FISH. Unless, indeed, when he uses the word [Greek: hys] here, he means the same animal which is also called [Greek: kapros], the sea-boar. But Numenius, in his Art of Fishing, enumerates plainly enough some sort of [Greek: hyaina] or plaice, when he says—
The cantharis, hyæna, and the mullet.
And Dionysius, in his Cookery Book, also speaks of the hyæna or plaice. And Archestratus, that prince of cooks and epicures says,—
At Ænus or at Potus buy the sea-pig,
Which some men call the digger of the sand,
Then boil his head, adding no seasoning,
But only water, stirring it full often,
And add some pounded hyssop; if you want
Anything more, pour on some pungent vinegar;
Steep it in that, then eat it with such haste
As if your object were to choke yourself.
But roast its neck, and all its other parts.
And perhaps it is the sea-pig which Numenius, in his Art of Fishing, calls the psamathis, or sand-fish, when he says—
Sometimes the fierce carcharias, and sometimes
The psamathis, delighting in the surf.
132. Then there is the hyces. Callimachus, in his epigrams, calls the hyces the sacred fish, in these lines—
And he does deem the sacred hyces god.
And Numenius, in his Art of Fishing, says—
The spar, or the gregarious hyces;
Or phagrus, ever wand'ring near the rocks.
And Timæus, in the thirteenth book of his Histories, speaking of the town in Sicily, (I mean the town of Hyccara,) says that this town derived its name from the circumstance of the first man who arrived at the place finding abundance of the fish called hyces, and those too in a breeding condition; and they, taking this for an omen, called the place Hyccarus. But Zenodotus says that the Cyrenæans call the hyces the erythrinus. But Hermippus of Smyrna, in his essay on Hipponax, when he speaks of the hyces, means the iulis; and says that it is very hard to catch; on which account Philetas says—
Nor was the hyces the last fish who fled.
133. There is also the phagrus. Speusippus, in the second book of his Things resembling one another, says that the phagrus, the erythrinus, and the hepatus, are very much
