FISH. variegated with red and black; and he calls it also [Greek: poikilogrammos], because it is marked with black lines.
135. There is the chromis; this also is spoken of by Epicharmus, who says—
There is the sword-fish and the chromias,
Who, in the spring, as Ananius says,
Is of all fish the daintiest.
And Numenius, in his Art of Fishing, says—
The hyces, or the beautiful callicthys,
Or else the chromis, and sometimes the orphus.
And Archestratus says—
You may catch noble chromises in Pella,
And they are fat when it is midsummer;
And in Ambracia likewise they abound.
136. There is also the chrysophrys. Archippus says in his Fishes—
The chrysophrys, sacred to Cytherean Venus.
And Icesius says that these fish are the best of all fish in sweetness, and also in delicacy of flavour in other respects. They are also most nutritious. They produce their young, as Aristotle says, in a manner similar to the cestres, wherever there are flowing rivers. Epicharmus mentions them in his Muses; and Dorion also, in his book on Fishes. And Eupolis, in his Flatterers, says—
I spent a hundred drachmas upon fish,
And only got eight pike, and twelve chrysophryes.
But the wise Archestratus, in his Suggestions, says—
Pass not the chrysophrys from Ephesus
Unheeded by; which the Ephesians call
The ioniscus. Take him eagerly,
The produce of the venerable Selinus;
Wash him, and roast him whole, and serve him up,
Though he be ten full cubits long.
137. There is a fish, too, called the chalcis; and others which resemble it, namely, the thrissa, the trichis, and the critimus. Icesius says, the fish called the chalcis, and the sea-goat, and the needle-fish, and the thrissa, are like chaff, destitute alike of fat and of juice. And Epicharmus, in his Hebe's Wedding, says—
The chalcides, the sea-pig too,
The sea-hawk, and the fat sea-dog.
But Dorion calls it the chalcidice. And Numenius says,—
But you would thus harpoon, in the same way,
That chalcis and the little tiny sprat.
