Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 2).djvu/58

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

And Numenius, in his Art of Fishing, says—

The char, the mighty tench of size enormous,
The channus, and the eel; and he who roves
By night, the wary pitynus; the mussel,
The horse-fish, or the sea-green corydulis.

And Antimachus the Colophonian mentions it in his Thebais, where he says—

The hyca, or the horse-fish, or the one
Which they do call the thrush.

70. There is a fish, too, called the ioulis, concerning which Dorion says, in his treatise on Fishes, "Recollect that if you boil the ioulis, you must do it in brine; and if you roast them, you must roast them with marjoram." And Numenius says—

And ne'er neglect the medicine which keeps off
To a great degree the greedy fish ioulis,
And scolopendrus that doth poison dart.

But the same writer calls them ioulus, and the entrails of the earth, in the following lines:—

Moreover do not then the bait forget,
Which on the highest hills that fringe the shore
Shall soon be found. And they are called iouli,
Black, eating earth—the entrails of the earth;
Or the long-footed grasshopper, what time
The sandy rocks are sprinkled with the foam
Of the high-rising tide. Then dig them up,
And stow them carefully within your bag.

71. There are also fish called [Greek: kichlê], the sea-thrush, and [Greek: kossyphos], the sea-blackbird. The Attic writers call the first [Greek: kichlê], with an [Greek: ê]; and the reason is as follows:—All the feminine nouns which end in [Greek: la] have another [Greek: l] before the [Greek: la]; as [Greek: Skylla]; [Greek: skilla], [Greek: kolla], [Greek: bdella], [Greek: hamilla], [Greek: hamalla]: but those which end in [Greek: lê] do not require a [Greek: l] to precede the [Greek: lê]; as [Greek: homichlê], [Greek: phytlê], [Greek: genethlê], [Greek: aiglê], [Greek: trôglê], and, in like manner, [Greek: triglê]. Cratinus says—

Suppose a man had eaten a red mullet ([Greek: triglên]),
Would that alone prove him an epicure?

And Diocles, in the first book of his treatise on Wholesomes, says, "Those fish which are called rocky fish have tender flesh; such as the sea-blackbird, the sea-thrush, the perch, the tench, the phyca, the alphesticus." But Numenius says, in his treatise on Fishing—