Around her head or amidst her hair on Syracusan coins dart dolphins (some hold eels, which were sacred to Artemis), symbolic of the sea, to show that the sweetness of the fountain was still untainted by the surrounding salt of the ocean.[528] Sweet the water may have been, but Athenæus (II. 16) characterises it as “of invincible hardness.” These coins are the work of those great masters, Cimon, Euaenetus, and an unknown third, the ‘New Artist’ of Sir Arthur Evans.[529] On an electrum coin of Syracuse an octopus is well delineated, while the obverse shows a veiled female head in profile.[530] [Illustration: ARETHUSA, FROM A TETRADRACHM OF SYRACUSE BY CIMON. From G. F. Hill’s _Handbook of Coins_, Pl. 6, Fig. 6.] The octopus, judging by the fact that at Mycenæ in one tomb alone Dr. Schliemann excavated fifty-three golden models of it, and by the many gold ornaments of which the fish forms the chief or only figure, was undoubtedly a very frequent and favourite subject for the craftsmen of the ‘Minoan’ age, although it did not bulk so big in early Mediterranean religion as L. Siret would make out.[531] The taxes or duties derived from fish or fishing furnished the _peculiar_ of the Temples at Delos, Ephesus, and elsewhere: at Byzantium and some other places they went to the city. After the Roman conquests these imposts were paid not to the cities (Cyzicus and other places were the exceptions), but to the State, and were gathered by the intermediary “publicans.”[532] With stories before him, such as those of the suppers recorded by the dozen in Athenæus, and given to and by the Emperor Vitellius, for which the fish were brought in ships of war from the Carpathian Sea and the Straits of Spain, it is no wonder that a modern author is driven to conclude that the ancients thought more of the edible than the sporting qualities of the fish. They ransacked the habitable globe for side-dishes, but did not trouble themselves about the precepts of Mrs. Glasse. Apart from this ransacking of the globe, the Romans developed, as the demand for fish by rich and poor alike grew ever greater, the Egyptian and Assyrian _vivarium_ to a marvellous extent. Built at first (as Columella avers[533]) simply for the purpose of supplying fresh fish for the table, they found such favour that no self-respecting Roman could afford to be without his _vivarium_. With the rich they were the occasion of most costly ostentation and extravagant expenditure.