Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 2).djvu/54

 head; by which Aristotle says that it is driven about, writing thus—"But the tunny fish and the sword fish are driven to frenzy about the time of the rising of the dogstar; for both of them at that season have under their fins something like a small worm, which is called œstrus, resembling a scorpion, and in size something similar to a spider, and this makes them leap about in leaps as large as those of the dolphin." And Theodoridas says,—

The tunnies bend their furious course to Gades.

But Polybius of Megalopolis, in the thirty-fourth book of his History, speaking of the Lusitanian district in Iberia, says, "That in the sea, in these parts, acorn-bearing oaks grow, on the fruit of which the tunnies feed, and grow fat; so that a person who called the tunny the pig of the sea would not err, for the tunnies, like the pigs, grow to a great size on these acorns."

65. And the intestines of this fish are highly extolled, as Eubulus also tells us, in his Ionian,—

And after this the luscious intestines Of roasted tunnies sail'd upon the table.

And Aristophanes, in his Lemnian Woman, says—

Despise not thou the fat Bœotian eel, Nor grayling, nor the entrails of the tunny.

And Strattis, in his Atalanta, says—

Next buy the entrails of a tunny, and Some pettitoes of pigs, to cost a drachma.

And the same poet says in his Macedonians—

And the sweet entrails of the tunny fish.

And Eriphus says in his Melibœa—

These things poor men cannot afford to buy, The entrails of the tunny or the head Of greedy pike, or conger, or cuttle-fish, Which I don't think the gods above despise.

But when Theopompus, in his Callæschrus, says,

The [Greek: hypogastrion] of fish, O Ceres,

we must take notice that the writers of his time apply the term [Greek: hypogastrion] to fish, but very seldom to pigs or other animals; but it is uncertain what animals Antiphanes is speaking of, when he makes use of the term [Greek: hypogastrion] in his Ponticus, where he says—