Since another version brackets “Reformation, hops, bays, and beer,” the year intended is obviously 1532. A Pike, or rather the head of a fish so-called, served at supper is said to have caused the end of Theodoric the Goth. In it he imagined he saw the face and head of Symmachus, whom he had just put to death; straightway he became so terror-stricken that within three days he had joined his victim. [Illustration: THE NAKED FISHERMAN OF THE VATICAN.] FOOTNOTES: [440] _Ep._, II. 2; _Carmina_, XIX. and XXI. Fortunately for Sidonius, Clermont was in the Auvergne, so he could be at once _piscator_ and _episcopus_. [441] IX. 32. “In Aquitania salmo fluvialis marinis omnibus prefertur.” To make this clear _piscibus_ should be understood after _omnibus_. The salmon is the fish most frequently found in the débris of the French caves, many of which are in Aquitania, so Palæolithic and Plinian man at any rate ate tooth to tooth in their preference. See Introduction. It is somewhat amazing, considering their opsophagy and the excellence of the fish, that down to 500 A.D. no Greek, and no Latin writer, except Pliny, Ausonius, and Sidonius, _Ep._ II. 2, mentions the _Salmonidæ_. I cannot forgo Ausonius’s epithet—mouth-filling yet appropriate—for us, who dwell in “this blessed Isle, this England,” _Aquilonigenasque Britannos_. [442] Salmon appear but infrequently in representations, but Plate 8 in C. W. King’s _Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire_, London, 1879, shows in colours a mosaic dedicated to the god Nodons by Flavius Senilis, an officer in command of the fleet stationed off the Severn: this mosaic includes a number of _salmon_. King, _ib._ Plate 13, 2, is a diadem of beaten bronze representing a fisherman with a pointed cap in the act of hooking with undoubtedly a _tight_ line a fine salmon: cf. A. B. Cook’s discussion of these finds in _Folk-Lore_, 1906, XVI. 37 ff. Nodons was in fact, like Nuada, a fish god, indeed a Celtic understudy for Neptune. If salmon figure little in representations, they bulk large in laws, and in commissariats for campaigns, _e.g._ 3000 dried salmon were ordered by Edw. II. in his war with Bruce. [443] From Professor R. C. Jebbs’ _Translation_, p. 176 (line 240 ff.). [444] Cf. Plutarch, _Symp._, IV. 4. “The place where we live is to fish no less than Hell: for no sooner come they unto it, but dead they immediately be.” Holland’s _Translation_. [445] For the story of Glaucus, see Æsch., _Frag._ 28; Paus., IX. 22, 6 and 7; Virgil, _Æn._, VI. 36; and Athen., VII. 47, 8. Ausonius follows the version according to which Glaucus had been metamorphosed by Circe, and then on tasting the herb regained his human form as the “Old Man of the Sea.” Ovid, _Met._, XIII. 898 ff. [446] _Mosella_, 88. “Purpureisque Salar stellatus tergora guttis,” and _ibid._, 129 f., “Qui necdum Salmo, necdum Salar, ambiguusque Amborum medio, sario, intercepte sub ævo.”