Natural History — Book IX

Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin

1| The nature of the animals that we have called land animals, which live in a kind of fellowship with men, has been set out. Of the rest, it is agreed that the birds are the smallest. For this reason the creatures of the seas, rivers and lakes will be described first.

2| Among these there are many larger even than the land animals. The evident cause is the abundance of moisture. The lot of the birds, whose life is spent hanging in the air, is different. But in the sea, spread out so widely as a yielding and fertile source of nourishment, receiving the causes of generation from on high and with nature forever giving birth, very many creatures are found that are even monstrous, since seeds and first principles are tangled together and rolled into one another, now by the wind and now by the wave, in one way and another; so that the common opinion becomes true, that whatever is born in any part of nature is also in the sea, and many things besides which are found nowhere else.

3| Indeed, one may perceive that images not only of animals but of objects are present there, for those who look at the grape, the sword, the saws, and the cucumber, which is like the real one both in color and in smell; so that we should be less surprised that horses' heads stand out on such small snails.

4| The most numerous and the largest animals are in the Indian sea, among them whales of four iugera each and pristes of two hundred cubits each, since there locustae reach four cubits, and in the river Ganges there are eels too of thirty feet. But in the sea the monsters are seen most of all around the solstices.

5| For then whirlwinds rush down there, then rainstorms, then gales hurled down from the mountain ridges churn the seas up from the bottom and roll the monsters, driven up from the depths, along with the waves, in such a multitude, as at other times the tunnies, that the fleet of Alexander the Great drew up its line front to front against them just as if an enemy battle line were coming to meet it: otherwise, scattered, they could not have got through. They are not frightened by shouting, by noise or by blows, but by a crash, and they are thrown into confusion only by a collision.

6| Cadara is the name of a huge peninsula of the Red Sea; by its barrier a vast gulf is formed, which took King Ptolemy 12 days and nights of rowing to cross, since it receives the breath of no breeze. In the stillness of this place above all the monsters grow to a size that renders them motionless.

7| The commanders of Alexander the Great's fleets reported that the Gedrosi who live along the river Arabis make the doors in their houses from the jaws of the monsters and frame their roofs with the bones, of which many were found forty cubits long. There also beasts like cattle come out onto the land and, having grazed on shrub roots, go back; and some with the heads of horses, asses and bulls, which graze on the crops.

8| The largest animals in the Indian sea are the pristis and the whale; in the Gallic ocean the physeter, which rears itself up like a huge column and, rising higher than the ships' sails, belches out a kind of deluge; in the ocean off Gades the tree, spread out with branches so vast that it is believed for that reason never to have entered the strait. There also appear the so-called wheels, named from their likeness, divided each by four spokes, with two eyes on either side closing off their hubs.

9| An embassy of the people of Olisipo, sent for that purpose, reported to Tiberius, the emperor, that in a certain cave a Triton had been seen and heard playing on a shell, in the form in which it is known. Nor is the form of the Nereids a fiction, only their body is bristling with scales even where it has a human shape. For one was seen on the same shore, and as it died, the people who live nearby heard even its mournful song from far off; and the governor of Gaul wrote to the deified Augustus that a number of dead Nereids had appeared on the shore.

10| I have as authorities men of distinction in the equestrian order who say that they saw in the ocean off Gades a sea-man, perfectly like a man in his whole body; that he climbs aboard ships at night, that the side he sits on is at once weighed down, and that if he stays longer, it even sinks. In the reign of Tiberius, on an island off the coast of the province of Lugdunensis, the ebbing ocean left stranded more than three hundred monsters at once, of wonderful variety and size, and no fewer on the shore of the Santones, among them, besides the rest, elephants and rams with horns imitated only by a whiteness, and many Nereids.

11| Turranius reported that a monster was cast up on the shore at Gades measuring sixteen cubits between the two fins at the extremity of its tail, and had 120 teeth, the largest measuring three-quarters of a foot, the smallest half a foot. The bones of the sea-creature before which Andromeda was reported to have been set out were brought to Rome from Joppa, a town of Judaea, and shown among the other marvels by Marcus Scaurus in his aedileship: 40 feet long, the height of the ribs exceeding the Indian elephants, the thickness of the spine a foot and a half.

12| Whales even make their way into our seas. In the ocean off Gades they are said not to be seen before midwinter, but at fixed seasons to hide away in a certain calm and spacious bay, taking wonderful delight in giving birth there. The orcas know this, a monster hostile to them, whose likeness cannot be conveyed by any representation other than that of an immense mass of flesh savage with teeth.

13| So they burst into these secluded places and tear with their bite the whales' calves, or the mothers that have given birth or are still pregnant, and with their charge they gore them as if with the beaks of Liburnian galleys. The whales, unable to turn, helpless to fight back, and weighed down by their own bulk, being then also heavy with young or weakened by the pains of giving birth, know only one help: to flee into the deep and defend themselves by means of the ocean. The orcas, on the other hand, strive to meet them and put themselves in the way, to slaughter them when penned in the narrows, to drive them onto the shallows and dash them against the rocks. These battles are watched as if the sea were angry with itself, with no winds in the bay, but with waves raised by the breathing and the blows such as no whirlwinds could roll.

14| An orca was seen even in the harbor at Ostia, attacked by the emperor Claudius. It had come then while he was building the harbor, drawn by the wrecks of hides brought from Gaul, and, gorging itself for many days, had plowed a channel in the shallows, banked up by the waves to such a degree that it could by no means be turned about, and, while it pursued its food driven by the waves toward the shore, it stood out with its back far above the water like the keel of an overturned ship.

15| Caesar ordered many nets to be stretched across the mouths of the harbor, and setting out himself with the praetorian cohorts he gave the Roman people a spectacle, the soldiers heaping lances from the boats as they darted in; one of these we saw sunk, filled with water by the blowing back of the beast.

16| Ballaenae have their mouths in their foreheads, and therefore, swimming at the surface of the water, they blow out showers into the air. They breathe, moreover, by the agreement of all, as do very few others in the sea, which have a lung among the inner organs, since no animal is thought to breathe without it. Those who hold this opinion believe that fish, which have gills, do not give out breath and take it in again by turns, nor do many other kinds, even those without gills; I see that Aristotle was of that view and persuaded many distinguished for learning.

17| I do not conceal that I do not at once accede to this opinion of theirs, since in place of lungs other organs for breathing might be present, nature so willing, just as for many there is another fluid in place of blood. Who would wonder that this vital breath penetrates into waters, when he sees it even given out by them, and that it penetrates also into the earth, a part of nature so much denser, by the proof of the animals that live always buried, like moles?

18| There are other considerations that persuade me at least to believe that all things breathe in the waters by the lot of their own nature: first, the panting of fish noted often in the summer heat and a kind of yawning at other times when it is calm; the admission too of those themselves who are of the opposite opinion about the sleep of fish (for what place is there for sleep without breathing?); besides, the blowing out of bubbling waters, and the growth of the bodies of shellfish too through the moon's effect. Above all there is the fact that there will be no doubt that fish have hearing and smell, both of which are made from the substance of air. Smell, indeed, could be understood as nothing but tainted air. Wherefore let each think about these things as he pleases.

19| Gills are not in ballaenae or dolphins. These two kinds breathe by a pipe which reaches to the lung, in ballaenae from the forehead, in dolphins from the back. And the sea-calves, which they call phocae, breathe and sleep on land; so do tortoises, of which more soon.

20| The swiftest of all animals, not only of marine ones, is the dolphin, faster than a bird, keener than a dart, and unless its mouth were far beneath the snout, almost in the middle of the belly, no fish would escape its speed. But the providence of nature brings delay, because they do not seize unless turned on their backs and reversed, a cause which especially shows their velocity. For when, roused by hunger, they have pursued a fleeing fish into the lowest shallows and held their breath too long, they dart out to breathe like things shot from a bow, and leap with such force that they often fly over the sails of ships.

21| Mostly they roam in pairs; they bear young in the tenth month, in summertime, sometimes two. They nourish them at the teats, like the ballaena, and even carry their offspring while weak in infancy; moreover they long accompany them when grown, with great affection toward their young.

22| They grow up quickly; at 10 years they are thought to reach their greatest size. They live also to thirty years, which has been learned by cutting off the tail as a test. They hide for thirty days at about the time the Dog Star rises, and are concealed in an unknown manner, which is the more marvelous if they cannot breathe in water. They are accustomed to burst out onto the land, for an uncertain reason, nor do they die at once on touching the ground, and much more quickly if the pipe is closed.

23| Their tongue is, contrary to the nature of aquatic creatures, movable, short and broad, not differing from a pig's. In place of a voice they have a groan like a human being's, the back is curved, the snout turned up. For this reason all recognize the name Simo in a marvelous way and prefer to be so called.

24| The dolphin is an animal friendly not only to man but also to the art of music, soothed by the music of a band, but especially by the sound of the water-organ. It is not frightened of man as a stranger, comes to meet ships, plays alongside leaping, even races, and passes sails though full.

25| In the principate of the deified Augustus, a dolphin that had been carried into the Lucrine lake loved with marvelous affection the boy of a certain poor man, who was going from Baiae to Puteoli to the school; when, lingering at noon, the boy had often called it by the name Simo and enticed it with fragments of the bread he carried for the journey, it was drawn to him. I should be reluctant to tell it, were not the matter committed to writing by Maecenas and Fabianus and Flavius Alfius and many others. At whatever time of day it was called by the boy, however hidden and concealed, it flew up from the depths and, fed from his hand, offered its back for him to mount, sheathing the spines of its fin as in a scabbard, and carrying him thus taken up to Puteoli across the great expanse to the school, bringing him back in the same way, for several years, until the boy was carried off by disease; thereafter coming again and again to the accustomed place, sad and like one mourning, it too, as no one could doubt, died of longing.

26| Another, within these years, on the African coast at Hippo Diarrutus, in a similar way feeding from men's hands, offering itself to be stroked, playing with swimmers and carrying those placed upon it, was anointed with ointment by Flavianus, proconsul of Africa, and was lulled, as appeared, by the strangeness of the smell, and floated like a dead thing; it then avoided the company of men as if driven away by an injury for some months, and soon, returning, was the same marvel as before. The wrongs done to their hosts by officials who came to see it drove the people of Hippo to put it to death.

27| Before these, similar things are told of a boy in the city of Iasus: a dolphin was seen in love with him for a long time, and while eagerly following him as he went off toward the shore, it was carried onto the sand and died. Alexander the Great put the boy in charge of the priesthood of Neptune at Babylon, interpreting that love as that of a favoring divinity. In the same city of Iasus Hegesidemus writes that another boy too, Hermias by name, riding in the same way over the seas, when he was killed by the waves of a sudden squall and brought back, the dolphin, confessing itself the cause of death, did not return to the sea and died on dry land.

28| Theophrastus reports that the same thing also happened at Naupactus. There is no end of examples: the people of Amphilochia and of Tarentum tell the same of boys and dolphins. These make it believed that Arion too, of the art of the cithara-singer, when the sailors at sea were preparing to kill him in order to seize his earnings, having coaxed them to let him first sing to the cithara, threw himself into the sea after dolphins had been gathered by the song, and, taken up by one of them, was carried to the shore at Taenarum.

29| In the province of Narbonensis, in the territory of Nemausus, there is a pool called Latera, where dolphins fish in partnership with man. An innumerable host of mullets at a fixed time bursts out into the sea through the narrow mouth of the pool, observing the turn of the tide. For this reason nets cannot be stretched across, and the mass of the weight could in no way be borne, even if cleverness did not lie in wait for the moment. By similar reasoning they make straight for the deep, which is achieved by the nearby whirlpool, and hasten to escape the only place suited to spreading nets.

30| When the fishermen notice this (and a crowd runs together knowing the time and still more eager for this pleasure), and the whole people from the shore with as great a shout as they can call upon Simo to bring about the outcome of the spectacle, the dolphins quickly hear the wishes, the voice being carried on by a north wind, but more slowly with a south wind carrying it back from the opposite side; yet even then they hasten to fly unexpectedly to help.

31| The battle line appears, which is at once drawn up in the place where battle is to be joined. They set themselves against them from the deep and drive them, alarmed, into the shallows; then the fishermen throw around nets and lift them with forks. The swiftness of the mullets nonetheless leaps across; but the dolphins catch them, and content for the present to have killed, put off their food until victory.

32| The battle is hot with the work, and they rejoice in being enclosed in nets while pressing most bravely, and, lest this very thing spur the flight of the enemy, between the boats and nets and swimming men they slip out so gradually that they do not open an exit. By leaping, which is otherwise most pleasing to them, none tries to escape unless the nets are lowered for them. Having gone out, they at once fight before the barrier. So when the catch is finished they tear apart those they have killed. But aware that they have done more strenuous work than the reward of one day, they wait until the next, and are satisfied not only with fish but with a mash of bread in wine.

33| What Mucianus reports of the same kind of fishing in the Iasian gulf differs in this, that they come of their own accord, without being called, and take their share from the hands, and that each boat has its own dolphin as partner, even by night and by torchlight. Among themselves too they have a common partnership. When one was captured by the king of Caria and tied up in the harbor, a huge multitude of the others came together with a kind of sorrow that could be understood, seeking pity, until the king ordered it to be let go. Moreover some larger one always accompanies the little ones as a guardian, and they have been seen carrying one that was dead so that it would not be torn by the beasts.

34| Those called thursiones have a likeness to dolphins. They differ in the gloom of their appearance (for that playfulness is absent), but most of all in their snouts, being like the dogfish in their mischievousness.

35| The Indian sea sends out tortoises of such size that the surface of single ones covers habitable huts, and among the islands, particularly of the Red Sea, they sail in these as boats. They are caught in many ways, but chiefly when they have been carried out onto the surface of the sea in pleasant forenoon weather, with the whole back standing out, floating in the calm; the pleasure of breathing freely deceives them so far, forgetful of themselves, that with the shell dried by the sun's heat they cannot dive, and float against their will as a ready prey for hunters.

36| They say too that having gone out at night to feed and eagerly satisfied, they grow weary, and when they have returned in the morning they doze off at the very top of the water; this is betrayed by the sound of their snoring. Then three swim up silently and gently to each one; by two it is turned on its back, by the third a noose is thrown on it as it lies supine, and so it is dragged to land by several. In the Phoenician sea they are caught without any difficulty and come of their own accord at a fixed time of year to the river Eleutherus, in a great multitude poured out.

37| The tortoise has no teeth, but sharp edges to the beak, the upper part closing the lower like a box. In the sea they live on shellfish, with such hardness of mouth that they crush stones, and when they come out on land on grasses. They lay eggs like the eggs of birds, up to a hundred in number, and bury them outside the water and cover them with earth, which is rammed down with the breast and smoothed, and they brood them by night. They bring forth the young in the space of a year. Some think the eggs are warmed by them with the eyes and by looking at them, and that the females avoid coupling until the male places some stalk on one that has turned away.

38| The Trogodytae have horn-bearing ones, with broad but movable horns attached as to a lyre, with which in swimming they help themselves like oars; this is called the chelium, from an exceptional tortoise, but a rare one. For jagged rocks frighten the Chelonophagi, while the Trogodytae, to whom they swim, worship them as sacred. There are also land ones, called on that account in works chersinae, in the deserts of Africa, in the part where they are most rough with thirsty sands, living, as is believed, on dewy moisture. And no other animal arises there.

39| Carvilius Pollio first devised cutting the shells of tortoises into plates and covering couches and sideboards with them, a spendthrift and shrewd genius for the instruments of luxury.

40| The coverings of aquatic creatures are several. Some are covered with hide and hair, like sea-calves and hippopotami, others with hide only, like dolphins, with shell like tortoises, with the hardness of flints like oysters and conchae, with crusts like locustae, with crusts and spines like echini, with scales like fish, with rough skin like the squatina, with which wood and ivory are polished, with soft skin like murenae, others with none, like polypi.

41| Those that are clothed with hair give birth to a living animal, like the pristis, the ballaena, the sea-calf. The latter gives birth on land, and delivers the afterbirth in the manner of cattle. It couples fast in the manner of dogs; it sometimes bears more than two, and rears its young at the teats. It does not lead the young to the sea before the twelfth day, accustoming them to it gradually from then. They are killed with difficulty unless the head is crushed. Their sound is a lowing (whence the name of calf), yet they take training, and voice at the same time, and at command greet the people with an unmusical roar, and answer when called by name.

42| No animal is pressed by heavier sleep. With the fins which they use in the sea they also crawl on the ground in place of feet. Their skins, they say, even when stripped from the body, keep a feeling for the waters, and always bristle when the tide of the sea ebbs; besides, there is a sleep-bringing power in the right fin, and, placed under the head, it entices sleep.

43| Of those lacking hair only two give birth to a living animal, the dolphin and the viper. The species of fish are 74, besides those covered with crusts, which are 30. Of the individual ones we shall speak elsewhere; for now the natures of the most notable are treated.

44| Of exceptional size are the thynni. We find that one weighed 15 talents, and that the width of its tail was two cubits and a palm. In some rivers too they grow no smaller: the silurus in the Nile, the isox in the Rhine, the attilus in the Po, fattening by inactivity at times to a thousand pounds, taken with a chained hook and drawn out only by yokes of oxen. And the smallest of fish, called the clupea, attacking with wonderful greed a certain vein of it in the throat, kills it with its bite.

45| The silurus ranges wherever it is, attacking every animal, often drowning horses swimming over. It is drawn out especially in the Moenus, a river of Germany, with the long teams of oxen, and in the Danube with mattocks, very like a sea-pig. And on the Borysthenes an exceptional size is recorded, with no bones or spines interposed, with exceedingly sweet flesh.

46| In the Ganges of India there are those they call platanistae, with the snout and tail of a dolphin, and in size 16 cubits. Statius Sebosus reports as no small marvel that in the same river there are worms, with two gills, of six cubits, blue, which took their name from their face. These have such strength, he says, that elephants coming to drink are seized by the trunk in their jaws and dragged off.

47| The male thynni have no fin under the belly. They enter the Pontus from the great sea in the spring season in herds, and do not breed elsewhere. The offspring is called cordyla, which accompanies the females returning into the sea in autumn; but the muddy or mud-born ones begin to be called pelamydes, and when they have passed the year's time, thynni.

48| These, cut limb by limb, are valued for the neck and belly and the clidium, that is, when fresh and even then with heavy belching. In the remaining part, full of flesh, they are preserved with salt. Melandrya are called slices like oak chips. Of these the cheapest is that nearest the tail, because it lacks fat, the most approved that from the throat. But in another fish that about the tail is the most worked. The pelamydes are cut into pieces for apolecti and divided into kinds of cybia.

49| Every kind of fish grows up with special swiftness, most of all in the Pontus. The cause is the multitude of rivers bringing in sweet waters. They call the amia that of which the growth is perceived day by day. With the thynni these and the pelamydes enter the Pontus for sweeter food in herds, each under its own leaders, and first of all the scombri, whose color in the water is sulphurous, and out of it the same as the rest. These fill the fish-pickling places of Spain, when the thynni do not come.

50| But no beast harmful to fish enters the Pontus except sea-calves and small dolphins. The thynni enter by the right bank and leave by the left. This is thought to happen because they see better with the right eye, both being dull by nature. In the strait of the Thracian Bosporus, where the Propontis is joined to the Euxine, in the very narrows of the channel that separates Europe and Asia, there is a rock of marvelous whiteness, translucent from the bottom to the top, near Chalcedon on the side of Asia. Suddenly terrified at the sight of it, they always make in a headlong column for the opposite headland of Byzantium, for that reason called the Golden Horn.

51| And so the entire catch belongs to Byzantium, with great scarcity at Chalcedon, 1,000 paces apart across the intervening strait. They wait for a blast of the north wind, so as to leave the Pontus on a favoring current, and they are caught only as they enter the harbor of Byzantium. In midwinter they do not roam; wherever they are overtaken, they pass the winter there until the equinox. The same fish, often accompanying ships under sail with a marvelous kind of sweetness, are watched from the rudders for stretches of several hours and miles, not frightened even when a trident is thrown at them repeatedly. Some call those of the thynni that do this pompili.

52| Many pass the summer in the Propontis without entering the Pontus; likewise soleae, though rhombi enter, and there is no saepia, though the lolligo is found; of rock fish the turdus and merula are absent, as are shellfish, although oysters abound. All, however, winter in the Aegean. Of those entering the Pontus the trichiae alone do not return (for it will be right to use Greek names for the most part, since different regions have called the same fish by one name and another),

53| but these alone go up into the Hister [sea] and from it flow down through its underground veins into the Hadriatic sea, and so are seen there too going down and never coming up from the sea. The catching of thynni is from the rising of the Pleiades to the setting of Arcturus. In the rest of the winter time they lie hidden in the lowest depths, unless called out by some warmth or by full moons. They fatten so much that they burst open. Their longest life is two years.

54| There is a small animal in the likeness of a scorpion, of the size of a spider. It fastens itself with its sting under the fin of the thynnus and of the one that is called the sword, which often exceeds the size of a dolphin, and distresses it with so great a pain that they often leap into ships. This they do otherwise also, fearing the violence of others, mullets especially, of such exceptional swiftness that they sometimes leap over boats lying across.

55| There are omens too in this part of nature, and fish have foreknowledge. In the Sicilian war, as Augustus was walking on the shore, a fish leapt from the sea to his feet, and from this sign the seers replied (Sextus Pompey then claiming Neptune as his adoptive father, so great was the glory in naval power) that those who then held the seas would be under the feet of Caesar.

56| The females of fish are larger than the males. In one kind there are no males at all, as the erythinus and the channa; for all are caught heavy with eggs. Of every scaly kind they roam mostly in herds. They are caught before sunrise: then the sight of fish is most deceived. At night they rest, but on bright nights they see as well as by day. They say too that it makes a difference to the catch if the water is stirred up; and so more are caught at the second drag than the first. They delight in the taste of oil above all, then in moderate rains, and are nourished by them. For even reeds, though born in marsh, do not grow without rain, and otherwise wherever fish are constant in the same water, if it does not flow in, they die.

57| All feel extreme winter cold, but most of all those thought to have a stone in the head, such as lupi, the chromis, sciaena, phagri. When the winters have been harsh, many are caught blind. And so in these months they lie hidden in caves, as we have related in the kind of land animals, especially the hippurus and the coracini, not caught in winter except on a few fixed days and always the same ones, likewise the murena and orphus, conger, percae and all rock fish. The torpedo, psetta and solea, they say, hide through the winters in the earth, that is, in the hollowed bottom of the sea.

58| Some again, unable to bear heat, lie hidden in the midst of the hot weather for sixty days, as the glaucus, the aselli, the aurata. Of river fish, the silurus is stricken when the Dog Star rises, and at other times is always stupefied by lightning; this they think happens in the sea to the cyprinus. And besides, the whole sea feels the rising of that star, which is most apparent in the Bosporus. For seaweed and fish are carried to the surface, and all things turned up from the bottom.

59| The nature of mullets is laughed at: in fear, with the head hidden, they believe themselves wholly concealed. The same fish have a lust so heedless that in Phoenicia, and in the Narbonese province, at mating time, a male is let out of the fish-ponds into the sea with a long line fastened through the mouth to the gills, and drawn back by the same line, and the females follow to the shore, and again the males follow a female at the time of spawning.

60| Among the ancients the acipenser was held the most noble of fish, the only one of all with scales turned toward the mouth, opposite to the way they go in swimming; it is now in no honor, which I for my part wonder at, since it is rare to find. Some call it the elops.

61| Afterward, Cornelius Nepos and Laberius the poet of mimes have recorded that the highest authority belonged to the lupus and the aselli. Of lupi the most praised are those called lanati, from the whiteness and softness of the flesh. Of aselli there are two kinds, the callariae, which are smaller, and the bacchi, which are caught only in deep water and so are preferred to the former. But among lupi those caught in a river are preferred.

62| Now the foremost place goes to the scarus, which alone of fish is said to chew the cud and to feed on grasses and not on other fish, most frequent in the Carpathian sea. It never crosses of its own will the promontory of the Troad, Lectum. Brought from there in the principate of Tiberius Claudius, they were scattered and spread by Optatus, one of his freedmen, prefect of the fleet, between Ostia and the coast of Campania, with care applied for nearly five years, so that those caught were returned to the sea.

63| Afterward they are found in numbers on the coast of Italy, not caught there before, and gluttony has provided itself with flavors by stocking fish, and has given the sea a new inhabitant, so that no one need wonder that foreign birds breed at Rome. Next in the table's favor, though only for their liver, come the mustelae, which, marvelous to tell, even among the Alps the Brigantine lake of Raetia produces, rivals of the sea ones.

64| Of the rest in repute and favor the greatest, and in abundance, are the mulli, though the size is moderate, and they rarely exceed two pounds of weight, nor do they grow in fish-ponds and pools. Of the ocean, only the northern part and the nearest part of the west produce these. For the rest there are several kinds of them; for they feed on seaweed and on oysters and mud and the flesh of other fish, and are marked with a double beard on the lower lip. One of these, of the cheapest kind, they call lutarius;

65| this is always accompanied by another fish, by name sargus, and as it digs the mud, devours the food stirred up. Nor are those of the shore in favor. The most praised have the flavor of shellfish. Fenestella thinks the name was given to them from the color of mullei, a kind of shoe. They spawn three times a year; certainly so often the brood appears.

66| They say that the leaders of gluttony watch a mullus as it expires in a variegated and many-sided changing of color, growing pale in a manifold alteration of reddening scales, especially if it is watched shut up in glass. Marcus Apicius, born to every ingenuity of luxury, thought that the best way was to kill them in the garum called "of the allies" (for this too has found a surname) and to devise allec from their liver.

67| Asinius Celer, of consular rank, challenged all spendthrifts in this fish (for that is easier to say than who won), having bought one mullus under the emperor Gaius for 8,000 sesterces. This reckoning takes my mind aside to the contemplation of those who, in complaining of luxury, used to cry out that cooks were bought each at a higher price than horses. But now cooks are procured at the price of three horses, and fish at the price of three cooks, and hardly any mortal is now valued at more than he who most skillfully sinks his master's fortune.

68| Licinius Mucianus reported a mullus of 80 pounds caught in the Red Sea; what price would luxury pay for it, were it found on the shores near the city? It is also in nature that different fish hold first rank in different places: the coracinus in Egypt, the zaeus, also called faber, at Gades, around Ebusus the salpa, foul elsewhere and one that can nowhere be fully cooked unless beaten with a fennel-rod; in Aquitania the river salmo is preferred to all sea fish.

69| Of fish, some have gills in many layers, some single, some double. Through these they send out the water taken in by the mouth. The mark of old age is a hardness of the scales, which are not the same in every fish. Italy has two lakes at the roots of the Alps, called Larius and Verbannus, in which fish appear every year at the rising of the Pleiades, conspicuous with scales that are numerous and very sharp, in the form of the nails of boots, and are seen no longer than about that month.

70| Arcadia too marvels at its exocoetus, so called because it goes out onto dry land for the sake of sleep. Around Clitorium this is reported to be vocal and without gills, and by some called Adonis.

71| Those that are called sea-mice also go out onto land, and polypi and murenae, and moreover a certain kind of fish in the rivers of India, and then it springs back. For in most the reason for passing into pools and rivers is evident, that they may bring forth their young in safety, because there are none there to devour the offspring and the waves rage less. One would marvel the more that these causes are understood by them and the turns of the seasons kept, if one considers how few men know that the catch is richest as the sun travels through the sign of the Fishes.

72| Of sea creatures some are flat, like rhombi, soleae and passeres, which differ from rhombi only in the position of the bodies (the right side is uppermost in the former when they are turned over, in the passer the left), others long, like the murena and conger.

73| Therefore the differences of fins also arise, which are given to fish in place of feet, none having above four, some two, some none. Only in Lake Fucinus is there a fish that swims with eight fins. Two entirely for the long and slippery, as eels and congers, none for others, as murenae, which have no gills either. All these use the sea by a winding thrust of their bodies as serpents use the earth, and they crawl even on dry land; for this reason such creatures are also longer lived. And of the flat ones some have no fins, as the pastinacae (for they swim by their very breadth) and those that are called soft, like polypi, since the feet provide them with the service of fins.

74| Eels live eight years. They last also without water, five and six days when the north wind blows, fewer with the south [….] in winter, but the same fish do not tolerate a little water, nor turbid water. For this reason they are caught chiefly about the Pleiades, in rivers then particularly turbid. They feed at night. Of fish they alone do not float when dead.

75| There is a lake of Italy, Benacus, in the territory of Verona, sending out the river Mincius, at whose outflow at a yearly time, almost in the month of October, with the autumnal star (as is plain) having wintered the lake, rolled in waves, they are tumbled together in such wonderful multitude that in the traps of that river made for this very purpose balls of a thousand each are found.

76| The murena gives birth in any month, whereas other fish spawn at a fixed time. Its eggs grow very quickly. The common people think that when they have slipped onto dry shores they are impregnated by coupling with serpents. Aristotle calls the male that begets zmyrus; the difference, he says, is that the murena is variegated and weak, the zmyrus of one color and robust, and has teeth even outside the mouth. In northern Gaul on the right jaw of all murenae seven spots in the form of the Septentrio gleam with a golden color, in living ones only, and are extinguished together with the breath.

77| Vedius Pollio, a Roman knight among the friends of the deified Augustus, found in this animal a proof of cruelty, plunging condemned slaves into their fish-ponds, not as though the beasts of the land were insufficient for this, but because in another kind he could not watch a whole man torn apart at once. They say that the flavour of vinegar above all sends them into a frenzy. Their skin is very thin, whereas in eels it is thicker, and Verrius reports that boys wearing the praetexta were accustomed to be beaten with it, and for that reason it was not the custom to fine them.

78| Of flat fish there is another kind, which has cartilage in place of a backbone, such as the raiae, pastinacae, squatinae, torpedo, and those which the Greeks call by the names of ox, lamia, eagle and frog. In this number are also the squali, though not flat. All these together Aristotle called in Greek selache, being the first to impose this name on them. We cannot distinguish them, unless one is pleased to call them cartilaginous. All such, however, are flesh-eaters and feed on their backs, as we said of dolphins, and whereas other fish lay eggs, this kind alone, like those they call cete, bears a living animal, except the one they call the frog.

79| There is a quite small fish accustomed to rocks, called echeneis. When it clings to the keels, ships are believed to go more slowly, whence the name was given. For this reason it is also ill-famed for love potions and as the delay of trials and lawsuits, which charges it balances by one praise, stopping the flux of pregnant women from the womb and holding the birth until delivery. Yet it is not admitted as food. Some think it has feet; Aristotle [….] it with the likeness of fins added.

80| Mucianus says the murex is broader than the purpura, with a mouth neither rough nor round, and with the beak not projecting into angles, but like a shell closing itself on both sides. By clinging to the keel of the ship of Periander, he says, they held it standing in a full wind, while it carried noble boys to be castrated; the shells which performed this are worshiped at the temple of the Venus of the Cnidians. Trebius Niger says it is a foot long and five fingers thick, and delays ships; besides, he says, its power, kept in salt, is such that, brought near, it draws out gold that has fallen into the deepest wells.

81| The menae change from white and become blacker in summer. The phycis also changes, white the rest of the time, variegated in spring. It alone of fish makes a nest of seaweed and gives birth in the nest.

82| The hirundo, very like a bird, certainly flies, likewise the miluus; there comes to the surface of the sea a fish called from the evidence lucerna, and a fiery tongue thrust out through the mouth shines again on calm nights. Another raises from the sea horns nearly a foot and a half long, and has taken its name from them. Again the sea draco, when caught and put on sand, digs a hole for itself with its snout with marvelous speed.

83| Those fish lacking blood, of which we shall speak, are of three kinds: first those called soft, then those covered with thin crusts, finally those enclosed in hard shells. The soft ones are the lolligo, saepia, polypus and the rest of that kind. In these the head is between the feet and the belly, and all have eight little feet. In the saepiae and lolligo two of the feet are the longest and rough, with which they bring food to the mouth and in the wave steady themselves as with anchors; the rest are tendrils, with which they hunt.

84| The lolligo also flies out of the water, raising itself, as the pectunculi do, like an arrow. (In the kind of saepiae the males are variegated and blacker and of greater steadiness. When a female is struck with a trident, the males come to her help, but the female flees when the male is hit.) Both, however, when they feel themselves seized, hide in water darkened by the ink poured out, which is to them instead of blood.

85| There are many kinds of polypi. Those of the land are larger than those of the deep. They use all their arms as feet and hands, but the tail, which is forked and sharp, in coupling. And polypi have a pipe on the back, through which they send out the sea water, and they shift it sometimes to the right side, sometimes to the left. They swim slanting toward the head, which is very hard, by blowing while alive. Otherwise, along the arms, as with scattered cups, they cling by a kind of suction; they hold on their backs so that they cannot be pulled away. They do not seize the shallows, and in large ones the grip is weaker. Alone of soft creatures they come out onto dry land, if only it is rough; they hate smoothness.

86| They feed on the flesh of shellfish, whose shells they break by the embrace of their hair-like arms; and so their lair is detected by the shells lying before it. And although otherwise the animal is held dull, as one that swims up to a man's hand, in a matter in a way of its own household it is clever. It carries everything into its home, then casts out the shells with the flesh eaten away, and hunts the little fish that swim up to them.

87| It changes color to match the place, and most of all in fear. That it gnaws its own arms is a false opinion (for this happens to it from congers), but that they grow again, as tails do in colotes and lizards, is not false.

88| Among the chief marvels is that which is called the nautilus, by others the pompilus. Lying on its back, it reaches the top of the waters, raising itself little by little so that, with all the water sent out through a pipe, it sails easily as though relieved of bilge. Afterward, turning back its first two arms, it stretches between them a membrane of wonderful thinness, which serves as a sail in the breeze, while with the other arms it rows beneath, and with the middle of its tail it steers as with a rudder. So it goes upon the deep, delighting in the image of Liburnian ships, and if any fright intervenes, sinks itself by drawing in water.

89| Of the kind of polypi is the ozaena, so called from the heavy smell of its head, for which reason murenae especially pursue it. Polypi are hidden for two months. They do not live beyond two years. They die, however, always by wasting, the females more quickly and usually after spawning. Not to be passed over are the things learned about polypi when Lucius Lucullus was proconsul of Baetica, which Trebius Niger, one of his companions, reported:

90| that they are most greedy of shellfish; that these close at a touch, cutting off their arms, and of their own accord take food from the predator. The shellfish lack sight and every sense other than of food and of danger. So the polypi lie in wait for them when open and place a small stone outside the body, lest it be thrown out by the quivering: thus they go about securely and draw out the flesh. The shells draw themselves together, but in vain, being wedged apart. So great is the cleverness of animals even the dullest.

91| Besides, he says there is no animal more fierce for destroying a man in the water. For it wrestles in an embrace and sucks with its cups and drags with its many suckers, when it has made its attack on shipwrecked persons or divers. But if it is turned over, its force languishes; for lying on its back they stretch themselves out. The other things that the same man reported may seem nearer to a monster.

92| At Carteia, in the fish-salting works, one was in the habit of going out from the sea into their open tanks and plundering the salted fish there (marvelously, all sea creatures seek even their smell, for which reason fish-traps are smeared with it), and turned against itself the immoderate indignation of the keepers by the constancy of its thefts. Fences had been set in its way, but it crossed these by a tree, and could not be caught except by the keenness of dogs. These surrounded it at night as it returned, and the keepers, roused, were struck with terror at the strangeness. First of all, its size was unheard of, then its color, smeared with brine, and dreadful in smell. Who would have expected a polypus there, or recognized it so? They seemed to themselves to be fighting with a monster. For with its terrible breath it drove off the dogs, now lashing them with the tips of its hairs, now striking them with its stronger arms like clubs,

93| and it could be killed only with difficulty and many tridents. They showed Lucullus its head, of the size of a large jar, holding 15 amphorae, and, to use Trebius's own words, its beards, which one could scarcely have embraced with both arms, knotty like clubs, 30 feet long, with cups or little vessels the size of an urn, like basins, and teeth corresponding to the size. The remains kept as a marvel weighed 700 pounds. The same author says that saepiae and lolligines of the same size were cast up on that shore. In our sea lolligines of five cubits are caught, saepiae of two. Nor do these live longer than two years.

94| Mucianus reported another ship-bearing likeness seen by him in the Propontis: a shell keeled like a light vessel, with curved stern and beaked prow. In it, he says, hides a nauplius, an animal like a saepia, only for the partnership of play. This is done in two ways: in calm weather the rider lowers his little oars and strikes as with oars; but if a breath invites, these are put out for use as a rudder and the hollows of the cheeks are spread to the breeze. The pleasure of the one is to carry, of the other to steer, and at the same time it descends into two things without feeling, unless perhaps (for this much is agreed) it is a gloomy omen for those sailing, and human disaster is the cause.

95| Locustae are protected by a brittle crust, in that kind which lacks blood. They lie hidden for five months. Similarly crabs, which are concealed at the same time, and both, at the beginning of spring, cast off old age in the manner of serpents by a renewal of the skin. The rest swim in the waves; locustae float in the manner of creeping things, if no fear presses, in a straight course, with their horns, which are tipped with a round knob proper to them, stretched out to the sides; the same, raised in fright, they advance sideways. They fight among themselves with their horns. This alone of animals, unless it is boiled alive in hot water, has no firmness in its liquid flesh.

96| They live in rocky places, crabs in soft. In winter they seek sunny shores, in summer they withdraw into the shaded places of the deeps. All of that kind are harmed by winter, and fatten in autumn and spring and more at full moon, because the star softens the nights with a warm glow.

97| The kinds of crabs are carabi, astaci, maeae, paguri, Heracleotici, leones, and others less distinguished. The carabi differ from other crabs in the tail. In Phoenicia they are called hippoe, of such speed that they cannot be overtaken. Crabs have a long life, eight feet, all bent sideways. The female's first foot is double, the male's single. Besides, they have two arms with toothed claws. The upper part in these foremost is moved, the lower immovable.

98| The right arm is larger in all. Sometimes all gather together. They cannot overcome the mouth of the Pontus; for this reason they go out and go around, and a well-worn track appears. The pinotheras is called the smallest of every kind, and so is open to injury. Its cleverness is to hide itself in the shells of empty oysters, and, when it has grown, to move into more capacious ones. Crabs in fear go backward with equal speed.

99| They fight among themselves, rushing together with horns opposed like rams. They are a remedy against the bites of serpents. When the sun passes through the sign of the Crab, it is said that the very body of the crabs, when they have died, is changed on dry land into scorpions.

100| Of the same kind are the echini, which have spines in place of feet. Their way of going is to roll in a circle, and so they are often found with the spines worn down. Of these those are called echinometrae whose spines are longest and whose cups are smallest. Nor is the glassy color the same in all; around Torone white ones are produced, with a small spine. The eggs of all are bitter, five in number. The mouth is in the middle of the body, turned to the ground. They are said to foresee the savagery of the sea, and to wait for it, having seized small stones, steadying their mobility by the weight; they do not wish to wear down their spines by rolling. When sailors see this, they at once bridle their vessels with several anchors.

101| In the same kind are snails, of water and of land, which put themselves forth from the dwelling and stretch out and draw in two things like horns; they lack eyes, and so test the way ahead with their little horns. Scallops in the sea are reckoned of the same kind, themselves also hidden in great cold and great heat, and their "nails" shining in the dark like fire, even in the mouth of those chewing.

102| Of firmer shell now are the murices and the kinds of conchae, in which there is a great variety of nature at play. So many differences of colors, so many shapes: flat, hollow, long, crescent-shaped, rounded in a circle, cut off by half a circle, raised in a hump, smooth, wrinkled, toothed, grooved, with the top twisted like a murex, with the edge drawn out into a point, spread outward, folded back within,

103| now marked by streaks, hairy, curled, divided in channels, in the manner of a comb, undulating like roof tiles, latticed like a net, spread obliquely, straight, thickened, extended, curved, joined with a short knot, linked along the whole side, opening like clapping hands, curved back like a trumpet. Of these the Venereae sail, offering the hollow part of themselves and opposing it to the breeze, and sail over the surface of the waters. Scallops leap and fly out, and themselves make keels for themselves.

104| But why do I mention these things, so small, when the ruin of morals and luxury arises from no other source more than from the kind of conchae? Indeed, of the whole of nature, the sea is the most ruinous to the belly, in so many ways, with so many courses, so many flavors of fish, whose prices are made by the danger of those who take them.

105| Yet how small a share is this to those who reckon purpurae, conchylia, pearls! It had evidently been too little for the seas to be buried in gullets, unless they were also carried on hands, ears, head and the whole body, by women and men alike. What has the sea to do with clothes, what the waves and billows with fleece? Does not this nature of things rightly receive us only naked? Granted, let there be so great a partnership between the belly and it: what has it to do with the back? Is it too little that we who feed on dangers should also be clothed with them? So much do things sought at the cost of a man's life, through the whole body, give most pleasure.

106| The pearls, then, hold the beginning and the summit of the price of all things. The Indian ocean sends them chiefly, coming through so many seas among those beasts so many and so great that we have described, through so long a stretch of lands and under such burning of the sun. And by the Indians too they are sought on islands, and on quite few. Most fertile are Taprobane and Stoidis, as we said in the circuit of the world, likewise Perimula, a promontory of India. They are chiefly praised, however, around Arabia in the Persian gulf of the Red Sea.

107| The origin and begetting are shells, not much different from the shells of oysters. When the hour of the generative season stimulates them, they open with a kind of yawning and, it is said, are filled by a conception of dew, afterward, grown heavy, they bring forth, and the offspring of the shells are the pearls, according to the quality of the dew received. If pure it has flowed in, whiteness is seen; if turbid, the fruit too is dingy; the same turns pale when the sky threatens. For the conception, they say, comes from the dew, and they have a greater partnership with the sky than with the sea: hence they draw a cloudy color, or a clear one in proportion to the brightness of the morning.

108| If they are fed at the right time, the offspring too grows large; if it lightnings, the shells are pressed together and diminish in proportion to the degree of fasting; if it also thunders, frightened and suddenly compressed they produce what are called physemata, in appearance like inflated emptiness without body; these are the abortions of the shells. The sound offspring, however, are made up of many layers of skin, as it might not unfittingly be thought a callus of the body.

109| And so they are cleaned by those skilled. I wonder that they alone rejoice in the sky itself, redden in the sun and lose their whiteness like the human body. For this reason those of the deep keep the best quality, sunk deeper than the rays can penetrate. Yet they too turn yellow with age and grow dull with wrinkles, and that vigor which is sought exists only in youth. They thicken also in old age and cling to the shells and can be torn from them only with a file. Those that have only one face, and roundness from it, with the reverse flat, are for that reason called tympania. We see them still clinging to shells which, so endowed, are carried about to hold perfumes. Otherwise the unio in the water is soft, and as soon as taken out hardens.

110| The shell itself, when it has seen a hand, presses itself together and covers its wealth, knowing it is sought for the sake of that, and, if the hand is quick enough, cuts it off with its own edge, with no juster penalty, and is protected by other torments too, since the greater part is found among rocks, and in the deep too sea-dogs accompany; and yet the ears of women are not kept off.

111| Some report that, as with bees, so in the swarms of shells single ones, outstanding in size and age, are like leaders, of wonderful cleverness in guarding. The divers aim at these; when they are taken the rest, wandering, are easily enclosed in nets; then they are buried in plenty of salt in earthen vessels; when all the flesh has been eaten away, certain kernels of the bodies, that is, the uniones, fall to the bottom.

112| There is no doubt that they are worn down by use and change color through carelessness. All their merit lies in whiteness, size, roundness, smoothness and weight, qualities not easy to find, so much so that no two are found indistinguishable: hence the name of uniones, which Roman fastidiousness evidently imposed, for among the Greeks there is no other name than margaritae, nor even among the barbarians, the discoverers of the thing. And in the whiteness itself there is a great difference:

113| it is clearer in those found in the Red Sea, while in the Indian they resemble the scales of mirror-stones, though in other cases surpassing in size. The highest praise of color is to be called alum-white. The longer ones too have their own favor. They call elenchi those of lengthened, tapering form like the shape of alabaster flasks, ending in a fuller roundness.

114| To hang these from the fingers and two and three from the ears is the glory of women, and foreign names come to attend this luxury, sought out by ruined extravagance, since when they have done it they call them crotalia, as though they enjoyed the sound too and the very clashing of the pearls; and even poor women now desire them, saying that a pearl is a woman's lictor in public. Moreover they add them to the feet, and not only to the straps of sandals but to whole shoes. For it is no longer enough to wear margaritae, unless they tread on them and walk even on uniones.

115| In our sea they used to be found rather often around the Thracian Bosporus, reddish and small, in shells they call myae. But in Acarnania the one called pina produces them, whence it appears that they are not born in one kind of shell. For Juba also reports that in the Arabian ones the shell is like a cut scallop, rough like the echini, the unio itself in the flesh like hail. Shells of that kind are not brought to us. Nor are those found in Acarnania praised, huge and wild and of marble color. Better ones are around Actium, but these too small, and on the coasts of Mauretania. Alexander Polyhistor and Sudines think that they grow old and their color dies away.

116| That the body is firm is evident, because they are broken by no fall. They are not invariably located in the centre of the flesh, but now in one place, now in another, and we have by now seen them even at the extreme edges, as though coming out of the shell, and in some four and five. In weight, up to this date, few have exceeded a half-ounce by single scruples. That they are born in Britain, small and without color, is certain, since the deified Julius wished it understood that the breastplate that he dedicated in her temple to Venus Genetrix was made from British pearls.

117| I have seen Lollia Paulina, who was the wife of the emperor Gaius, not at any serious or solemn ceremonial preparation, but at the supper of even an ordinary betrothal, covered with emeralds and pearls shining in alternate weaving over her whole head, [with a coil] in the hair, on the ears, [necklaces] on the neck, on the fingers, a sum which came to forty million sesterces, she herself at once ready to prove the title by documents. Nor were they gifts of a spendthrift emperor, but ancestral wealth, evidently gained by the spoils of provinces.

118| This is the outcome of plunder; this was why Marcus Lollius, disgraced by the gifts of kings in the whole East, with friendship renounced by Gaius Caesar the son of Augustus, drank poison, so that his granddaughter might be looked at by lamplight covered with forty million sesterces! Let someone now reckon on one side how much Curius or Fabricius carried in their triumphs, imagine the processions of those men, and on the other side Lollia, a single little woman of the empire, reclining at table: would he not rather have them dragged from their chariots than have them conquer to this end?

119| Nor are these the highest examples of luxury. There were two of the greatest uniones through all ages; Cleopatra, last of the Egyptian queens, possessed both, passed down to her through the hands of Eastern kings. She, when Antony was being fattened daily on choice banquets, with proud and at the same time wanton disdain, as a queen and harlot, belittling all his splendor and apparatus, when he asked what could be added to the magnificence, replied that she would consume ten million sesterces at one supper.

120| Antony was eager to learn, but did not think it could be done. So wagers having been made, the next day, on which the judgment was to be given, she set before Antony, who was laughing and demanding the reckoning, a supper otherwise magnificent, so that the day might not be lost, but an ordinary one. But she declared that this was a mere extra and that the supper would consume the sum assessed, and that she alone would dine at ten million sesterces, and ordered the second course to be brought in. By her instruction the attendants set before her only one vessel, of vinegar, whose sharpness and force dissolves pearls into slime.

121| She was wearing at her ears at the time that singular and truly unique work of nature. And so, with Antony waiting to see what she would do, she took off one, dipped it, and swallowed it when dissolved. Lucius Plancus, the judge of her wager, laid his hand on the other, as she was preparing to consume it too in the same way, and pronounced Antony beaten, the omen being fulfilled. Fame attends the partner of that unio; after that queen, the victor in so great a contest, was captured, it was cut in two, so that at Rome in the Pantheon there should be in the ears of Venus, in each, half of that supper.

122| They will not bear off this palm, and will be robbed even of the glory of luxury. Earlier at Rome Clodius, son of the tragic actor Aesopus, left by him as heir in great wealth, had done this with uniones of great price, lest Antony be too proud of his triumvirate, being almost compared to an actor, and indeed brought to it by no wager (to make it the more royal), but to find out, for the glory of his palate, what pearls tasted like. And when they pleased him wonderfully, lest he alone know this, he gave single uniones to his guests also to swallow.

123| Fenestella reports that at Rome they came into mixed and frequent use after Alexandria was brought under our sway, and first began about the times of Sulla, small and cheap ones, in manifest error, since Aelius Stilo records that about the Jugurthine war the name uniones was being imposed, precisely on large pearls.

124| And yet this is a possession almost eternal; it follows the heir, passing into ownership like some estate: conchylia and purpurae every hour wear away, and for these the same mother, luxury, has made prices almost equal even to pearls.

125| Purpurae live at most seven years. They lie hidden, like murices, around the rising of the Dog Star, for thirty days. They gather in the spring season and by mutual rubbing produce the stickiness of a kind of wax in their saliva. In a similar way murices do too, but purpurae have that flower so sought for dyeing garments in the middle of their throat.

126| This is a white vein of very little liquid, from which is drunk that precious fluid, gleaming with the color of a darkening rose; the rest of the body is useless. They strive to take them alive, because with life they vomit out that juice. And from the larger purpurae they remove the shell and take it out, but the smaller they break alive with the shell, and so at last squeeze it out.

127| At Tyre the best in Asia, at Meninx in Africa and on the Gaetulian shore of the ocean, in Laconia in Europe. For this the fasces and axes of Rome make way, and the same is the majesty of boyhood, distinguishes the senate from the knight, is called in to appease the gods and brightens every garment, and in the triumphal one is mixed with gold. Wherefore let the madness for purpura also be excused. But whence come the prices for the conchylia, what is the foul odor in the dye, the harsh color in the sea-green and like a sea in anger?

128| The tongue of the purpura is a finger's length, with which it feeds, piercing the other shellfish: so great is the hardness of the sting. They are killed by the sweetness of water, and wherever a river runs in; otherwise, when caught, they live even fifty days on their own saliva. All shells grow very quickly, especially purpurae: in a year they fill out their size.

129| But if the account were to hurry past at this point, luxury would surely believe herself defrauded and condemn us for carelessness. For this reason we shall go through the workshops as well, so that, as in the food of grains the method is known, so all who delight in these things may be skilled in the reward of their own lives.

130| Of the shells for purpurae and conchylia (for the material is the same, but it differs in the mixing) there are two kinds: the bucinum, a smaller shell, in the likeness of that by which the sound of the trumpet is made (whence the reason for the name), cut at the rim with a round mouth; the other is called purpura, with a channeled beak running forward and the side of the little channel tubed inward, through which the tongue is thrust forth. Besides, it is studded up to the spire with spikes in a ring, about seven, which the bucinum does not have, but both have as many whorls as they have years. The bucinum clings only to rocks and is gathered around the cliffs.

131| Purpurae by another name are called pelagiae. Of them there are several kinds, distinguished by food and ground: the lutense, foul with mud, and the algense, nourished on seaweed, both the cheapest. Better is the taeniense, gathered in the taeniae of the sea, though this too is still lighter and thinner. The calculense is so called from the pebble in the sea, wonderfully fitted for conchylia, and far the best for purpurae is the dialutense, that is, fed on a varied kind of ground.

132| Purpurae are caught, moreover, with little baskets, rare in weave like fish-traps, thrown into the deep. In these is bait, shells that close and bite, like the mussels that we see. These half-dead shells, but restored to the sea and reviving with greedy gaping, the purpurae seek and attack with extended tongues. But they, stung by the sting, shut themselves and press together on what bites. So the purpurae, hanging by their own greed, are lifted up.

133| It is most useful for them to be caught after the Dog Star rises or before the season of spring, since when they have made wax, they have flowing juices. But [….] of the dyers is turned on this. Afterward the vein of which we spoke is removed, to which salt must be added, about a sextarius to every hundred pounds; the right time for steeping is three days, since the force is as much greater as it is fresher; it is made to boil in lead, and for each [hundred] amphorae of water, five hundred pounds of the drug are heated with an even and moderate steam, and for that reason by the channel of a distant furnace. So, the flesh being skimmed off from time to time, which must have adhered to the veins, about the tenth day, when the contents of the vat have liquefied, a fleece rinsed clean is dipped in as a test, and until the hope is satisfied the liquor is heated. A reddish color is worse than a blackish.

134| Wool is soaked for five hours, and again dipped when carded, until it drinks up all the gore. The bucinum by itself is condemned, since it gives up the dye: it is bound together with the pelagium in measure, and gives to its excessive blackness that sharpness and that gloss which is sought in scarlet. So, with their strengths mixed, one is roused or restrained by the other.

135| The sum of the drugs by the pound [….] for fleeces, of bucinum two hundred and of pelagium 111. So is made that outstanding color of amethyst. But the Tyrian is first saturated in pelagium, in an unripe, green vat, then changed over into bucinum. Its highest praise is in the color of clotted blood, blackish to look at and the same shining when looked at against the light. Whence blood is called purple by Homer.

136| I see that the use of purpura has always been at Rome, but in the case of Romulus in the trabea. For the toga praetexta and the broader stripe, it is well agreed that Tullus Hostilius, of the kings, first used them, after the Etruscans were conquered.

137| Cornelius Nepos, who died in the principate of the deified Augustus, says: "In my youth violet purple was in vogue, the pound of which sold for a hundred denarii, and not long after the red of Tarentum. To this succeeded the Tyrian dibapha, that could not be purchased for a thousand denarii to the pound. Publius Lentulus Spinther, curule aedile, was censured for being the first to use it on a praetexta. What man now," he says, "does not make dining-room coverings of that purple?" Spinther was aedile in the 691st year from the founding of the city, in the consulship of Cicero. Dibapha was then the name of what had been dyed twice, as though at splendid expense, in the way in which now nearly all the more convenient purples are dyed.

138| In a garment dyed with conchylium, all else is the same without bucinum, and besides the liquid is tempered with water and, in undivided proportion, with the excrement of human drink. Half the drugs are also added. Thus is produced that praised pallor, the full strength cheated away and so much the more diluted the more the fleeces are starved. The prices of the drug are indeed cheaper in proportion to the fertility of the shores, yet let those who buy such things at an immense price know that nowhere does pelagium exceed fifty sesterces per hundred pounds, and bucinum a hundred.

139| But other beginnings come from the end, and it pleases to play with expense and to double the play by mixing and again to adulterate the very adulterations of nature, as to dye tortoise-shell, to blend silver with gold so that electrum is made, to add bronze to these, as for Corinthian. It is not enough to have taken away from the gem the name of amethyst; again, when it is finished it is made drunk with Tyrian, so that there is from both a disreputable name and at once a double luxury, and when they have finished conchylia they think it better to pass over into Tyrian.

140| Regret must first have discovered this, the craftsman changing what he condemned. From that a method was born, and by monstrous ingenuity a fault was turned into something desired, and a twofold path of luxury was shown, so that one color might be covered by another, and made thus more pleasing and gentler, so it was said; indeed to mix in earthy things too and to dye with Tyrian what had been dyed with coccum, so that hysginum might be made. Coccum of Galatia,

141| a reddish berry, as we shall say among land things, or that around Emerita in Lusitania is in the greatest praise. But, so that the famous pigments may be finished together, with the berry a year old the juice is weak, and the same from the fourth year faded. So neither is it strong when fresh nor in old age. The method by which the beauty of men and of women alike believes itself made most splendid has been abundantly treated. Of the kind of conchae is also the pina.

142| It is born in muddy places, always upright and never without a companion, which they call pinoteres, others pinophylax; this is a small squilla, elsewhere a crab, a follower of the feast. The pina opens, offering its body, deprived of eyes, within to tiny fish. These at once leap in, and when boldness has grown with license, they fill it. The informer, watching for this moment, gives a sign by a light bite. She, by compression, kills whatever she has shut in and gives a share to her partner.

143| Whence I wonder the more that some have thought there is no sense in aquatic creatures. The torpedo knows its own power, not itself being numbed, and hides sunk in mud, seizing those of the fish which, swimming above in security, have been benumbed. (To its liver no tenderness is preferred.) Nor is the cleverness of the frog less, which in the sea is called the fisher. It puts forth the little horns standing out under its eyes when the mud is stirred, drawing the little fish to it as they leap, until they come so near that it leaps upon them.

144| In a similar way the squatina and the rhombus, hidden, move their extended fins in the likeness of little worms, and likewise those called raiae. For the pastinaca commits robbery from concealment, piercing those who pass with the spine, which is its weapon. A proof of its cleverness is that these, the slowest of fish, are found with the mullet, swiftest of all, in their belly.

145| Scolopendrae, like the land ones which they call centipedes, when the hook has been swallowed, vomit up all their inwards until they have cast out the hook, then swallow them back. But sea-foxes in a like danger gulp more, as far as the weak part of the line, where they can easily gnaw through. More cautiously the one called glanis bites the hooks from the rear and does not swallow them, but strips the bait. The aries ranges like a robber, and now hidden in the shadow of larger ships standing in the open water, waits if the pleasure of swimming should invite anyone, now with the head raised out of the water watches the boats of fishermen, and, swimming up hidden, sinks them.

146| For my part I think that sense is present also in those that are neither of animals nor of shrubs, but have a third nature from both, I mean nettles and sponges. Nettles roam at night and change their place. Their nature is of a fleshy leaf, and they feed on flesh. Their force is biting by itching, the same as that of the land nettle. So it draws itself together as much as possible, stiff, and when a little fish swims past spreads its leaf, and embracing devours it.

147| At other times, like something withering and suffering itself to be tossed by the wave in the way of seaweed, it attacks fish that touch it and those that scratch the itch by rubbing on a rock. The same by night seeks scallops and echini [….]. When it feels a hand brought near, it changes color and draws itself together. When touched it gives out a burning, and if there was a little interval, it hides. Its mouth is said to be at the root, and its excrement is given out through a thin pipe at the top.

148| We have received three kinds of sponges: the dense, very hard and rough is called tragos [that is], the dense and softer manos, the fine and close, from which paintbrushes are made, Achillium. All grow on rocks, are fed on shells, fish, mud. It appears that there is understanding in them, because when they have sensed the one tearing them off, they contract and are drawn away with much more difficulty; the same they do when the wave beats.

149| That they live on food is shown plainly by the small shellfish found in them. Around Torone they say that they are fed on these even when torn away, and grow again on the rocks from the roots left behind; the color of blood also clings to them, especially to the African ones, which are produced in the Syrtes. The manoe grow largest, but softest around Lycia, and in deep and windless water softer; in the Hellespont they are rough, and dense around Malea. They rot in sunny places, and therefore the best are in the deeps. In the living the color is the same blackish one as in the soaked.

150| They cling neither by a part nor wholly; for there are certain empty pipes between them, about four or five, through which they are thought to be fed. There are also others, but closed at the top. And it is understood that a certain membrane lies beneath their roots. It is agreed that they live a long time. The worst kind of all is that of those called aplysiae, because they cannot be washed clean; in these the pipes are large and the rest of the density thick.

151| The multitude of dogfish chiefly threatens divers around them with grave danger. The divers themselves say that a kind of cloud also thickens over their heads, like an animal of the flat fishes, pressing them and keeping them from coming back, and for that reason they have very sharp pointed rods attached to lines, because unless pierced through it will not depart, a work, as I judge, of darkness and fright. For a cloud and mist, in whose name they call this evil, no one has found among animals.

152| With the dogfish there is a dreadful fight. They go for the groin and heels and every white part of the bodies. The one safety is to go against them and terrify them first, for it fears man as much as it terrifies him, and so the lot is equal in the deep. When the surface of the water is reached, there the danger is doubtful, reason being taken away to go against it, while he tries to come up, and all safety is in his companions. They pull a rope tied to him from his shoulders; he, fighting, shakes it with the left hand to be a sign of the danger, while the right, having seized the rod, is in the fight.

153| The pull is moderate at other times; when they have come near the keel, unless they have snatched him up suddenly with very swift force, they watch him being devoured. And often divers already being drawn up are carried off out of their hands, unless they have helped the efforts of those pulling by rolling their bodies into a ball. Some stretch out tridents, but the monster has the cleverness to go under the boat and so fight from safety. All the care, then, is spent in watching for this evil. The surest security is to have seen flat fish, because they are never where the harmful beasts are, for which reason the divers call them sacred.

154| It must be admitted that those enclosed in a flinty shell have no sense, as oysters. Many have the same nature as a shrub, such as holothuriae, pulmones, stars. And so nothing is not produced in the sea, that even the summer animals of the taverns, troublesome with their nimble leap or those which hair especially hides, appear and are often drawn out gathered around the bait, which cause is thought to disturb the sleep of fish in the sea at night. Some are born in the fish themselves, in which number the chalcis is counted.

155| Nor do dire poisons cease, as in the hare, which in the Indian sea, pestilential even to the touch, at once produces vomiting and loosening of the stomach; in our sea it is a shapeless lump, only in color like a hare, in India in size and hair, only harder. Nor is it caught alive there. Equally deadly is the animal araneus, harmful with the sting on the spine of its back. But nothing anywhere is more abominable than the spine standing above the tail of the trygon, which our people call pastinaca, five twelfths of a foot in size: fixed in the root, it kills trees; as a weapon it pierces armor, by the force of iron and the evil of poison.

156| We have not learned that whole kinds of fish suffer diseases, as other animals, even wild ones, do. But that individuals are sick is made plain by the leanness of some, when in the same kind others are caught very fat.

157| In what way they generate, the desire and wonder of men does not suffer to be put off. Fish couple by rubbing their bellies with such speed that they deceive the sight, dolphins and the other cete in a like manner and a little longer. At mating time the female fish follows the male, striking his belly with her snout; at spawning the males follow the females in the same way, feeding on their eggs. Nor is coupling in itself enough for generation, unless, when the eggs have been laid, the males, moving among them, sprinkle the vital seed. This does not happen to all the eggs in so great a multitude; otherwise the seas and pools would be filled, since single wombs conceive countless.

158| The eggs of fish grow in the sea, some with the greatest speed, as those of murenae, some a little more slowly. Of the flat fish, those that have no tail [….] and the spined, and tortoises, come upon one another in coupling; polypi with a single tendril attached to the nostrils of the female, saepiae and lolligines with their tongues, joining their arms together and swimming in opposite directions; they give birth also by the mouth. But polypi couple with the head turned to the ground, the rest of the soft ones on their backs like dogs, likewise locustae and squillae; crabs by the mouth.

159| Frogs mount in coupling, the male seizing the female by the armpits with his forefeet, and the haunches with his hind feet. They give birth to very small black bits of flesh, which they call gyrini, remarkable only for their eyes and tail, soon the feet are formed, the tail splitting itself into the hind ones. And it is a marvel that in a half-year of life they dissolve into mud with no one seeing, and again in the spring waters those that were born are born anew, by a likewise hidden law, since this happens every year.

160| Mussels and scallops arise of their own accord in sandy places; those with a tougher shell, such as the murex and purpura, arise from a slimy secretion, as gnats do from souring liquid; the apua from sea foam when it grows warm, once a rainstorm has come in; but those covered with a flinty shell, such as oysters, arise from putrefying mud, or from the foam that gathers around ships standing for some time, and around fixed stakes, and especially around timber. It has recently been discovered in oyster beds that a fluid, productive of offspring, flows out of them like milk. Eels rub themselves against rocks; the scrapings come to life, and they have no other mode of procreation.

161| Different kinds of fish do not mate with one another, except the squatina and the raia; from them is born a fish resembling the raia in its front part, and among the Greeks it takes a name compounded from both.

162| Some creatures are produced at a certain time of year, in water as on land: in spring the scallops, slugs and leeches; and they vanish again in due season. Of fishes, the lupus and the trichias bear twice a year, and all rock fish; mullets three times, and the chalcis; the cyprini six times; scorpaenae twice, and the sargi, in spring and autumn; of the flat fish the squatina alone bears twice, in autumn, at the setting of the Pleiades; most fish bear in three months, April, May and June; the salpae in autumn; the sargi, the torpedo and the squali about the equinox; the soft-bodied creatures in spring; the sepia in every month. Its eggs, clinging together like a bunch of grapes by the glue of its ink, are followed by the male with his breath; otherwise they become barren.

163| Polypi mate in winter and lay their eggs in spring, in coils like a twisted vine-tendril, with such fecundity that, once the polypus is killed, the great number of eggs cannot be contained in the hollow of the head in which they were carried while it was pregnant; they hatch on the fiftieth day, and many of them perish because of their number.

164| Locustae and the others of thinner shell lay their eggs underneath themselves and so brood them. The female polypus sometimes sits on her eggs, and sometimes closes her cave with a lattice of interwoven arms. The sepia lays on earthy ground among reeds, or wherever seaweed has grown up, and hatches on the fifteenth day. Lolligines lay their eggs in the deep, clustered together like those of the sepia. Purpurae, murices and others of the same kind breed in spring. Sea urchins have their eggs at the full moons in winter; and snails are born in the winter season.

165| A torpedo has been found carrying eighty young, and it gives birth within itself, moving the very soft eggs to another part of the womb and hatching them there. So do all those that we have called cartilaginous. Thus it happens that these alone among fishes both conceive eggs and bring forth live young. The silurus, the male alone of all of them, guards the eggs once laid, often even for fifty days, so that they may not be devoured by others. The other females hatch them in three days, if the male has touched them.

166| The acus, or belone, is the only fish that gives birth with its womb splitting open because of the multitude; after the birth the wound closes up, which they report also of blind snakes. The sea mouse, on land, digs out a pit, lays its eggs and covers them over again with earth; on the thirtieth day it digs them up, opens them, and leads its young into the water. The erythini and channae are said to have wombs; the one that the Greeks call trochos is said to mate with itself. The young of all aquatic creatures are without sight in their first beginnings.

167| Concerning the lifespan of fishes we have lately received a memorable example. Pausilypum is a villa of Campania not far from Naples; there, in Caesar's fishponds, Annaeus Seneca writes that a fish put in by Vedius Pollio died after sixty years, two others of the same kind, its contemporaries, being still alive even then. This mention of fishponds reminds me to say a little more on the subject before we depart from aquatic creatures.

168| The first of all to devise oyster preserves was Sergius Orata, at Baiae, in the age of the orator Lucius Crassus, before the Marsic War; and not for the sake of gluttony but of greed, drawing great revenues from this device of his, for he was the man who first devised hanging baths, and so kept selling villas, one after another, spruced up for the market. He was the first to award the best flavor to the Lucrine oysters, since the same kinds of aquatic creatures are better in one place than in another,

169| as the lupus fish in the river Tiber between the two bridges, the rhombus at Ravenna, the muraena in Sicily, the elops at Rhodes, and other kinds likewise, not to carry out a full censor's review of the kitchens. The shores of Britain were not yet serving us when Orata was making the Lucrine famous. Afterward it was thought worthwhile to seek oysters as far off as Brundisium, at the farthest edge of Italy, and, lest there be a quarrel between the two flavors, it was lately contrived to feed up in the Lucrine the hunger caused by the long carriage from Brundisium.

170| In the same age the earlier Licinius Murena devised preserves for the remaining fishes, and the nobility then followed his example, Philippus and Hortensius among them. Lucullus, having even cut through a mountain near Naples, at greater expense than he had spent in building the villa, let in a channel and the seas, for which reason Pompey the Great used to call him Xerxes in a toga. When he had died, fish from that pond were sold for 4,000,000 sesterces.

171| A preserve of murenae for private keeping was devised before others by Gaius Hirrius, who at the triumphal banquets of Caesar the dictator lent six thousand murenae by number, on condition of repayment in kind; for he was unwilling to exchange them for a price or for any other merchandise. His villa, though less than modest, was sold by its fishponds for 4,000,000 sesterces.

172| Then came a love for individual fishes. At Bauli, in the Baian district, the orator Hortensius had a fishpond in which he so loved a murena that he is believed to have wept when it died. In the same villa Antonia, wife of Drusus, put earrings on a murena that she loved, and because of its fame some people longed to see Bauli.

173| Preserves for snails were first set up by Fulvius Lippinus in the Tarquinian territory, a little before the civil war that was fought with Pompey the Great; he kept their kinds distinct, so that there were separately the white ones that are produced in the territory of Reate, separately the Illyrian ones, notable for their size, the African ones, for their fertility, and the Solitan ones, for their excellence.

174| He even devised a way of fattening them with boiled-down must, spelt and other kinds of food, so that fattened snails too might fill out gluttony; and Marcus Varro is our authority that the fame of this art brought them to such a size that the shell of a single one would hold 80 quadrantes.

175| Still more marvelous kinds of fish are reported by Theophrastus. Around the irrigated lands of Babylon, when the rivers go down, some remain in holes that hold water, and from there come out to feed, walking on their little fins with frequent movement of the tail; and when hunted they flee back into their holes and stand in them facing outward; their heads are like the sea frog's, the rest of their parts like gobiones, and they have gills like other fishes.

176| Around Heraclea and Cromna, and in many places in Pontus, there is one kind that pursues the outermost waters of the rivers and makes burrows for itself in the ground and lives in them, even when the shore is dried out as the rivers ebb; so they are dug up, and only the movement of their bodies proves that they are alive.

177| Around the same Heraclea [and on the same] river Lycus, when it goes down, fish are produced from eggs left in the mud, which in seeking their food flutter with little gills, so that they do not need water; for this reason eels too live a long time when taken out of the water; and their eggs ripen on dry land, like those of tortoises. In the same region of Pontus fish are caught in the ice, especially gobiones, which do not show any movement of life except under the heat of the cooking pans.

178| And in these cases, however marvelous, there is still some reason. The same author reports that in Paphlagonia land fish, very pleasant to eat, are dug out of deep pits in places where no water stands, and he himself wonders that they are produced without mating; he thinks there is some force of moisture in those places, as there is in wells, as if fish were found in any wells. Whatever this may be, it certainly makes the life of moles, an underground animal, less surprising, unless perhaps these fish have the nature of earthworms.

179| But the flooding of the Nile lends credibility to all these, with a marvel that surpasses all of them. For when it uncovers the ground, little mice are found, the work of the generating water and earth only begun, already living in part of their body while the last part of their form is still earth.

180| Nor is it right to keep silent about the anthias fish, the stories about which I notice that many have believed. We have said that the Chelidonian islands lie off the promontory of Taurus, in the rocky sea of Asia; this fish is plentiful there and is quickly caught in one particular way. In a small boat and in clothes of the same color, and at the same hour for several days running, the fisherman sails out a fixed distance and throws out bait. But if anything is changed, the prey suspects a trick and guards against what it has feared. When this has been done often, at last one anthias, drawn on by habit, goes for the bait.

181| This one is marked with careful attention as the source of hope and the one who will win the catch over; nor is this difficult, since for several days it alone dares to approach. At last it finds some others too, and gradually, with more company, it finally brings shoals beyond counting, the oldest of them already accustomed to recognize the fisherman and to snatch food from his hand. Then the fisherman casts his hook in the bait a little beyond his fingers and seizes them one at a time rather than catches them, snatching them out of the shadow of the boat with a short pull so that the others do not notice, while another man inside receives the one snatched on patchwork cloths, so that no flapping or noise may drive the rest away.

182| It is useful to know the one that won them over for this purpose, so that it is not caught, since the shoal would flee for the future. They say that a partner at odds with another, out of malice, laid a trap for the leader, who was well known, and caught it; and Mucianus adds that it was recognized in the market by the partner who had been wronged, that a formula for damages was issued, and that he was condemned, with the damages assessed. These same anthiae, when they see one held on the hook, are said to cut the line with the spines they have on their backs, serrated like a saw, the one that is held stretching it out so that it can be cut. Among the sargi, though, the one that is held rubs the line against the rocks himself.

183| Besides these, I see authors famous for their wisdom marveling at the star in the sea. It has that shape, with very little flesh inside and a harder hide outside. They report that it has such a fiery heat that it burns everything it touches in the sea and digests all food at once. By what experiments this was learned I could not easily say, and I would think far more worth recording something that there is occasion to test every day.

184| Of the class of shellfish are the dactyli, named from their likeness to human nails. It is their nature to shine brightly in the dark when other light is taken away, and the more moisture they hold, the more they glow in the mouths of those who chew them, glow in their hands, and even on the floor and clothing when drops fall, so that it is plain beyond doubt that this property belongs to the juice, which we would marvel at even in the body.

185| There are also marvels of enmity and friendship. The mullet and the lupus burn with mutual hatred, and the conger and the murena, which gnaw off each other's tails. The locusta is so afraid of the polypus that if it sees one anywhere near, it dies; the conger in turn frightens the locusta; and again congers tear the polypus to pieces. Nigidius is our authority that the lupus gnaws off the tail of the mullet, and that these same fish are at peace in certain months; and that all fish whose tails are cut off in this way live.

186| But on the contrary there are examples of friendship, besides those whose partnership we have mentioned: the whale and the musculus. Since the whale's eyes are covered by the very heavy weight of its brows, the musculus swims in front, shows it the shallows dangerous to its bulk, and serves it in place of eyes. Next the natures of the birds will be described.

Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/pliny/020-natural-history-book-ix#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.

← All of Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder: Letters, Panegyricus & Natural History