The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 2 (of 3)Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Philosophy
The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 2 (of 3)
Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Civilization, Greco-Roman; Dinners and dining -- Greece; Greece -- Social life and customs; Homosexuality -- Greece
Then after this there are boaces and
Smarides, anchovies, also cammori.
And Sophron, in his Female Farces, mentions them. But they are a
species of squill, and this name was given them by the Romans.
76. There is also a fish called the carcharias. Numenius of Heraclea,
in his Art of Fishing, says—
[Sidenote: FISH.]
At times you may too a carcharias catch,
At times a psamathis who loves the surf.
And Sophron, in his Tunny-hunter, says, "But if your stomach happens
to have swallowed a carcharias." But Nicander the Colophonian, in his
essay on Dialects, says that the carcharias is also called the lamias
and the squill.
77. There is also the cestreus. Icesius says, "Of the fish which are
called by one general name of leucisci there are many sorts; for some
are called cephali, and some cestres, and some chellones, and some
myxini. But the cephali are the best both in flavour and juiciness;
the next to them are those called the cestres; the myxini are inferior
to either. But the worst of all are the chellones, which are called
bacchi; and they are all full of wholesome juice, not very nutritious,
but very digestible." And Dorion, in his essay on Fish, mentions the
sea cestreus, but does not approve of the river one. And the sea
cestreus he subdivides into two species—the cephalus and the nestis.
But the cestreus, which is like the sea-urchin about the head, he calls
sphondylus. And he says "that the cephalinus differs from the cephalus,
and that this last is also called the blepsias." But Aristotle says,
in the fifth book of his treatise on the Parts of Animals, "But of the
different kinds of cestreus, the chellones begin to be pregnant in the
month Poseideon; so does the sargus and the fish called the myxus; and
so does the cephalus: and they go thirty days with young. But some of
the cestres are not generated by copulation, but are produced by the
slime and the sand."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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