Large fish ponds were maintained, and the cruelty of Vellius Pollis who fed his lampreys on the bodies of slaves he caused to be slain is well known.  This cruelty Domitian disapproved of but should have punished.

There has been much discussion as to which is the best fish.

The question will never be decided, for as the Spanish proverb says, sobre los gustos no hai disputa.  Every one is effected in his own way.  These fugitive sensations can be expressed by no known character, and there is no scale to measure if a cat-fish (!), a sole, or a turbot are better than a salmon, trout, pike, or even tench of six or seven pounds.

It is well understood that fish is less nourishing than meat, because it contains no osmazome, because it is lighter in weight, and contains less weight in the same volume.  Shell-fish, and especially oysters, furnish little nutrition, so that one can eat a great many without injury.

It will be remembered that not long ago any well arranged entertainment began with oysters, and that many guests never paused without swallowing a gross (144).  I was anxious to know the weight of this advance guard, and I ascertained that a dozen oysters, fluid included, weighed four ounces averdupois.  Now look on it as certain that the same persons who did not make a whit the worse dinner, on account of the oysters would have been completely satisfied if they had eaten the same weight of flesh or of chicken.

Anecdote.

In 1798 I was at Versailles as a commissary of the Directory, and frequently met M. Laperte, greffier of the count of the department.  He was very fond of oysters, and used to complain that he had never had enough.

I resolved to procure him this satisfaction, and invited him to dine with me on the next day.

He came.  I kept company with him to the tenth dozen, after which I let him go on alone.  He managed to eat thirty-two dozen within an hour for the person who opened them was not very skilful.

In the interim, I was idle, and as that is always a painful state at the table, I stopped him at the moment when he was in full swing.  “Mon cher,” said I, “you will not to-day eat as many oysters as you meant—­let us dine.”  We did so, and he acted as if he had fasted for a week.

Muria-Garum

The ancients extracted from fish two highly flavored seasonings, muria and garum.

The first was the juice of the thuny, or to speak more precisely, the liquid substance which salt causes to flow from the fish.

Garum was dearer, and we know much less of it.  It is thought that it was extracted by pressure from the entrailles of the scombra or mackerel; but this supposition does not account for its high price.  There is reason to believe it was a foreign sauce, and was nothing else but the Indian soy, which we know to be only fish fermented with mushrooms.

Certainly, people from their locality are forced to live almost entirely upon fish.  They also feed their working animals with it, and the latter from custom gradually grow to like this strange food.  They also manure the soil with it, yet always receive the same quantity from the sea which surrounds them.