[2361] The evening setting, namely. This took place on the fourth day before the nones of November. See B. xviii. c. 74.
[2362] Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. vi. c. 16.
[2363] Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. vi. c. 16. Hardouin remarks, that the tunny which Pliny mentions in c. 17, as weighing so many hundreds of pounds, must certainly have been older than this.
[2364] This is, as Cuvier has remarked, a crustaceous insect of the parasitical class Lernæa, which are monoculous [and form the modern class of the Epizoa]. Gmelin, he says, has called it “Pennatula filosa,” though, in fact, it is not a pennatula [or polyp] at all. As Dalechamps observes, its appearance is very different from that of a scorpion. Penetrating the flesh of the tunny or sword-fish, it almost drives the creature to a state of madness.
[2365] Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 19. Appian also, in his Halieutics, B. ii., makes mention of this animal. Pintianus remarks, that Athenæus, on reading this passage of Aristotle, read it not as “arachnes,” but “drachmes;” not the size of a spider, but the weight of a “drachma,” or Roman denarius.
[2366] Or the emperor fish, Cuvier says, the Xiphias gladius of Linnæus.
[2367] In confirmation of this, Suetonius says, “The day before Augustus fought the sea-battle off Sicily, while he was walking on the sea-shore, a fish leapt out of the sea and fell at his feet.”
[2368] Appian tells us, B. v., that Sextus Pompeius, on gaining some successes against Augustus at sea, caused himself to be called the “Son of Neptune,” as having been adopted by that divinity. There is also a coin of Pompey extant, which attests that he adopted the surname of “Neptunius.”
[2369] Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. v. c. 5. Cuvier remarks, that this is true, and more especially during the spawning season.
[2370] Aristotle says the same, but with the expression of some doubt as to the truth of the assertion. B. vi. c. 13.