VIVARIA ROMAN, SICILIAN—ARCHIMEDES 225 
I hasten to endorse the 
First Fisherman: ‘“‘ Why as men do on land; the great ones eat 
up the little ones,” 
and to add that the fish confined in these separate ponds found 
in the waters their business and livelihood from the testacee 
purposely planted. 
This passion for piscine gradually impoverished the 
Mediterranean and other seas. Fish in the Tyrrhenian Sea 
had no time to come to maturity, because as Columella com- 
plains, ‘‘ Maria ipsa Neptunumque clauserunt!’’! While 
Varro and Columella give careful directions as to the making 
and keeping of practical fish stews, they keep silence as to 
methods of capturing the inhabitants. 
I have come across no notice of vivaria among the Greeks : 2 
their kinsman in Sicily erected at least one magnificent example. 
Diodorus Siculus (XI. 2) tells us that the Agrigentines (pro- 
bably by the labour of the Carthaginian prisoners) ‘“‘ sunk a 
fishpond, with great costs and expenses, seven furlongs in 
compass, and twenty cubits in depth: in this water, brought 
both from fountains and rivers, fish were planted which soon 
supplied them with an ample stock both for food and pleasure.”’ 
To the great Archimedes is due the unique achievement of a 
vivarium on board ship. It is impossible here to set forth all 
the glories of this wonderful vessel, intended for the corn 
traffic between Egypt and Sicily, and propelled by means of 
huge sweeps—every sweep worked by a team of twenty men 
(eixoadpoc). 
Her Gymnasium, her three Baths, her Flower Garden, her 
1 De Re Rustica, VIII. 16. Cf. also Juvenal, V. 94 ff.— 
‘‘quando omne peractum est 
Et iam defecit nostrum mare, dum gula sevit, 
Retibus assiduis penitus scrutante macello 
Proxima, nec patimur Tyrrhenum crescere piscem,”’ 
and Seneca, Ep., 89, 22— 
‘quorum profunda et insatiabilis gula hinc maria scrutatur, hinc terras.”’ 
? The explanation for this by Nonnius, op. cit., p. 75 that the Greek coasts, 
from being surrounded on all sides by seas, yielded ample supplies of fish, 
while the Romans, ‘‘ whose seas were not so near,” were not as fortunate and 
were compelled to be more instant in pisciculture—is a statement at the best 
doubtful, and certainly not supported by the existence of vivaria in Sicily, 
lapped on every side by seas. 
