But those whose meat is good and soft by nature,
It is enough to sprinkle well with salt,
And lightly to anoint with oil. For they
Have virtue and delights within themselves.
118. There is the salpe, too. Epicharmus, in his Hebe's Wedding, says—
The aon, and the phagrus, and the pike,
And the dung-eating, bloated, dirty salpe,
Which still have a sweet flavour in the summer.
And Aristotle, in the fifth book of his Parts of Animals, says that the salpe has young once a-year only, in the autumn; and that his skin is covered with numerous red lines. Moreover, he has serrated teeth, and is a solitary fish. And he says that it is stated by the fishermen that he may be caught with a cucumber, being very fond of that kind of food. And Archestratus says—
I always do account the fish call'd salpe
A worthless fish. But it is least tasteless
When the wheat ripens. And the choicest kinds
Are caught at Mitylene.
And Pancrates, in his Works of the Sea, says—
There is the salpe too, of the same size,
Which the seafaring fishermen do call
The ox, because he grinds within his teeth
The stout seaweed with which he fills his belly.
He also is a spotted or variegated fish; on which account his friends used to nickname Mnaseas the Locrian (or, as some call him, the Colophonian),—the man who wrote the poem, called The Sports,—Salpe, on account of the variety of things in his collection. But Nymphodorus the Syracusan, in his Voyage round Asia, says that it was a Lesbian woman, named Salpe, who wrote the book called The Sports. But Alcimus, in his Affairs of Sicily, says that in Messene, in Sicily, there was a man named Botrys, who was the author of some "Sports" very like those which are attributed to Salpe. But Archippus uses the word in the masculine form, Salpes, saying—
The ceryx shouted out,
The salpes trumpeted and fetch'd seven obols.
And there is a similar fish produced in the Red Sea, which is called the stromateus; and it has gold-coloured lines running along the whole of his body, as Philo tells us, in his book on Mines.
