The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned of Athenaeus Part 93

You may catch n.o.ble chromises in Pella, And they are fat when it is midsummer; And in Ambracia likewise they abound.

136. There is also the chrysophrys. Archippus says in his Fishes--

The chrysophrys, sacred to Cytherean Venus.

And Icesius says that these fish are the best of all fish in sweetness, and also in delicacy of flavour in other respects. They are also most nutritious. They produce their young, as Aristotle says, in a manner similar to the cestres, wherever there are flowing rivers. Epicharmus mentions them in his Muses; and Dorion also, in his book on Fishes. And Eupolis, in his Flatterers, says--

I spent a hundred drachmas upon fish, And only got eight pike, and twelve chrysophryes.

But the wise Archestratus, in his Suggestions, says--

Pa.s.s not the chrysophrys from Ephesus Unheeded by; which the Ephesians call The ioniscus. Take him eagerly, The produce of the venerable Selinus; Wash him, and roast him whole, and serve him up, Though he be ten full cubits long.

137. There is a fish, too, called the chalcis; and others which resemble it, namely, the thrissa, the trichis, and the eritimus. Icesius says, the fish called the chalcis, and the sea-goat, and the needle-fish, and the thrissa, are like chaff, dest.i.tute alike of fat and of juice. And Epicharmus, in his Hebe's Wedding, says--

The chalcides, the sea-pig too, The sea-hawk, and the fat sea-dog.

But Dorion calls it the chalcidice. And Numenius says,--

But you would thus harpoon, in the same way, That chalcis and the little tiny sprat.

But the ?a??e?? is different from the ?a????; and the ?a??e?? is mentioned by Heraclides, in his Cookery Book; and by Euthydemus, in his book on Cured Fish, who says that they are bred in the country of the Cyzicenes, being a round and circular fish.

But the thrissa is mentioned by Aristotle in his book on Animals and Fishes, in these words--"The following are stationary fish: the thrissa, the encrasicholus, the membras anchovy, the coracinus, the erythrinus, and the trichis." And Eupolis mentions the trichis in his Flatterers;--

He was a stingy man, who once in his life Before the war did buy some trichides; But in the Samian war, a ha'p'orth of meat.

And Aristophanes, in his Knights, says--

If trichides were to be a penny a hundred.

But Dorion, in his treatise on Fishes, speaks also of the river Thrissa; and calls the trichis trichias. Nicochares, in his Lemnian Women, says--

The trichias, and the premas tunny too, Placed in enormous quant.i.ties for supper.

(But there was a kind of tunny which they used to call premnas. Plato, in his Europa, has these lines--

He once, when fis.h.i.+ng, saw one of such size A man could scarcely carry it, in a shoal Of premnades, and then he let it go, Because it was a boax.)

And Aristotle, in the fifth book of his Parts of Animals, calls it a trichias also, but in the book which is ent.i.tled ?????, he calls it trichis. And it is said that this fish is delighted with dancing and singing, and that when it hears music it leaps up out of the sea.

Dorion also mentions the eritimi, saying, that they are much the same as the chalcides, and that they are very nice in forced meat. And Epaenetus, in his book upon Fishes, says--"The sea-weasel; the smaris, which some call the dog's-bed; the chalcides, which they also call sardini; the eritimi, the sea-hawk, and the sea-swallow." And Aristotle, in the fifth book of his Parts of Animals, calls them sardines. And Callimachus, in his Names used by different Nations, writes thus--"The encrasicholus, the eritimus, are names used by the Chalcedonians; the trichidia, the chalcis, the ictar, the atherina." And in another part, giving a list of the names of fishes, he says--"The ozaena, the osmylnion, are names used by the Thurians; the iopes, the eritimi, are names used by the Athenians." And Nicander mentions the iopes in his Botian,--

But as when round a shoal of newly born Iopes, phagri, or fierce scopes roam, Or the large orphus.

And Aristophanes, in his s.h.i.+ps of Burden, says--

O wretched fish, the first of trichides To be immersed in pickle.

For they used to steep in pickle all the fish which were proper to be dressed on the coals. And they called pickle, Thasian brine; as also the same poet says in his Wasps,--

For before that it twice drank in the brine.

138. There is also a fish called the thratta. And since we have brought the discussion to this point, and have also discussed the thrissa; let us now examine what the thrattae are, which are mentioned by Archippus, in his play called the Fishes. For in that play, in the treaty between the Fishes and the Athenians, he introduces the following sentences--

And it is agreed on further That both the high contracting parties Shall restore all they now do hold Of each other's property.

We shall give up thus the Thrattae, And the flute-playing Atherina, And Thyrsus's daughter Sepia, And the mullet, and Euclides, Who was archon t'other day, And the coraciontes too, Who from Anagyrus come; And the offspring of the tench, Who swims round sacred Salamis; And the frog who's seated near, From the marshes of Oreum.

Now in these lines, perhaps a man may ask what sort of thrattae among the fishes are meant here, which the fish agree to give up to the men. And since I have got some private things written out on this subject, I will now recite to you that portion of them which bears most on the subject.

The thratta, then, is really a genuine sea-fish; and Mnesimachus in his Horse-breeder, mentions it; and Mnesimachus is a poet of the middle comedy. And he speaks thus--

The mullet, and the lebias, and the sparus, The bright aeolias, and the thratta too, The sea-swallow, the caris, and the cuttle-fish.

But Dorotheus of Ascalon, in the hundred and eighth book of his Collection of Words, writes this name ??tta, either because he fell in with a copy of the drama with an incorrect text, or because, as he himself was unused to the word, he altered it so before he published it.

But the name thetta does absolutely never occur in any Attic writer whatever. But that they were used to call a sea-fish by the name of thratta, that Anaxandrides establishes, speaking in this manner in his play called Lycurgus,--

And sporting with the little coracini, With little perches, and the little thrattae.

And Antiphanes says in his Etrurian--

_A._ He is of the Halaea borough. This is all That now is left me, to be abused unjustly.

_B._ Why so?

_A._ He will (you'll see) bestow on me Some thratta, or sea-sparrow, or some lamprey, Or some enormous other marine evil.

139. We come now to the sea-sparrow. Diocles enumerates this fish among the drier kinds. But Speusippus, in the second book of his Things resembling one another, says that the sea-sparrow and the buglossus and the taenia are very much alike. But Aristotle, in the fifth book of his Parts of Animals, writes--"And in the same manner the greater number of the small fish have young once a year; such as those which are called chyti, which are surrounded by a net, namely, the chromis, the sea-sparrow, the tunny, the pelamys, the cestreus, the chalcis, and others of the same sort." And in his treatise on Animals he says--"These fish are cartilaginous, the sea-cow, the turtle, the torpedo, the ray, the sea-frog, the buglossa, the sea-sparrow, the mussel." But Dorion, in his book on Fishes, says--"But of flat fish there is the buglossus, the sea-sparrow, the escharus, which they also call the coris." The buglossi are mentioned also by Epicharmus in his Hebe's Wedding--

Hyaenides, buglossi, and a citharus.

And Lynceus the Samian, in his Letters, says that the finest sea-sparrows are procured near Eleusis, in Attica. And Archestratus says--

Remember then to get a fine sea-sparrow, And a rough-skinn'd buglossus, near the port Of sacred Chalcis.

But the Romans call the sea-sparrow rhombus; which, however, is a Greek name. And Nausicrates, in his Sea Captains, having first mentioned the sea-grayling, proceeds in this manner--

_A._ Those yellow-fleshed fish, which the high wave That beats aexona brings towards the sh.o.r.e, The best of fish; with which we venerate The light-bestowing daughter of great Jove; When sailors offer gifts of feasts to heaven.

_B._ You mean the mullet, with its milky colour, Which the Sicilian mult.i.tude calls rhombus.

140. So now, having given you, O Timocrates, the whole of the conversation which took place among the Deipnosophists on the subject of fish, we may conclude our book here; and unless you want some other kind of food, we will end by setting before you what Eubulus has said in his Lacedaemonians, or Leda;--

Besides all this you now shall have A slice of tunny, a slice of pork, Some paunch of kid, some liver of goat, Some ram, the entrails of an ox, A lamb's head, and a kid's intestines; The belly of a hare, a pudding, Some tripe, black-puddings, and a sausage.

Being sated, therefore, with all this, let us now take due care of our bodies, in order to be able to feed comfortably on what is coming next.