[466] Suetonius (Tib., 34), “Tresque mullos triginta milibus nummum.” A thousand sesterces, in the time of Augustus, equalled £8 17s. 1d., but later only £7 15s. 1d. For convenience I take 1000 sesterces as roughly equivalent to about £8 0s. 0d.
[467] An amusing instance of official interference is recorded in Apuleius, Metamorhp. I. 18. Lucius, the hero of the story, tries to buy some fish for dinner from a fishmonger at Hypata in Thessaly, who demanded 100 nummi (denarii): after much haggling, 20 denarii’s worth is bought and being taken home, when the local ædile intervenes, seizes the parcel on account of the extravagant charge, and destroys the fish in the presence of the seller. The result, which Lucius bewails, was loss of both dinner, and denarii!
[468] See Mayor’s Juvenal and Gifford’s Trans., IV. 15. In Pliny, IX. 31, Mutianus speaks of a mullet which was caught in the Red Sea, weighing 80 lbs. The comment of I. D. Lewis (on Juv., IV. 15 f.) that this fish “is utterly fabulous,” is not the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
[469] IX. 31, “at nunc coci triumphorum pretiis parantur, et coquorum pisces.”
[470] Ep., X. 31 f.
[471] Sat., IV. 23 ff. (Gifford’s Trs.).
[472] VIII. 16. Cf. also Varro, De Re Rust., Bk. III. 3, 10; Ælian, VIII. 4; and Macrobius, Sat., III. xv. 1 ff.
[473] Athen., VIII. 26.
[474] Ibid. VIII. 26.
[475] Xenophon, in speaking of a man as “an opsophagist and the biggest dolt possible,” evidently does not subscribe to the pleasant theory that fish-food increases the grey matter of our brain. Holland’s translation of Plutarch is not complimentary: “hence it is we call those gluttons who love belly-cheer so well opsophagists.”