_A._ What was't I said? _B._ A cybium for threepence. _A._ But are you sure you've nought embezzled here? _B._ My friend, you've no experience of the market; You know not how the grubs devour the greens. _A._ But how is that a reason for your charging A double price for salt-fish? _B._ The greengrocer Is also a salt-fishmonger; go and ask him. A conger, tenpence. _A._ That is not too much. What next? _B._ I bought a roast fish for a drachma. _A._ Bah! how he runs on now towards the end, As if a fever had o'ertaken him. _B._ Then add the wine, of which I bought three gallons When you were drunk, ten obols for each gallon. 87. And Icesius says, in the second book of his treatise on the Materials of Nourishment, that pelamydes are a large kind of cybium. And Posidippus speaks of the cybium, in his Transformed. But Euthydemus, in his treatise on Salt Fish, says that the fish called the Delcanus is so named from the river Delcon, where it is taken; and then, when pickled and salted, it is very good indeed for the stomach. But Dorion, in his book on Fishes, calls the leptinus the lebianus, and says, "that some people say that is the same fish as the delcanus; and that the ceracinus is called by many people the saperdes; and that the best are those which come from the Palus Mæotis. And he says that the mullet which are caught about Abdera are excellent; and next to them, those which are caught near Sinope; and that they, when pickled and salted, are very good for the stomach. But those, he says, which are called mulli are by some people called agnotidia, and by some platistaci, though they are all the same fish; as also is the chellares. For that he, being but one fish, has received a great variety of names; for that he is called a bacchus, and an oniscus, and a chellares. And those of the larger size are called platistaci, and those of middle size mulli, and those which are but small are called agnotidia. But Aristophanes also mentions the mulli, in his Holcades-- Scombri, and coliæ, and lebii, And mulli, and saperdæ, and all tunnies. 88. When Dionysiocles was silent upon this, Varus the grammarian said,--But Antiphanes the poet, also, in his Deucalion, mentions these kinds of pickled salt-fish, where he says-- If any one should wish for caviar From mighty sturgeon, fresh from Cadiz' sea; Or else delights in the Byzantine tunny, And courts its fragrance. And in his Parasite he says-- Caviar from the sturgeon in the middle, Fat, white as snow, and hot. And Nicostratus or Philetærus, in his Antyllus, says-- Let the Byzantine salt-fish triumph here, And paunch from Cadiz, carefully preserved. And a little further on, he proceeds--