[643] With this meeting compare that summoned post-haste by Nero in the Revolution (which led to his death), when to anxious and breathless senators he imparted the important news that he had just effected an improvement of the hydraulic organ, by which the notes were made to sound louder and sweeter. His ἐξεύρηκα conflicts somewhat with the account in Suetonius (Nero, 41). The Emperor evidently had a bent and a liking for mechanical invention, for according to C. M. Cobern, New Archæological Discoveries, etc., 1917, in one of his palaces were elevators which ran from the ground to the top floor, and a circular dining-room which revolved with the sun.
[644] The part played by fish in recovering episcopal keys and rings has been dwelt on elsewhere. Sad it is that in the case of St. Lupus the rôle is performed not by his namesake fish, but by a barbel, in whose belly was found, just previous to the return of the bishop to his See of Sens the self-same ring which on being exiled by Clothaire II. he had cast into the moat. Let us, disregarding all geographical habitats, trust that Barbel was here an ichthyic inexactitude for Lupus. Cf. S. Baring Gould, The Lives of the Saints, Vol. X. 7, Edinburgh, 1914.
[645] Pliny, IX. 28.
[646] Cf. Macrobius, Sat., II. 12: “Lucilius ... eum ... quasi ligurritorem catillonem appellat, scilicet qui proxime ripas stercus insectaretur.” À propos of ‘Catillo,’ there is a quaint remark in the Gloss. Salom., “Nomen piscis a catino dictus ob cuius suavitatem homines catinum corrodunt”—the fish was so delicious it made one fairly bite the dish!
[647] IX. 28.
[648] Epist., XI. 40.
[649] Hal., 41 f.
[650] N. H., IX., 88; Arist., H. A., IX. 3.
[651] Dorion, ap. Athen., VII. 99. Dorion was the author of a treatise much used by Athenæus.
[652] IX. 25; N. H., IX. 36.