toov tow, t.e. for weight avoirdupois you 
handed over a similar weight in money or, as Mayor neatly 
renders it, “ £ for lb.” This gibe at the public mania sprang 
from bitter personal experience. At Rome, too, we read “ of 
those who sell rare fish for their weight in money.” 
‘Does not Martial’s savage outburst on a glutton who had 
sold a slave for £10 to procure a dinner, which was not really 
a good one because nearly all the money was spent on a mullet— 
“Non est hic, improbe, non est 
Piscis : homo est ; hominem, Calliodore, comes,” 
apply with greater force to “‘ the men-eaters’’ who purchased 
mullets for £40 or £60 each ? 3 
2 See Mayor’s Juvenal and Gifford’s Tvans., IV. 15. In Pliny, IX. 31, 
Mutianus speaks of a mullet which was caught in the Red Sea, weighing 
80 Ibs. The comment of I. D. Lewis (on Juv., IV. 15 f.) that this fish “ is 
utterly fabulous,” is not the voice of one crying in the wilderness. 
* IX. 31, ‘at nunc coci triumphorum pretiis parantur, et coquorum pisces.” 
3 Ep., X. 31 f. 
