Chap. 31.] 
FISHES. 
403 
M. Apicius, a man who displayed a remarkable degree of in- 
genuity in everything relating to luxury, was of opinion, that 
it was a most excellent plan to let the mullet die in the pickle 
known as the garum of the allies — for we find that even 
this has found a surname — and he proposed a prize for any 
one who should invent a new sauce,^^ made from the liver of 
this fish. I find it much easier to relate this fact, than to state 
who it was that gained the prize. 
CHAP. 31. ENOKMOUS PEICES OF SOME EISH. 
Asinius Celer, a man of consular rank, and remarkable for 
his prodigal expenditure on this fish, bought one at Eome, 
during the reign of Caius,^^ at the price of eight thousand ses- 
terces.^^ A reflection upon such a fact as this will at once lead 
us to turn our thoughts to those who, making loud complaints 
against luxury, have lamented that a single cook cost more 
money to buy than a horse ; while at the present day a cook 
is only to be obtained for the same sum that a triumph would 
cost, and a fish is only to be purchased at what was formerly 
the price for a cook ! indeed, there is hardly any living being 
held in higher esteem than the man who understands how, in 
the most scientific fashion, to get rid of his master's property. 
(18.) Licinius Mucianus relates, that in the Eed Sea there 
was caught a mullet eighty pounds in weight. What a price 
25 This anchovy, pickle, or fish-sauce, will be found more fully spoken 
of in B. xxxi. c. 44. 
26 Alecem. See B. xxxi. c. 44. Seneca speaks of this cruel custom of 
pickling fish alive, Qusest. Nat. B. iii. c. 17. "Other fish, again, they 
kill in sauces, and pickle them alive. There are some persons who look 
upon it as quite incredible that a fish should be able to live under-ground. 
How much more so would it appear to them, if they were to hear of a fish 
swimming in sauce, and that the chief dish of the banquet was killed at the 
banquet, feeding the eye before it does the gullet ? " 
'-^"^ He may have been the son of C. Asinius Gallus, who was consul B.C. 
8 ; but he does not appear to have ever been consul himself. 
28 The reign of the Emperor Caligula. 
29 Juvenal, Sat. iv. 1. 15, speaks of a mullet being bought for 6000 ses- 
terces, a thousand for every pound, and Suetonius tells us that in the reign 
of Tiberius three mullets were sold for 30,000 sesterces. It is in allusion 
to this kind of extravagance that Juvenal says, in the same Satire, that it 
is not unlikely that the fisherman could be bought as a slave for a sraailer 
sum than the fish itself. At the above rate, each of these mullets sold for 
about £70 of our money. 
20 Cuvier says that although the mullet of the Indian Seas is in general 
