Book 7
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And if the mullet, while alive, be choked with wine, and then a man drinks the wine, he will no longer be able to indulge in the pleasures of Venus, as Terpsicles tells us in his book on Amatory Pleasures. And if a woman drinks this same wine, she never becomes pregnant. Birds, too, are affected in the same manner. But Archestratus, that very learned man, after he has praised the Milesian mullet which are found at Teichius, proceeds to say— If you at Thasos are, then buy a mullet; You ne'er will get a worse, unless indeed You go to Tius; but even those are fair: But at Erythræ they are caught in shore And are most excellent. And Cratinus, in his Trophonius, says— And do not eat a red-flesh'd mullet hard, Brought from Aexona; nor of any turtle, Or mighty melanurus from those seas. But Nausicrates, the comic poet, praises the mullets from Aexona, in his Captains of Ships, saying— Those yellow fleshed fish, which the high wave That beats Aexona brings towards the shore, The best of fish; with which we venerate The light-bestowing daughter of great Jove; When sailors offer gifts of feasts to heaven. B. You mean the mullet.
128
There is, too, the tænia; and this is mentioned by Epicharmus:— The most belovèd tænia, which are thin, But highly flavour'd, and need little fire. And Mithæcus, in his Cookery Book, says—Having taken out the entrails of the tænia, and cut off its head, and washed it, and having cut it into slices, sprinkle over it cheese and oil. But this fish is found in the greatest number and in the finest condition off Canopus, which is near Alexandria; and also off Seleucia, which is close to Antioch. But when Eupolis, in his Prospaltii, says— His mother was a Thracian woman, A seller of tænie; he then means by the word ταινία, not the fish, but those pieces of woven work and girdles with which women bind their waists.
