(E) The Mugil, although vouched for as the greediest and most insatiable of feeders, attained paradoxically the sobriquet of Νῆστις, or the Faster.
The epithet probably gained currency from the stomach of the fish (like that of most salmon caught in fresh water) rarely being found to contain food. This perhaps may be accounted for by the great length of its gut, throughout which the filmy garbage and vegetable matter forming its chief diet are inconspicuously disposed. “The Cestreus is fasting” even became a proverb and was applied to men who lived with strict regard to justice, because—as Athenæus explains—the fish is never carnivorous.[681]
(F) The use in cases of adultery of the Cestreus in Greece and the Mugil at Rome, if not singular among fish, is striking; for it survived into the civilised age of Catullus (“percurrent raphanique mugilesque,”)[682] and of Juvenal (“Quosdam mœchos et mugilis intrat,”)[683]. Indeed, traces of the same barbaric custom still exist among certain tribes on the West Coast of Africa.
Gifford writes: “the being clystered (as Holyday expresses it) by a Mugil was allowed by no written law, but it seems to have been an old and approved method of gratifying private vengeance. Isidorus thinks that the fish was selected for this purpose on account of its anti-venereal properties, but he confounds the Mugilis with the Mullet.”[684]
From The Fisheries of the Adriatic, a most elaborate Report by Faber on the kinds and market values of the fishes of that sea, I give the class allotted to the fish of my list. It must once more be impressed on the reader that these eight fish (for of course Faber does not deal with the kάpros), were the most renowned in Greece and Rome. Of these, five only—the Mullet, Acipenser, Rhombus, Lupus, and Sole—are in Class I.; the Asellus and Muræna in II.; the Scarus, and it could not be lower, in III.[685]
The classification disappoints and depresses, especially in the case of the vaunted and lovable Scarus. It tempts, however, to an insoluble sum in proportion. If about these and other less esteemed fish the books extant and known to have been lost are almost as countless as the smile of Ocean, how many volumes would an Englishman or an American—given the same fish-mania and the same literary facility as the Greeks—require to do justice to his wealth of first-class edible fish? Verily the Library of Alexandria, with its room for 400,000 volumes, would scarce suffice.
CHAPTER XIX
FISH IN MYTHS, SYMBOLS, DIET, AND MEDICINE
Although the salutary warning—Terminat hora diem: terminet auctor opus—forbids us prolonging the Greek-Roman section, already disproportionate in space, yet the part played by fish (A) in myths, (B) in symbols or emblems, Pagan or Christian, (C) in medicine, and (D) in diet necessarily demands some notice.