Commend me for invention to the rogue Who sells fish in the agora. He knows In fact there’s no mistaking,—that the law Clearly and formally forbids the trick Of reconciling stale fish to the nose By constant watering. But if some poor wight Detect him in the fact, forthwith he picks A quarrel, and provokes his man to blows. He wheels meanwhile about his fish, looks sharp To catch the nick of time, reels, feigns a hurt: And prostrate falls, just in the right position. A friend placed there on purpose, snatches up A pot of water, sprinkles a drop or two, For form’s sake on his face, but by mistake, As you must sure believe, pours all the rest Full on the fish, so that almost you might Consider them fresh caught.[589] ----- Footnote 588: The longer to preserve fish fresh, the Orientals sometimes cover them with a coating of wax. Mullets, caught at Damietta, are sent, thus preserved, throughout the Turkish Empire, as well as to different parts of Europe. Pococke’s Description of the East. Footnote 589: Our readers will probably remember the good old Italian marchioness, who having, perhaps, been cajoled, by the blarney of some Hibernian peripatetic, into the purchase of a pair of strong-odoured soles, recommended to our magistrates the adoption of an ordinance passed, as she affirmed, by his grace of Tuscany. In that prince’s territories, she assured their worships, the man who has fish to sell, must transact business standing on one leg in a bucket of hot water, a practice undoubtedly calculated to induce despatch and prevent haggling. This Tuscan enactment might evidently have been adopted with great advantage at Athens, where, however, legislation proceeded on exactly the same principles, and attained in this point an almost equal degree of perfection. ----- By a law passed at the instance of the wealthy Aristonicos, himself no doubt an ichthyophagos, the penalty of imprisonment was decreed against all those who, having named a price for their fish, should take less, in order that they might at once demand what was just and no more. In consequence of this enactment, an old woman or a child might be sent to the fish-market, without danger of being cheated. According to another provision of this Golden Law, as it is termed by Alexis, fishmongers were compelled to stand at their stalls and not to sit as had previously been the custom. The comic poet, in the fulness of his charity, expresses a hope that they might be all _suspended_ aloft on the following year, by which means, he says, they would get a quicker sight of their customers, and carry on their dealings with mankind from a machine like the gods of tragedy.[590] ----- Footnote 590: Athen. vi. 8. -----