The acme of epicurean hospitality was reached with serving the Mullet, not dead swimming in sauce, but alive swimming in a globe of glass, to be handed round among the guests. All eyes gloated as its gay hues gradually grew dimmer, till at last with death they faded into one dull colour.
Seneca lashes with his bitterest irony the custom, and the company. They are no longer content to satisfy their teeth and their stomach—no, they must also gratify their eyes. “No one now sits with a dying friend. None can bring himself to witness the death, however much desired! of his father. The last hours of brother or kinsman find no soul with him. To the death of the Mullet have they all flocked with one accord.”[632]
2. For the Scarus (S. cretensis), the “Parrot Wrasse,” [see Chapter X].
3. The Acipenser, a Latin name, adopted by some Greek writers, which is often, if not convincingly, identified with the Sturio, the “Sturgeon,” and by Archestratus[633] is affirmed but wrongly, to be the γαλεός, enjoyed a long and glorious reign of supremacy from the early times of the Republic down to Vespasian. For it alone, with perhaps one exception, was reserved the high honour of being served at a banquet to the music of flutes and pipes, crowned itself, borne by slaves likewise crowned.[634]
Its praise and its price (Varro styles it multinummus) seem alike exorbitant. We find the name of Gallonius the glutton-auctioneer, the first to bring the fish into fashion, occurring again and again.[635] On Ovid’s (Hal. 134) “Tuque peregrinis acipenser nobilissimus” may be piled passage upon passage. Plautus in a fragment of his Bacaria[636] asks:
“Quis est mortalis tanta fortuna affectus umquam Qua ego nunc sum? quoius hæc ventri portatur pompa: Vel nunc qui mihi in mari acipenser latuit antehac, Quoius ego latus in latebras reddam meis dentibus et manibus.”
Cicero—no fish story-teller he—makes at least four references to it. In De Fato, frag. 5, he sets forth the tale of the Acipenser (‘piscis ... in primis nobilis’) presented to Scipio, to whom, as he persisted in inviting all and every one who saluted him, Pontius anxiously whispered, “Do you know what you are about? Lo! this is a fish fit only for a few choice palates!”
As to its decline from its high estate, Pliny’s definite assertion (IX. 27), “Apud antiquos piscium nobilissimus habitus acipenser ... nullo nunc in honore est,” finds corroboration by Martial, XIII. 91:
“Ad Palatinas acipensem mittite mensas; Ambrosias ornent munera rara dapes.”[637]
The Elops or Helops has been deemed to be the Acipenser,[638] but this conflicts with Ovid (Hal., 96)—“Et pretiosus elops nostris incognitus undis”—with Columella (VIII. 16), and with Pliny (XXXII. 54).