FISH.
A. Aye, like a ploughman. For indeed I have
A farm not far from that most dainty lake.
But I impeach the eels now of desertion,
For none at all were there the other day.
And some of these iambics may be found in the Acestria, and also in the Countryman, or Butalion. And Hipponax, as Lysanias quotes him in his treatise on the Iambic Poets, says—
For one of them with rapid extravagance
Feasting each day on tunnies and on cheese-cakes,
Like any eunuch of rich Lampsacus,
Ate up his whole estate. So that he now
Is forced to work and dig among the rocks,
Eating poor figs, and small stale loaves of barley,
Food fit for slaves.
And Strattis also mentions the thunnis, in his Callipides.
68. There is also a fish called the hippurus, or horsetail. Aristotle, in the fifth book of his treatise on the Parts of Animals, says that the hippuri lay eggs, and that these are small at first, but come to a great size, like those of the lamprey; and that they bring forth their young in the spring. But Dorion, in his book upon Fish, says that the hippurus is also called the coryphæna. But Icesius calls it the hippuris; and Epicharmus also mentions them in his Hebe's Wedding, saying—
The sharp-nosed needle-fish,
And the hippurus, and bright chrysophrys.
But Numenius, in his treatise on the Art of Fishing, speaking of the nature of the fish, says that it keeps continually leaping out of the water; on which account it is also called the Tumbler. And he uses the following expressions about it:—
Or the great synodons, or tumbler hippurus.
And Archestratus says—
Th' hippurus of Carystus is the best,
And indeed all Carystian fish are good.
And Epænetus, in his Cookery Book, says that it is called also the coryphæna.
69. There is another fish called the horse; and perhaps it is the same which Epicharmus calls the hippidion, or little horse, when he says—
The coracinus colour'd like a crow,
Fat, well-fed fish; the smooth hippidion,
The phycæ, and the tender squill. . . .
