[463] Dio. Cass. 76, 12, 2, speaks of the Scottish Seas as swarming and crammed with fish. [464] Damm, p. 465, asserts that the order of eating of fish among the Greeks was (1) Fish from the sea, and then, but much later, (2) Fish from the rapids of a river. Daremberg and Saglio: “Pour les Grecs le poisson d’eau douce comptait à peine dans la consommation du poisson de mer: seules les anguilles du lac Copaïs avaient quelque renom. Mais la pêche maritime eut toujours beaucoup plus d’importance.” Pliny, XXXII. 10: Pisces marinos in usu fuisse protinus a condita Roma. Philemon the comedian makes the cook in his play, “The Soldier” (cited by Athen., VII. 32), bewail having for the feast mere, “river fish, eaters of mud; If I had had a scare or bluebacked fish from Attic waters I should have been accounted an immortal!” [465] See _infra_, p. 287. [466] Suetonius (_Tib._, 34), “Tresque mullos triginta milibus nummum.” A thousand sesterces, in the time of Augustus, equalled £8 17_s._ 1_d._, but later only £7 15_s._ 1_d._ For convenience I take 1000 sesterces as roughly equivalent to about £8 0_s._ 0_d._ [467] An amusing instance of official interference is recorded in Apuleius, _Metamorhp._ I. 18. Lucius, the hero of the story, tries to buy some fish for dinner from a fishmonger at Hypata in Thessaly, who demanded 100 _nummi_ (_denarii_): after much haggling, 20 _denarii’s_ worth is bought and being taken home, when the local ædile intervenes, seizes the parcel on account of the extravagant charge, and destroys the fish in the presence of the seller. The result, which Lucius bewails, was loss of both dinner, and _denarii_! [468] See Mayor’s _Juvenal_ and Gifford’s _Trans._, IV. 15. In Pliny, IX. 31, Mutianus speaks of a mullet which was caught in the Red Sea, weighing 80 lbs. The comment of I. D. Lewis (on _Juv._, IV. 15 f.) that this fish “is utterly fabulous,” is not the voice of _one_ crying in the wilderness. [469] IX. 31, “at nunc coci triumphorum pretiis parantur, et coquorum pisces.” [470] _Ep._, X. 31 f. [471] _Sat._, IV. 23 ff. (Gifford’s _Trs._). [472] VIII. 16. Cf. also Varro, _De Re Rust._, Bk. III. 3, 10; Ælian, VIII. 4; and Macrobius, _Sat._, III. xv. 1 ff. [473] Athen., VIII. 26. [474] _Ibid._ VIII. 26. [475] Xenophon, in speaking of a man as “an opsophagist and the biggest dolt possible,” evidently does not subscribe to the pleasant theory that fish-food increases the grey matter of our brain. Holland’s translation of Plutarch is not complimentary: “hence it is we call those gluttons who love belly-cheer so well opsophagists.”