A slice of grayling, and a head
Of mighty conger, luscious food;
A frog's inside, a tunny's flank,
A ray's sharp back, a cestra's loin,
Sea-sparrows, and sea-thrushes too,
Sprats, and anchovies, let me not
Complain of any want.
47. And Nausicrates says, in his Captains of Ships,—
A. They say there are two kinds of fish most tender
And beautiful to see, which oft appear
To sailors wandering o'er the spacious plains
Of ocean. And they say that one foretells
To mortals all the evils which hang o'er them.
B. You mean the grayling.
A. You are right, I do.
And Theolytus, the Methymnæan; in his Bacchic Odes, says that Glaucus the deity of the sea became enamoured of Ariadne, when she was carried off by Bacchus in the island of Dia; and that he, attempting to offer violence to her, was bound by Bacchus in fetters made of vine-twigs; but that when he begged for mercy he was released, saying—
There is a place, Anthedon is its name,
On the sea-side, against th' Eubœan isle,
Near to the stream of the still vext Euripus—
Thence is my race; and Copeus was my sire.
And Promathides of Heraclea, in his Half Iambics, traces the pedigree of Glaucus as being the son of Polybus, the son of Mercury, and of Eubœa, the daughter of Larymnus. But Mnaseas, in the third book of his history of the Affairs of Europe, calls him the son of Anthedon and Alcyone; and says that he was a sailor and an excellent diver, and that he was surnamed Pontius; and that having ravished Syme, the daughter of Ialemus and Dotis, he sailed away to Asia, and colonised a desert island near Caria, and called that Syme, from the name of his wife. But Euanthes, the epic poet, in his Hymn to Glaucus, says that he was the son of Neptune and the nymph Nais; and that he was in love with Ariadne, in the island of Dia, and was favoured by her after she had been left there by Theseus. But Aristotle, in his Constitution of the Delians, says that he settled in Delos with the Nereids, and gave oracles to all who wished for them. But Possis, the Magnesian, in the third book of his Amazonis, says that Glaucus was the builder of the Argo, and that he was
