214 
SURMULLET. 
a dainty so mncli esteemed, but who contented himself with 
half of a fish, as all he was able to supply. Under these 
circumstances the price might be expected to rise very high, 
and accordingly a IMullct of two pounds (each pound amounting 
to twelve ounces) was expected to bring its weight of sil\er. 
This value, however, was often exceeded, and especially per- 
haps when the fish had grown scarce in their own waters, 
and in consequence were sought for on the distant coasts of 
Corsica and the south of Sicily. At that time a thousand 
sesterces were equal to three pounds of silver, and, according 
to this reckoning, Juvenal speaks of a single Surmullet as 
having obtained the price of almost fifty pounds; and if as 
a satiric poet he may be suspected of exaggeration, his story 
is confirmed by the more sober Suetonius, who tells us that 
on one occasion three of these Mullets were sold for thirty 
thousand sesterces, which made at least seventy pounds for 
each fish. Juvenal remarks on examples of this nature, that 
the fisherman might have been bought for less money than 
his fish; and, according to Pliny, so might, in former days, 
the cook that dressed it. 
According to the last-named author, Asinius Celer expended 
sixty-five pounds in the purchase of a single MuUet; which 
will render less extraordinary a story told of the Emperor 
Tiberius, in which instance the price obtained will be ascribed 
to the wish of contending courtiers to obtain the notice of 
their prince, rather than to the fashionable value of the fish 
itself. It appears that some one had obtained a Mullet which 
reached the unusual weight of four pounds and a half, and 
which he judged a proper present for the emperor; but the 
latter, either from avarice or caprice gave command that it 
should be carried to the market for public sale, where two 
noblemen contended for the purchase until it reached the sum 
of five thousand sesterces, or fifteen pounds of silver. But 
people of a lower degree had similar aspirations; and an 
J^gyptian, who had been a slave and had obtained his fieedom, 
and afterwards being raised to the rank of a knight by the 
Emperor Domitian, was rich enough, as well as sufficiently 
ambitious, to pay six thousand sesterces for the fish. And 
yet, stranger still, all of these examples must give way to 
what is told of the Emperor Ileliogabalus, who, in a freak 
