[536] Pliny, XXXII. 21.
[537] Athen., I. 13; cf. Suidas, s.v. ὄστρεα.
[538] Euphron, incert. fab. frag. 1, quoted by Athen., I. 13.
[539] Cf. Varro, De Re Rust., 3. 12, 1, and Plin., 9. 82.
[540] Petronius, 120, 88, expelluntur aquæ saxis, mare nascitur arvis.
[541] Lucullus, enriched by the vast booty captured from Mithridates and Tigranes, was the first who taught luxury to the Romans (Athen., VI. 109). Polybius (31, 24) writes that M. Porcius Cato denounced the introduction of foreign extravagances into Rome, citing as instances that for a jar of pickled fish from Pontus 300 drachmæ had been paid, and that the price of a beautiful boy exceeded that of a field.
[542] De Re Rustica, III. 17.
[543] De Re Rustica, VIII. 16. Cf. also Juvenal, V. 94 ff.—
“quando omne peractum est Et iam defecit nostrum mare, dum gula sævit, Retibus assiduis penitus scrutante macello Proxima, nec patimur Tyrrhenum crescere piscem,”
and Seneca, Ep., 89, 22—