212 FISH MANIA—VITELLIUS—APICIUS—COOKS 
a poem on the oyster! To be more accurate, he wrote two,! 
and lengthy ones to boot ! - 
The Emperor Domitian (Juvenal, IV.) ordered a special 
sitting of the Senate to deliberate and advise on a matter of 
such grave State importance as the best method of cooking 
a turbot. 
Greek and Roman writers frequently poke fun at the 
gourmets who asserted that they could instantly tell from the 
flavour whence the fish came: from what sea, and what part 
of that sea, from what river, and even from which side of that 
river.2 
Either these ancient connoisseurs were blessed with a more 
exquisite and developed sense of taste than we moderns, or 
the whole pose was an intolerable affectation, for “ they 
drenched their subtly-conceived dishes with garum, alec, and 
other sauces, which were so strong and composite that it 
would have been hardly possible to distinguish a fresh fish 
from a putrid cat—except by the bones !’’ 3 
This assertion is none too strong, if the receipts for these 
sauces be duly pondered. Mention of garum, which gets its 
name from being made originally from the salted blood and 
entrails of a fish called garon or gavos by the Greeks, is in 
classical writers very general: we find it even in Aschylus 
and Sophocles.4 
1 Ausonius, Epist.,5 and 15. But, after all, our own Keats, addressing his 
favourite Moon, did not hesitate to write: 
“thou art a relief 
To the poor patient oyster !”’ 
(Endymion, III. 66 f.) 
2 Pliny, IX. 79: “Is (Sergius Orata) primus . . . adiudicavit quando 
eadem aquatilium genera aliubi atque aliubi meliora, sicut lupi pisces in 
Tiberi amne inter duos pontes .. . et alia genera similiter, ne culinarum 
censuva peragatur.’"’ See Horace, Sat., II.2, 31 ff. Also Columella, R.R., VIII. 
16, 4: ‘'Fastidire docuit fluvialem lupum, nisi quem Tiberis adverso torrente 
defatigasset ’’; and also Juvenal IV. 139 ff.: 
«‘Nulli maior fuit usus edendi 
Tempestate mea: Circeis nata forent an 
Lucrinum ad saxum Rutupinove edita fundo 
Ostrea, callebat primo deprendere morsu, 
Et semel aspecti litus dicebat echini.”’ 
More of the same sort is to be read in Macrob., Sat., III. 16, 16-18. 
3 Robinson, op. cit., p. 45. : 
4 Zsch., Proteus frag., 211; Nauck?, and Soph., Tviptolemos, frag. 606 
Jebb, ap. Poll. 6. 65 and Athen., IJ. 75. 
