To the great Archimedes is due the unique achievement of a vivarium on board ship. It is impossible here to set forth all the glories of this wonderful vessel, intended for the corn traffic between Egypt and Sicily, and propelled by means of huge sweeps—every sweep worked by a team of twenty men (εἰκοσόρος).
Her Gymnasium, her three Baths, her Flower Garden, her trellised Vineyard, her Temple to Venus, her Library with its floor of mosaics exhibiting a series of subjects taken from the Iliad, and, lastly, in the bow by the side of the huge reservoir of 21,000 gallons, her water-tight well, made of planks lined with lead, and filled with sea-water, in which a great number of fish were always kept—if all these wonders of a ship, launched over 2200 years ago, do not cause us to think a little, and to abate our boasts over our Imperators and Olympics, then to the cocksure conceit of the twentieth century naught is of avail, not even the account given by Moschion.[545]
Disregarding the practical directions of Varro (whom Schneider[546] stamps, with regard to fish, etc., as a mere plagiarist of Greek authors), of Columella, and in a lesser degree of Pliny how to construct and conduct paying stew-ponds, and turning a deaf ear to Varro’s warning that “to build, stock, and keep them up was most costly,” the Romans thought no money, no time, too much to expend on vivaria.[547] Possession and cultivation of fish in vivaria, which were sometimes made in the dining-room, became the one delight of these “Tritones Piscinarum,” as Cicero dubs two of his friends.
The primary cause for their existence, a ready supply of fresh fish in a hot climate, was forgotten. Other owners resembled Hortensius, who (according to Varro) “not only was never entertained by his fish at table, but was scarcely ever easy, unless engaged in entertaining or fattening them.” The death of “his friend,” the Muræna, between whom and himself such a close attachment existed, almost broke his heart.[548]
Macrobius testifies that Crassus, “first among all the greatest men of Rome, mourned a muræna” (probably it of the earrings and necklace of precious stones) “found dead in his vivarium even as a daughter.” It was on the occasion of Domitius twitting him with “Did you not weep when your fish died?” that Crassus got back with “Did you not bury three wives and never weep at all?”[549]
Of Hortensius Varro continues:[550] “His mullet give him infinitely more concern than my mules and asses do; for while I, with one lad, support all my thrifty stud on a little barley, etc., the fish-servants of Hortensius are not to be counted. He has fishermen in fine weather toiling to procure them food; when the weather is too boisterous for fishing, then a whole troop of butchers and dealers in provisions send in their estimates for keeping his alumni fat. Hortensius so looks after his mullet as to forget his men; a sick slave has less chance of getting a draught of cold water in a fever than these favoured fish of being kept cool in their stews in Midsummer.”
The fish often answered to their names when called by their master, or their keeper. The latter, nomenclator, made a very handsome income from the admiring crowds, who flocked to see the fish perform their exercises with wagging tails or heads bedecked with rich jewels.[551]
Antonia, to whom the lands and villa of Hortensius descended, even stripped herself of her earrings to put them on a muræna. This lady, apart from this anecdote, was no ordinary person. We find her passing from the positive of celebrated renown for her beauty, her virtue, her chastity (no mean feat in that day!), through the comparative of being the mother of Germanicus Cæsar and Claudius, and the grandmother of Caligula (which last, in slang parlance, “wanted a bit of doing!”), unto the superlative of deathless fame in Pliny’s “Nunquam exspuisse” (never spat!).[552]
The savage use to which Vedius Pollio put his vivaria can be learnt from the pages of Pliny[553] and Seneca.[554] A slave, for breaking a crystal decanter at a banquet given to Augustus, was ordered to be thrown instantly into a piscina, there to be eaten alive by the nibbling voracious Murænæ. Escaping from his guards he threw himself at the Emperor’s feet, “beseeching nothing else except that he should die otherwise than as food for fish”[555]. Cæsar moved “novitate crudelitatis” (he little knew that this was his host’s cheery custom) commanded the crystals of Pollio to be smashed on the spot, the slave to be freed, and all the fishponds to be filled up.
As conducive to la joie de vivre of the other slaves, the command was commendable, for the bite of the Muræna’s serrated teeth, according to Nicander’s Theriaca—that “nullius fidei farrago”—owing to its mating with the viper, dealt poisonous death and destruction to the fishermen driven by its pursuit “headlong from their boats,” and was only curable by a mixture made of ashes from its own burnt head! So dreaded was this fish—curious is it not, to read, although from its savage nature no other could inhabit the same vivarium, the many stories of its tameness and docility?—that one of the direst of imprecations ran that in the under-world your enemy’s lungs should be mangled by Murænæ![556]