But before we proceed further with this part of our subject, we will demand permission of Lynceus to hear what Hesiod has to say of saltfish, on which Euthydemos, the Athenian, composed a separate treatise. According to this poet, who boldly speaks of cities erected long after his death, immense quantities of fish were salted on the Bosporos, sometimes entire, as in modern times,[594] sometimes cut into gobbets of a moderate size. Among these were the oxyrinchos whose taste proved often fatal, the thunny, and the mackerel. The little city of Parion furnished the best kolias (a kind of mackerel), and the Tarentine merchants brought to Athens pickled orcynos from Cadiz, cut into small triangular pieces, in jars.[595] Physicians, indeed, inveighed against these relishes; but the gourmands would consult only their palates and preferred a short life with pickled thunny to that of Saturn himself on beef and mutton. ----- Footnote 594: Herod. iv. 53. Footnote 595: Athen. iii. 84. ----- But the Hesiod of Euthydemos (a creation probably of his own) is but very poor authority compared with Archestratos, who made the pilgrimage of the world in search of good cheer, and afterwards, for the benefit of posterity, treasured up his experience in a grand culinary epic. In his opinion a slice of Sicilian thunny was a rare delicacy, while the saperda, though brought from the Pontos Euxinos, he held as cheap as those who boasted of it.[596] The scombros, by some supposed to be a species of thunny, though others understand by it the common mackerel, stood high in the estimation of this connoisseur. He directs that it be left in salt three days, and eaten before it begins to melt into brine.[597] In his estimation the horaion[598] of Byzantium was likewise a great delicacy, which he advises the traveller, who might pass through that city, to taste by all means. It seems to have been there what macaroni is at Naples. ----- Footnote 596: Athen. iii. 85. Footnote 597: Athen. iii. 85. The Scomber Pelamys or mackerel of Pallas, caught in the Black Sea, is pickled in casks and not eaten for a twelvemonth. Travels in Southern Russia, iv. 242. Footnote 598: Poterant ὡραῖα nominari, ut _vere_ vel initio æstatis salita, quo tempore minus pinguis totus piscis esset. Schweigh. Animadv. in Athen. iii. 85. t. vii. 313. Cf. Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxii. 53. Gesner, De Salsamentis. -----