Fishing from the earliest times by Radcliffe William 1856-1938

Author:Radcliffe, William, 1856-1938
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fishing
Publisher: London : J. Murray
Published: 1921-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

228 FISH IN SACRIFICES—VIVARIA—ARCHIMEDES

Antonia, to whom the lands and villa of Hortensius descended, even stripped herself of her earrings to put them on a murcena. This lady, apart from this anecdote, was no ordinary person. We find her passing from the positive of celebrated renown for her beauty, her virtue, her chastity (no mean feat in that day !), through the comparative of being the mother of Germanicus Caesar and Claudius, and the grandmother of Caligula (which last, in slang parlance, " wanted a bit of doing ! "), unto the superlative of deathless fame in Pliny's " Nunquam exspuisse " (never spat !).i

The savage use, to which Vedius Pollio put his vivaria, can be learnt from the pages of Pliny - and Seneca. ^ A slave, for breaking a crystal decanter at a banquet given to Augustus, was ordered to be thrown instantly into a piscina, there to be eaten alive by the nibbling voracious Murcena;. Escaping from his guards he threw himself at the Emperor's feet, " beseeching nothing else except that he should die otherwise than as food for fish " *. Caesar moved " novitate crudelitatis " (he little knew that this was his host's cheery custom) commanded the crystals of Pollio to be smashed on the spot, the slave to be freed, and all the fishponds to be filled up.

As conducive to la joie de vivre of the other slaves, the command was commendable, for the bite of the Murcena s serrated teeth, according to Nicander's Theriaca —that " nullius fidei farrago "—owing to its mating with the viper, dealt poisonous death and destruction to the fishermen driven by its pursuit " headlong from their boats," and was only curable by a mixture made of ashes from its own burnt head ! So dreaded was this fish—curious is it not, to read, although from

Chinese proverb. " In Japan fish are summoned to dinner by melodious gongs. In India, I have seen them called out of the muddy depths of the river at Dohlpore by the ringing of a handbell, while carp in Belgium answer at once to the whistle of the monks who feed them, and in far away Otaheite, the chiefs have pet eels, whom they whistle to the surface " (Robinson, op. cit., p. 14). Cf. Athen,, VIII. 3, " and I myself and very likely many of you too have seen eels having golden and silver earrings, taking food from any one who offered it to them." The Egyptians similarly adorned their crocodiles with gold earrings. Herod. 2. 69.

1 VII. 18.

' IX. 39.

» De Ira, III. 40.

* For eels devouring the flesh of a corpse, see Iliad, 203 and 353.

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