A. Do you know how you ought to dress a lizard?
B. I shall, when you have taught me.
A. First of all
Take off the gills, then wash him, then cut off
The spines all round, and split him open neatly;
Then when you've laid him flat, anoint him well
And thoroughly with assafœtida;
Sprinkle him then with cheese, and salt, and marjoram.
And Ephippus, in his Cydon, gives a list of many other fishes, and among them he mentions the lizard, in the following lines:—
Slices of tunny, and of glanis,
Of shark, and rhinè, and of conger,
Cephalus, perch, and lizard too,
And phycis, brinchus, also mullet,
Sea-cuckoo, phagrus, myllus, sparus,
Lebias, æolias, and sea-swallow,
Thritta, and squid, and cuttle-fish,
Sea-sparrow, and dracænides.
The polypus, the squid, and orphus,
The tench, th' anchovy, and the cestres,
And last of all the needle-fish.
And Innesimachus, in his Horse-breeder, says—
Of fish with teeth serrated, you may eat
The grim torpedo, the sea-frog, the perch,
The lizard, and the trichias, and the phycis,
The brinchus, and the mullet, and sea-cuckoo.
There is also the scepinus; and this fish is mentioned by Dorion, in his treatise on Fish; and he says that it is also called the attageinus, or sea-woodcock.
121. There is also the sciæna. Epicharmus, in his Hebe's Wedding, says—
Æoliæ were there, and plotes too,
And cynoglossi and sciathides.
But Numenius calls this fish the Sciadeus, saying—
Use then this bait, and you perhaps may catch,
If such your wish, a mighty synodon,
Or the quick leaping hippurus, or the phagrus
Proud with his high-raised crest, or in a shoal
Of trusty comrades, the fresh sciadeus.