Comacchio on the Adriatic, from its extraordinary advantages of position and of fish-food, can hardly have escaped being utilised for similar purposes by the Romans. For many centuries, at any rate, its _valli_ or breeding grounds have been renowned. Ariosto sings its speciality: “La Città che in mezzo alle piscose Paludi del Pô, téme ambe le foci.” Tasso hands it down as the place where the fish— “finds itself within a prison swamp Nor can escape, for that seraglio Is aye to entrance wide, to exit barred.” At the present day over twelve hundred tons of fish, eight hundred of them eels, are annually captured at Comacchio.[558] * * * * * Since the above was printed, new and interesting evidence of the importance of fish, not only as an economic, but also as a hygienic, factor in the nation’s prosperity has been furnished by Prof. J. A. Thomson in his lecture before the Royal Institution, January 6, 1921. He traced a connection between the decline of Greece and a shortage of little fishes. There was strong reason to believe that one of the causes for the decay of “the glory that was Greece” was that malaria was brought into the State. The little creature, which caused malaria, lived on the mosquito by whom it was carried. The mosquito spent its larval life in the fresh waters. Little fish were the enemy of the mosquito—particularly the fish known as “millions”—which consumed the pest at a great rate. The professor suggested, therefore, that what had happened in Greece was that there had not been enough little fish to keep the mosquitos in check. Because of this, malaria had been brought into the country, and that plague helped, if it did not cause, the destruction of the wonderful civilisation of Greece. FOOTNOTES: [504] _Fasti_, VI. 239 ff. [505] Agatharchides, _frag._ 1 _ap._ Athen., VII. 50. In these days of the Science of Comparative Curiosity and International Meddling the answer of the Bœotian to a foreigner asking how so singular a victim and sacrifice originated rings out pleasantly refreshing: “I only know one thing: it is right to maintain the customs of one’s ancestors, and it is not right to explain them to foreigners!” [506] Athen., VIII. 8. [507] Ælian, XV. 6. [508] Athen., VII. 50, and Paulus Rhode, _Thynnorum Captura_ (Lipsiæ, 1890), p. 71. Most of the major deities—_e.g._ Diana, Apollo, Mercury, Juno, Neptune, Ceres, and Venus—claimed a particular sacrificiable fish or fishes. Sometimes fishes were offered to two or more gods, _e.g._ the mullet to Ceres and Proserpine. Cf. J. G. Stuck, _Sacrorum et sacrificiorum gentil. descriptio_, ii. p. 72. [509] ἰχθύων δὲ θύσιμος οὐδεὶς οὐδὲ ἱερεύσιμός ἐστιν.