To Fulvius Herpinus or Lippinus belongs the credit of being the first—just before the Civil War—to fatten the Cochlea, or sea-snail, in a vivarium. By careful collecting from Africa and Illyrica and skilful feeding, his cockles became renowned for size and number.[539]
In the period between the taking of Carthage and the reign of Vespasian, the taste in fish became a perfect passion; for its gratification Proconsuls enriched, like our Clives from India, beyond the dreams of avarice by the spoils of Asia and Africa, incurred the most lavish expense. Thus Licinius Muræna, Quintus Hortensius, Lucius Philippus constructed immense basins,[540] which they filled with rare species. Lucullus, like the Persian king at Athos, but with unlike motive, caused even a mountain to be pierced to introduce sea-water into his fish-ponds, and for the achievement was dubbed by Pompey, “Togatus Xerxes.”[541]
But in many cases the huge outlay was repaid with interest. Varro[542] avers that Hirrius (who first before all others designed and carried out the vivarium for Murænæ) received twelve million sesterces in rent from his properties, and employed the entire sum in the care of his fishes! At the death of Lucullus the fish in his stew-ponds realised over £32,000.
The rich Patricians were not satisfied with a single pond; their fish preserves were divided into compartments where they kept different kinds. In case any reader, like the Third Fisherman in Shakespeare’s Pericles,
“Marvel how the fishes live in the sea,”
First Fisherman: “Why as men do on land; the great ones eat up the little ones,”
and to add that the fish confined in these separate ponds found in the waters their business and livelihood from the testaceæ purposely planted.
This passion for piscinæ gradually impoverished the Mediterranean and other seas. Fish in the Tyrrhenian Sea had no time to come to maturity, because as Columella complains, “Maria ipsa Neptunumque clauserunt!”[543] While Varro and Columella give careful directions as to the making and keeping of practical fish stews, they keep silence as to methods of capturing the inhabitants.
I have come across no notice of vivaria among the Greeks:[544] their kinsman in Sicily erected at least one magnificent example. Diodorus Siculus (XI. 2) tells us that the Agrigentines (probably by the labour of the Carthaginian prisoners) “sunk a fishpond, with great costs and expenses, seven furlongs in compass, and twenty cubits in depth: in this water, brought both from fountains and rivers, fish were planted which soon supplied them with an ample stock both for food and pleasure.”