FISH—SACRED, DIVINATORY, SPICED 219 
were foreshadowed by the fighting of fish among themselves 
in the vivaria belonging to Henry II. and Cromwell.! 
As is but natural in hot countries, the trade in salted and 
pickled fish, the rapryoc of the Greeks, the salsamentum of the 
Romans, grew to great importance.? 
This sweet-sour comestible was among both nations early, 
universal, and pushed to the extreme of madness.3 In such 
high esteem was it held that it came to be looked on as an 
offering meet for the gods. Cato and others testify to the 
exorbitant prices commanded by Pontic and kindred salsa- 
mentum, of which a small flask fetched more than one hundred 
sheep! Of every kind—and they were as diverse as the 
countries and towns that furnished them—we find champions 
ready to go to the stake to prove the superiority of their own 
pet choice. 
Of some towns it was the chief, if not the only, commerce. 
As modern towns frequently bear for their arms or on their 
seal some device connected with their history or trade, so 
ancient seaports which produced salsamentum often stamped 
their coins with the figures of fish, etc. 
Thus Olbia, one of the most important markets for salt or 
pickled fish, bears on its money an eagle taking a fish,4 while a 
1 The cause, sympathy with their owners, mentioned by Robinson, op. 
cit., 88-9, hardly recommends itself. 
2 The Greek term, tapixn, was applied to Conserves de viande et poisson— 
but chiefly the latter. Salted fish was a food far commoner among the Latins 
than among the Greeks (Daremberg and Saglio). Sausages—lIsicia or 
Insicia—were made from fish as well as meat. Of both there were, according 
to Apicius (Bk. II.), many preparations, those from fish being in great demand. 
3 Nonnius, op. cit., p. 155. Apart from fashionable mania, the salsamentum 
was used for very practical purposes, e.g. as food for the Athenian soldier on 
campaign. Cf. Aristoph., Ach., I101, 2. From the frequent notices and 
quotations in Atheneus, Euthydemus the Athenian seems to have been the 
most prolific author on pickled fish. On him and his three treatises, see 
Pauly-Winowa, Real. Enc., VI. 1505. 
a4 propos of the fish-trade of Olbia, Koehler (in the Mém. de l’Acad. des 
Sciences de St. Petersburg, V1™* série, tome 1, p. 347, St. Petersburg, 1832, as 
quoted by E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks, Cambridge, 1913, p. 440) con- 
cludes that preserved fish of every quality, from jars of precious pickle, corre- 
sponding to our caviare or anchovy, to dried lumps answering to our stock- 
fish were all sent to Greece, and later to Rome, from the mouths of Dnépr and 
the sea of Azov. As regards some of the small copper coins of Olbia, Mr. G. F. 
Hill, A Handbook of Greek and Roman Coins (London, 1899), p. 3, writes: “‘ If 
these are coins, they differ from the ordinary Greek coin only in the fact that, 
instead of putting a fish type on a flan of ordinary shape, the whole coin was 
made in the shape of a fish. Another explanation is suggested by the fact 
Q 
