Page:The Deipnosophists (Volume 2).djvu/75



97. There is also a fish called the orphos ([Greek: orphôs]); but the word is also spelt with an [Greek: o] ([Greek: orphos], as Pamphilus tells us. But Aristotle, in the fifth book of his Parts of Animals, where he says that the growth of most fish is very rapid, says, "The orphos also grows to a large fish from a little one with great rapidity; but he is a carnivorous fish, with serrated teeth, and of a solitary disposition. And there is this peculiarity in him, that it cannot be ascertained what means he has of propagating his species, and that he can live a long time after he has been cut in pieces. He is also one of those fish which bury themselves in holes during the winter season, and he is fond of keeping close to the land, rather than of going into the deep sea; but he does not live more than two years. And Numenius, speaking of this fish, says—

Now with such baits as these it is not hard To draw the lengthy scorpion from his bed, Or the rough orphus: for they're easily caught.

And in another place he says—

The grayling, or the sea-born race of orphi, Or the dark flesh'd sea-blackbird.

But Dorion says that the young orphus is called by some the orphacines. And Archippus says, in his Fishes,—

The orphus came to them, the priest o' the god.

And Cratinus says, in his Ulysses,—

A hot slice of the newly taken orphus.

And Plato, in his Cleophon, says—

For he has brought you here, old dame, to dwell, A rotten food for orphi and for phagri, And other gristly boneless fish around.

And Aristophanes, in his Wasps, says—

If a man be inclined to purchase orphi, And likes to leave alone the membrades.

Now this word [Greek: orphôs], in the nominative case singular, is accented with an acute on the ultima by the Attic writers; so Archippus writes the word, in his Fishes, in the lines which I have already quoted; and Cratinus also, in his Ulysses, as I have above quoted it, writes—

[Greek: temachos orphô chliaron].

98. There is also a fish called orcynus. Dorion, in his treatise on Fishes, says that the orcyni come from the sea near the Pillars of Hercules to the waters on our coasts; on