Bitterer than gall?[[585]]
But if the reader should be disposed to infer from these testimonies that the fishmongering race were saucy only at Athens, he will be in danger of falling into error. Throughout the ancient world they were the same, and we fear that should any poor devil from Grub-street, or the Quartier Latin, presume to dispute respecting the price of salmon with one of their cockney or Parisian descendants, he would meet with little more politeness. At all events their manners had not improved in the Eternal city,[[586]] for it is a propos of the Roman fishfags that Athenæus brings forward his examples of like insolence elsewhere. The poet Diphilos would appear, like Archestratos, to have travelled in search of good fish and civil fishmongers, but his labours were fruitless; he might as well have peregrinated the world in the hope of finding that island where soles are caught ready-fried in the sea. Such at least is the tenour of his own complaint:
Troth, in my greener days I had some notion
That here at Athens only, rogues sold fish;
But everywhere, it seems, like wolf or fox,
The race is treacherous by nature found.
However, we have one scamp in the agora
Who beats all others hollow. On his head
A most portentous fell of hair nods thick
And shades his brow. Observing your surprise,