crowned, and that it is called by the Romans accipesius. But the accipesius, the same as the acipenser, or sturgeon, is but a small fish in comparison, and has a longer nose, and is more triangular than the galeus in his shape. And the very smallest and cheapest galeus is not sold at a lower price than a thousand Attic drachmæ.[1] But Appian, the grammarian, in his essay on the Luxury of Apicius, says that the accipesius is the fish called the ellops by the Greeks. But Archestratus, speaking of the Rhodian galeus, counselling his companions in a fatherly sort of way, says—
Are you at Rhodes? e'en if about to die,
Still, if a man would sell you a fox shark,
The fish the Syracusans call the dog,
Seize on it eagerly; at least, if fat:
And then compose yourself to meet your fate
With brow serene and mind well satisfied.
Lynceus, the Samian, also quotes these verses in his letter to Diagoras, and says that the poet is quite right in advising the man who cannot afford the price for one, to gratify his appetite by robbery rather than go without it. For he says that Theseus, who I take to have been some very good-looking man, offered to indulge Tlepolemus in anything if he would only give him one of these fish. And Timocles, in his play called The Ring, says—
Galei and rays, and all the fish besides
Which cooks do dress with sauce and vinegar.
45. There is also the sea-grayling. Epicharmus, in his Hebe's Wedding, says—
There is the variegated scorpion,
The lizard, and the fat sea-grayling too.
And Numenius, in his Treatise on Fishing, says—
The hycca, the callicthys, and the chromis,
The orphus, the sea-grayling too, who haunts
The places where seaweed and moss abound.
And Archestratus, praising the head of the glaucus, says—
If you're at Megara or at Olynthus,
Dress me a grayling's head. For in the shallows
Around those towns he's taken in perfection.
And Antiphanes, in his Shepherd, says—
Bœotian eels, and mussels too from Pontus,
Graylings from Megara, from Carystus shrimps,
Eretrian phagri, and the Scyrian crabs.
- ↑ An Attic drachma was as near as may be 9-3/4d. So that a thousand will amount to something over 40l.
