Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 2).djvu/72

 account of their diminutive size; and the following is the passage:—

A. Why, I did think that all these monstrous fish Were cannibals. B. What can you mean, my friend? A. Why, cannibals: so how would any man eat them? B. That's true. But these are food of Hecate, Which he is speaking of, just sprats and mullets.

There is also one kind which is called the leucomænis, or white sprat, which some people call the boax. Poliochus, in his Corinthiastes, says—

Let no man, in God's name I beg, persuade you, Come when he will or whence, so to mistake As to call leucomænides boaces.

93. There is also the melanurus, or black-tail; and concerning this fish Numenius says, in his Art of Fishing:—

The scorpion or melanurus black, The guide and leader of the perch.

But Icesius says that he is very like the sargus, but that he is inferior to the latter in the quantity and quality of his juice, and also in delicacy of flavour; but that he is rather exciting food, and very nutritious. And Epicharmus mentions him in his Hebe's Marriage:—

There were sargini, there were melanuri.

Aristotle too, in his treatise on Animals, writes thus: "There are some fish which have barred or spotted tails, among which are the melanuri, and the sargi or sardine; and they have many lines on their skin, dark lines. But Speusippus affirms, in the second book of his treatise on Things similar to one another, that the fish called psyrus resembles the melanurus; but Numenius calls the psyrus, psorus, with an o, saying—

The psorus, or the salpe, or the dragon-fish Which haunts the shore.

94. There is also a fish called the mormyrus, a most nutritious fish, as Icesius says. But Epicharmus, in his Hebe's Marriage, calls it the myrmes, unless, at least, he means a different fish by this name. But his expression is—

The sea-swallow, the myrmes too, And they are larger than the colias tunny.

But Dorion, in his book upon Fishes, calls them mormylus, with a [Greek: l]. But Lynceus of Samos, in his treatise on the Art of buying Fish, which he addressed to some friend of his, who