“Baiano procul a lacu recede, Piscator: fuge, ne nocens recedas.” (IV. 30.)
This epigram furnishes Bunsmann with one of the only three acts of Impietas which he can allege against the blameless race of fishermen. Martial here solemnly warns a fellow craftsman against fishing in the lake of Baiæ, because (1) the fish there are sacred to the Emperor Domitian, (2) a previous intruder was smitten blind in the very act of landing his fish, so that—and here comes a touch of the true angler—“he could not see his spoil.”
The pretty compliment, veiled in the words “sacred fish,” ranks Domitian as a god, because, as at many temples of the gods fish were held sacred, so at his Baian abode the fish had been shown by divine action to be sacred. But the fulsome bluntness of “than whom in the whole world there is none mightier” mars the effect. Lest, however, his friend might think that “Not twice in this world shall the Gods do thus,” or deem the superhuman sanction played out, Martial adjures him to throw to the fish some plain hookless food, and “dum potes, innocens recede.”
These Baian fish were evidently not as sophisticated or as discriminating as their neighbours, the Melanuri, which greedily snatch food thrown into the sea, but to any bit whatsoever containing a hook they approach neither delicately, nor at all.[389]
In case some reader, fired by the fame of Theocritus or Martial, imagine an easy affluence by writing Fisher Eclogues or Fisher Epigrams, I refer him to Martial’s other warning, where he states that a written copy of one of his books could be bought for about fourpence halfpenny (considerably cheaper than a printed one now) and that with a profit to the bookseller![390]
The seeming naïveté of Martial’s appeal to a buyer and of his recommendation that the book, which describes presents, would be for a man like himself not too flush of coin, an admirable present to send at the Saturnalia, incites me to give the whole, if fishless, passage.
The hint of how to get rid of their surplus stock or “remainders” at Christmas may avail our present poetasters in these days of economy and war taxes. “The whole collection of Xenia” (distichs describing certain kinds of viands so-called) “in this thin book will cost you four sesterces to buy. Is four too much? You may get it (in a cheaper form) for two, and even that will leave a profit to the bookseller. This book itself, which describes presents, may be sent as a present at the Saturnalia, if you have not much money to spare, like myself.”
Manuscript books at Rome cost even less than printed books do now. This seeming inconsistency was effected by a large number of slaves writing rapidly at the dictation of one person, and so multiplying copies very cheaply and easily.
By such means, no doubt, was published Acta Diurna, the fly sheet or daily newspaper of Rome. Composed originally of the reports of lawsuits, births, deaths, marriages, and the almost equally numerous divorces, it came to contain in the time of Julius Cæsar the debates and Acta of the Senate, and later the news collected and conveyed by constant couriers from all parts of the Empire.[391]