calls attention to the expensive nature of his present, for _garum_ made from the _scomber_ was in Pliny’s words “laudatissimum,” while the ἄλμη, or _muria_, fabricated from the intestines and nothing else of the tunny was cheap and inferior. Apart from their gastronomic popularity, the medical efficacy of the various _gara_ as pæaned by Pliny must, like the Waverley Pen, have “come as a boon and a blessing to men,” in the wide range of their cures.[501] For ulcers of the mouth and ears, one _mirifice prodest_. On the application of other _gara_, “dumb-foundered flee away” burns, blains, dysenteries, bites of dogs, _maximeque crocodili_, etc. Chapter 44 might indeed easily pass as the leaflet of an advance agent for a patent pill. With the knowledge and use of the various internal parts of fish, it is strange to find Caviare, made out of the roe of the Sturgeon, first in a recipe of the ninth century. Soft and hard roes then, as now, were generally exported, but as a separate article it became known only in Byzantine times.[502] With the hungry desire for fish among all classes and with the deep pockets of the rich enabling them to go to any extreme price, is it any wonder that the trade of a fishmonger at Athens and Rome was most lucrative? Several fishmongers acquired large fortunes and high position. The Athenians even raised to the rank of citizens the sons of Chærephilus, for the adequate reason that he sold such excellent pickled fish![503] At Athens, and probably at Rome, there existed a Society or Corporation of Fishmongers, akin to our own Fishmongers’ Company, one of the many trade guilds of mediæval times. Its power and political pull often defeated or evaded the stringent regulations, which from time to time fixed the price of fish. In early times fish were sold by the fishermen themselves, as soon as the Fish-Market at Rome had been opened by the ringing of its bell. FOOTNOTES: [459] Cf. Chapter IV. Also Plutarch, _Symp._, VIII. 8, and Aristoph., _Ach._, 880. [460] Akin to this we have the special prohibition—unique as far as I know—whereby priests at the temple of Leptis abstained from eating _sea_ fish, because Poseidon was god of the sea, and owner and protector of its denizens. Plutarch, _De solert. an._, 35, 11. At other of his temples, _e.g._ in Laconia, the fate awaiting a violator of the sacred fish was that common to poachers of similar holy waters, death. [461] _The Love of Nature among the Romans_ (London, 1912), p. 300, n. 1. [462] Passages which at first sight seem to conflict with this summary can often be ruled out from (A) geographical reasons, where (1) the fishing occurs in some non-Greek water, as in the Tiber (Galen, περὶ τροφῶν δυνάμεως, 3), or (2) the locality is not specified, as in Athen., VIII. 56, which is merely a quotation from a treatise of Mnesitheus, concerned with _all_ kinds of fish from a digestive point of view; and (B) from the _brackish_ nature of water.