CHAP. 9.—PLACES WHERE BITTER FISH ARE FOUND, SALT, OR SWEET.
Nor is it by any means the least surprising fact, that off the
island of Pele,[1] the town of Clazomenæ,[2] the rock[3] [of
Scylla] in Sicily, and in the vicinity of Leptis in Africa,[4]
Eubœa, and Dyrrhachium,[5] the fish are bitter. In the neighbourhood
of Cephallenia, Ampelos, Paros, and the rocks of
Delos, the fish are so salt by nature that they might easily be
taken to have been pickled in brine. In the harbour, again,
of the last-mentioned island, the fish are sweet: differences,
all of them, resulting, no doubt, from the diversity[6] of their
food.
Apion says that the largest among the fishes is the seapig,[7]
known to the Lacedæmonians as the "orthagoriscos;"
he states also that it grunts[8] like a hog when taken. These
accidental varieties in the natural flavour of fish—a thing that
is still more surprising—may, in some cases, be owing to the
nature of the locality; an apposite illustration of which is, the
well-known fact that, at Beneventum[9] in Italy, salted provisions
of all kinds require[10] to be salted over again.
1. See B. v. c. 38.
2. See B. v. c. 31, and B. xxxi. c. 43.
3. See B. iii. c. 14.
4. See B. v. cc. 3, 4.
5. See B. iii. cc. 16, 26.
6. Ajasson thinks that this may possibly be true to some small extent.
7. Identical with the fish called "orbis," already mentioned in c. 5 of
this Book. Ajasson remarks that though these fish have been known to
weigh as much as three hundred pounds, there are many others which
grow to a larger size, the sturgeon, and the silurus, for instance.
8. Ajasson thinks that this notion may possibly have been derived from
the name, which not improbably was given to it from the spongy and
oleaginous nature of the flesh.
9. See B. iii. c. 16.
10. Owing, perhaps, to the moisture of the atmosphere.