404 
plint's katueal history. [Book IX. 
would have been paid for it by our epicures, if it bad only been 
found off the shores in the vicinity of our city ! 
CHAP. 32. THAT THE SAME KII^DS AEE NOT EVEEYWHERE 
EQUALLY ESTEEMED. 
There is this also in the nature of fish, that some are more 
highly esteemed in one place, and some in another ; such, for 
instance, as the coracinus^^ in Egypt, the zeus,^^ also called the 
faber,^^ at Gades, the salpa,^* in the vicinity of Ebusus,*^^ which 
is considered elsewhere an unclean fish, and can no where be 
thoroughly cooked, wherever found, without being first beaten 
with a stick : in Aquitania, again, the river salmon is pre- 
ferred to all the fish that swim in the sea. 
larger than ours, it is never found at all approaching the weight here men- 
tioned. 
31 The bolty of the modern Egyptians, as previously mentioned. 
32 Or Jove-fish. Cuvier says that Gillius has applied the name of 
" faber '* to the dory, or fish of Saint Peter, and has stated that the Dal- 
matians, who call it the "forga," pretend that they can find in its bones all 
the instruments of a forge. After him, other modern naturalists have called 
the same fish Zeus faber ; but nothing, Cuvier says, goes to prove that the 
dory is the fish so called by the ancients. The epithet even of " rare," 
given to it by Ovid, Halieut. 1. 112, is far from applicable to the dory, 
which is common enough in the Mediterranean. If, indeed, the ^aXfcgut: 
of the Greeks were the same as the faber," as, indeed, we have reason to 
suppose, it would be something in favour of the dory, as Athenaeus, B. vii., 
says that the ;)^aXK£ue is of a round shape : but then, on the other hand, 
Oppian, Halieut. B. v. 1. 135, ranks it among the rock-fish which feed near 
rocks with herbage on them; while the dory is found only in the deep sea. 
33 Oj. a blacksmith." 
3^ Cuvier says that this fish has still the same name in Italy ; that it is 
called the saupe " in Provence, and the " vergadelle " in Languedoc, being 
the Sparus salpa of Linnaeus ; and that it still answers to all the ancient 
characteristics of the salpa, eating grass and filling its stomach, and having 
numerous red lines upon the body. It is common, and bad eating, but is 
no better at Ivica, the ancient Ebusus, than anywhere else. M. De la 
Roche, when describing the fishes of that island, says expressly that the 
flesh of the saupe is but very little esteemed there. Ovid, Halieut. 1. 122, 
speaks of it as " deservedly held in little esteem." 
35 See B. iii. c. 11. 
36 Neither at Ebusus nor anywhere else. 
3'7 Hardouin remarks, that Pliny and Ausonius are the only Latin writers 
that mention this fish ; while not one among the Greeks speaks of it. It 
was probably a native of regions too far to the north for them to know 
much about it. In this country it holds the same rank that the scarus and 
the mullet seem to have held at the Eoman tablese 
