Pliny records (N. H., IX. 31) “octo milibus nummum unum mullum mercatum fuisse”—one mullet equalled £64, or the price of nine bulls! He also says (N. H., IX. 30) that mullets were plentiful and cheap when under 2 lb., “a weight they rarely exceeded.” Martial (Ep., XIV. 97) confirms this in his “Do not dishonour your gold serving-dish by a small mullet: none less than two pounds is worthy of it.” In proportion as they exceeded this, they grew in value.
One would imagine that Nature had fallen in with the caprice of the Romans, for the fish seems to have grown larger in the decline of the Empire, as if to humour the extravagance of this degenerate people. Horace thought he had pretty well stigmatised the frantic folly of his glutton by a mullet of 3 lbs. (Sat., II. 2, 33); but the next reign furnished one of 4½ lbs., which presented to and sold at auction by the Emperor Tiberius was bought by Octavius for £40 (Seneca, Ep., XCV. 42), while in Juvenal, IV. 15 f., we have one of 6 lbs.[468]
How long the passion for these big mullets lasted it is impossible to tell, but Macrobius, speaking with indignation of one purchased by Asinius Celer in the reign of Claudius for £56 (in Pliny, N. H., IX. 31, I find the price was £64!), declares that in his time (fifth century a.d.) such mad prices had vanished.
Alongside of Pliny’s caustic comment[469] that the price of a victorious Triumph equalled that of a cook, or a fish, can be set the lament of the Greek comedians that for some fish one had to pay ἴσον ἲσῳ, i.e. for weight avoirdupois you handed over a similar weight in money or, as Mayor neatly renders it, “£ for lb.” This gibe at the public mania sprang from bitter personal experience. At Rome, too, we read “of those who sell rare fish for their weight in money.”
Does not Martial’s savage outburst on a glutton who had sold a slave for £10 to procure a dinner, which was not really a good one because nearly all the money was spent on a mullet—
“Non est hic, improbe, non est Piscis: homo est; hominem, Calliodore, comes,”
apply with greater force to “the men-eaters” who purchased mullets for £40 or £60 each?[470]
Juvenal’s scathing invective on Crispinus—who had bought a mullet of 6 lbs. for £48—runs:
“What! you, Crispinus, brought to Rome erewhile, Lapt in the rushes of your native Nile, Buy scales at such a price! You might, I guess, Have bought the fisherman himself for less; Bought, in some countries, manors at this rate, And, in Apulia, an immense estate.”[471]
The folly of the Roman nobles and millionaires did not exhaust itself in buying fish at insane prices, or squandering their fortunes on Vivaria and similar extravagances. They touched a yet lower depth of infamy by taking their cognomen from fish.