266 THE NINE FISH MOST HIGHLY PRIZED 
being worn only by country folk) often employed for striking 
a person.! 
Then comes the other play on Lingulaca, which in its first 
sense equals a chatterbox, and in its second the fish. 
Lysidamus : Soleas, Chalinus: Qui, queso, potius quam scul- 
poneas, 
Quibus battuatur tibi os, senex nequissime ? 
Olympio: Vin’ lingulacas? Lysidamus: Quid opust, quando 
uxor domi est ? 
Ea lingulaca est nobis, nam numquam tacet.? 
To render the double punning of these lines has been a task 
too hard even for the excellent Loeb Library. But Badham, 
perhaps poeta nascitur, but here non fit, comes to the fore : 
“Fresh tongues for sale, who'll buy, who'll buy ? 
Come, Sir, will you? No, friend, not I; 
Of tongue enow at home I’ve got 
In my old wife, Dame Polyglot.” 
The Cestveus, or Mugil. My inclination to include this 
fish among “ The Nine Fish most highly prized’ was checked 
in part by Faber’s placing it only in Class II., and in part by 
the possible reproach, seeing that the glories of its cousin the 
Mullus had been fully recounted, of ‘‘ too much one family.”’ 
But as the fish possesses traits very individual, if not always 
engaging, and as Athenzeus devotes to its gastronomic and other 
properties no less than four chapters,? I cannot pass by it 
without some comment. 
Its edible qualities vary with the place of its capture. 
While the Mugil of Abdera, Sinope, and other clear-watered 
places achieved high praise, its more frequent but muddy- 
tasting brother of the lagoons formed the staple of one kind 
of rapexog. Their predilection for lagoons and brackish 
water—evidenced by writers as far apart as Aristotle and 
Apostolides (1900 A.D.)—came about possibly from the fish 
“breeding best where rivers run into the sea,’’ or can be 
accounted for by the belief that ‘‘Some of the grey mullet 
1 Terence, Eun., V. 7, 4. 
2 Plautus, Casin. II. 8, 59 ff. 
* Deipn, VII. 77-80; cf. Pausanias, IV. 34. 
