For mussels you must go to Ænos; oysters You’ll find best at Abydos. Parion Rejoices in its urchins; but if cockles Gigantic and sweet-tasted you would eat, A voyage must be made to Mitylene, Or the Ambracian Gulf, where they abound With many other dainties. At Messina, Near to the Faro, are pelorian conchs, Nor are those bad you find near Ephesos; For Tethyan oysters, go to Chalcedon; But for the Heralds,[610] may Zeus overwhelm them Both in the sea and in the agora! Aye, all except my old friend Agathon, Who in the midst of Lesbian vineyards dwells.[611] ----- Footnote 609: Demet. Scep. ap. Athen. iii. 41. Footnote 610: The κήρυξ, ceryx, so called because the Heralds (κήρυκες) used its shell instead of a trumpet, when making proclamation of any decree in the agora. Footnote 611: Athen. iii. 44. Cf. Polluc. vi. 47. The ancients made the most of their fish in every way. They were hawked about the streets in rush-baskets, as with us.—Athen. vii. 72. ----- We have already mentioned the magnificent eels of Lake Copais,[612] in Bœotia, a longing for which appears to have been Aristophanes’s chief motive for desiring an end to the Peloponnesian war. Next in excellence were those caught in the river Strymon, and the Faro of Messina.[613] The ellops, by some supposed to be the sword-fish,[614] was found in greatest perfection near Syracuse; at least, in the opinion of Archestratos; but Varro and Pliny give the preference to that of Rhodes, and others to that of the Pamphylian sea.[615] The red mullet, the hepsetos, the hepatos, the elacaten, the thunny, the hippouros, the hippos, or sea-horse, found in perfection on the shores[616] of Phœnicia, the ioulis, the kichlè, or sea-thrush, the sea-boar, the citharos, the kordylos, the river cray-fish, the shark, which was eaten when young, the mullet, the coracinos, the carp, the gudgeon, the sea-cuckoo, the sea-wolf, the latos, the leobatos, or smooth ray, the lamprey,[617] the myræna, the anchovy,[618] the black tail, the torpedo, the mormyros, the orphos, the onos, the polypus, the crab, the sea-perch, the physa, or sea-tench, the raphis, the sea-dog,[619] the scaros, the sparos, the scorpios, the salpe, or stock-fish, the synodon, the sauros, the scepinos, or halibut, the sciaina, the syagris, the sphyræna, the sepia, the tœnia, the skate, the cuttle-fish, the hyca, the phagros, the perca cabrilla, the chromis, the gilthead, the trichidon, the thratta, and the turbot;[620] such is a list of the fish in common use among the Greeks. The species it will be seen has not in many cases been ascertained. ----- Footnote 612: Sch. Aristoph. Acharn. 845. Lysist. 36. There were in the fountain at Arethusa, as we are told by the philosophical Plutarch, eels that understood their own names.—Solert. Anim. § 23. Footnote 613: