Highly favoured by the neighbourhood of the sea, the Greek population applied themselves, with that peculiar taste which characterized them, to distinguish the best species; and skilful cooks knew how to give to fish the most refined flavour, thanks to the numerous combinations of ingredients which we too have learned from the ancient authors who have written on dietetics. They possessed various ways of preparing them with salt or oil, and aromatics.[XXI_11] Athenæus has transmitted to us some very important precepts upon their seasoning. Æschylus and Sophocles were not above lowering their tragic muse by sometimes introducing remarks on fish sauce.
The productions of the sea had for Athens such an irresistible interest, that a law of police forbad all fishmongers to sit down until they had parted with the whole of their stock; so that the uncomfortable position of standing made them more submissive, and induced them to dispose of the fish at a more reasonable price.[XXI_12] This regulation in the “Billingsgate” of Athens was very rigorously observed, and the purchasers were highly delighted with it.
They also required that the fish should always be out of the water; and this wise law, consequently, did not allow its being preserved, or the price to be increased.[XXI_13] And finally, as soon as any kind of fish was brought to market, they were required to call the customers together immediately, by a kind of market-bell, which was a sort of invitation to come and make their purchases.[XXI_14]
Some would-be philosophers, members of the opposition of that period, thought of raising their voices against the common taste. Symmachus, Polycrates, and Lamprias, tried to prove, in their writings, that those who eat fish were the most cruel and ferocious of men. These tender ichthyophilists were laughed at, and their works had no sale.
The Romans inherited the predilection of the Greeks, “For the dumb companions of the fair Amphitryte;” but, excited by the love of the marvellous, they stocked the sea with imaginary beings; and they saw whales of four acres, fishes of two hundred cubits, and even that eel, or that serpent, which veridical navigators have seen again in our days. It was then thirty feet in length,[XXI_15] but now it is much longer!
Pliny, who believed so many things, swore to these by the twelve great gods of Olympus. At all events, we are much indebted to that laborious naturalist for very precious information. He has made us acquainted with the scare, which the Roman epicures preferred to every other species. After the scare, the eel-pout or lotas’-liver enjoyed a great reputation. The red mullet, which is still much esteemed, was considered as one of the most delicate of dishes, and the Romans in fashionable circles employed it in a refinement of pleasure of a singular kind.
It is well known that this fish, when the scales are removed, still remains of a fine pink colour. The fops of Rome having remarked that, at the death, this colour passed through a succession of the most beautiful shades, the poor mullet was served alive, inclosed in a glass vessel; and the guests, attentive and greedy of emotions, enjoyed this cruel spectacle, which presented to them a gradation of colours, which insensibly disappeared.[XXI_16]
The greatest sensualists killed it in brine, and Apicius was the first who invented this kind of luxury. The brine most in use, in such cases, was made with the blood of mackerel, and that was one of the varieties of that famous garum so highly praised by the Latin authors, and which was to them, at that period, what the fish sauces of the English are now. We will give, in this work, the various preparations of this so celebrated condiment, and the reader will then be able to judge for himself.
Apicius, the man of culinary progress, proposed a prize to any one who could invent a new brine made with the liver of red mullets. History has not transmitted to us the name of the fortunate conqueror; but Juvenal informs us that Asinius Celer offered sixty pounds for one of these fishes which weighed six pounds.[XXI_17]
This was, after all, but a trifling folly, in the midst of so many extravagances which several writers have carefully registered. Lucullus, the most ostentatious of the patricians, had a mountain cut through in the neighbourhood of Naples, so as to open a canal and bring up the sea and its fishes to the centre of the gardens of his sumptuous villa.[XXI_18]