[721] The influence of fish, wherever important, in commerce is noteworthy. They furnished, as we have seen, designs for a mint or cognomina for Roman Nobles. An interesting and probably very ancient instance occurs in the oath taken this very year (1920) by the Stipendiary Magistrate of Douglas, Isle of Man: “I swear to do justice between party and party, as indifferently as the herring’s backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish.”
τῶν πάντων ἰήματ’ ἒχει φύσις οὐδέ τι νούσων ῥιγεδανῶν ἀλέγουσι βροτοὶ χραισμήι’ ἒχοντες ἐξ ἁλός, ἐκ γαίης τε καὶ ἠέρος εὐρυπόροιο.
[723] N. H., XXX. 49. Cf. Ælian, op. cit. passim, for aphrodisiacs.
[724] Fragment, Varro Sexagesis, ap. Man. Marc., p. 319. 15 ff., Lindsay.
[725] Cas., II. 8, 57; cf. also Aul., at the wedding of Euclid’s daughter.
[726] See ibid., Rudens, II. 1, 9.
[727] N. H., XXXII. 50.
[728] London, 1912. Note, however, that Hultsch in Pauly-Winowa, Real Enc. (Stuttgart, 1903), V. 211, says: ‘Damit war aus dem Silber-D., der noch unter Severus einen Metallwert von etwa 30 Pfennig gehabt hatte ... eine kleine Scheidemünze zum Curswerte von 1, 8 Pfennig oder Weniger geworden.’ On this showing the denarius had sunk to 1⅘ pfennigs in 301 a.d.
[729] Fragments of the Edict in Latin and in Greek have been coming to light for the last two centuries from Egypt, Greece and Asia Minor—not the least important being found by W. M. Leake; see his Edict of Diocletian, 1826. See also Mommsen’s Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. III. pp. 1926-1953, the text of which was published by H. Blümner with a commentary in 1893 in his Der Maximaltarif des Diocletian. A convenient account of this famous Edict, together with a full bibliography, is given by H. Blümner in Pauly-Winowa, Real. Enc. (Stuttgart), V. pp. 1948-1957.