206 FISH MANIA—VITELLIUS—APICIUS—COOKS 
lampoon the gluttony and extravagance connected with 
opsophagy, or the eating of fish. This limitation of the word 
is explained by Plutarch (Symp., IV. 4), “ fish alone above all 
the rest of the dainties is called éyov, because it is more 
excellent than all the rest,’’ and characteristically defended 
by Athen., VIT. 4.! 
The banquets of the Greeks 2 seem to have outdone even 
those of Imperial Rome. Both must have weighed heavy, 
alike on table and on chest. 
At these, writes Badham, “ although all flesh was there, 
although quadrupeds mustered strong, and a whole heaven 
of poultry, still it was the flesh of fishes that ever bore 
away the palm; they were the soul of the supper, and the 
number of kinds brought together at one repast was surprisingly 
great. From the poetic bills of fare preserved by Athenzus 
I have verified twenty-six species of fish in one Attic supper, 
and not less than forty at another! 3 On the fish course being 
brought in, the appearance of the banqueting hall soon became 
more splendid: hardware made way for solid silver: gold 
breadbaskets were now handed round: the flower of youth 
of both sexes entered bearing bits of pumice, drugs against 
drunkenness, and trays full of chaplets of Violets and Amaranth, 
while others hung up that mystic flower, the present of the 
1 Xenophon, in speaking of a man as ‘‘ an opsophagist and the biggest 
dolt possible,’ evidently does not subscribe to the pleasant theory that fish- 
food increases the grey matter of our brain. Holland’s translation of Plutarch 
is not complimentary: ‘‘ hence it is we call those gluttons who love belly- 
cheer so well opsophagists.”’ 
2 In charity to the Greeks may I hazard the plea (the rules of even the 
Law Courts are now sensibly relaxed) that their delight in Brobdingnagian 
meals may have originated in the days when their gods walked with men 
on earth, or grew up later as the sincerest form of flattery? No one in 
Homer keeps his eye more skinned or his nose more active than a god, when 
hecatombs “are about.’’ The Olympians flit constantly to Athiopia and 
are impatient of any business, mundane or heavenly, which interferes with a 
trip thither, when with the keen scent (or vision ?) of vultures, they smell 
(or see ?) hecatombs in preparation in the heart of the Dark Continent, where 
the inhabitants, as a scholiast tells us, kept a feast for twelve days, one for 
every god! See A. Shewan’s Homeric Games at an Ancient St. Andrews 
(Edinburgh, 1911), p. 116—a most delightful and destructive skit at the 
expense of The Higher Criticism of Homer ! 
3 The greatest number of fish which I can count at any feast mentioned 
in Athenzus (in Bk. IV. 13) amounts to only thirty-two! Badham (p. 587) 
omits to state that the whole poem is nothing but a parody, chiefly of Homer, 
by Matron, and is not a “' Bill of fare of an Attic supper ” in any sense. 
