Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
1 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. vi. c. 16.
2 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 25.
3 This fish does not seem to have been exactly identified till recently but was generally supposed to have been of the tunny genus. Appian says, that it israther smaller than the tunny. Rondelet, B. viii., speaks of it as being, in his time, known by the name of "byza." Cuvier has the following remark. "The 'amia' of the ancients, as Rondelet was well aware, was the same fish, to which, incorrectly, upon nearly all the coasts of the Mediterranean, the name of 'pelamis' has been transferred. It is, in fact, the same as the 'limosa' of Salvianus, the 'pelamis' of Belon, the ' thynnus primus' of Aldrovandus, and the 'scomber sarda' of Bloch. The proof of all these being synonymous, is the fact, that the ' scomber sarda' is the only species of the tunny genus in the Mediterranean, which has strong, sharp, cutting teeth, and is capable of attacking large fish, which Aristotle relates respecting the amia, Hist. Anim. B. ix. c. 37. The same author too, was well aware of the length of its gall-bladder, which is greater than in most other fishes."
4 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 16.
5 Generally supposed, as Cuvier says, to have been the same as the mackerel, or Scomber scombrus of Linnæus, and with very fair reason. From the frequent remarks made on the subject by the Roman poets, we find that it was a very common fish at Rome, of small size, and was in little repute. It was wrapped in paper when exposed for sale, and bad poets were threatened with the mackerel, as they are at the present day with the grocer or butterman; or, as in the time of the Spectator, with the trunk-maker. Thus Persius says, Sat. i, 1. 43. "and to leave writings worthy to be preserved in cedar, and verses that dread neither mackerel nor frankincense." Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. ix. c. 2, enumerates this fish among those that are gregarious, and places it in company with the tunny and the pelamis, but states that it is inferior in strength, B. viii. c. 2. Cuvier says, that the mackerel still has names in different parts that are derived from the word "scomber," they being called "sgombri" at Con- stantinople, scombri at Venice, and scurmu, scrumiu, and scumbirro in Sicily.
6 Cetarias. These "cetariæ," or "cetaria," Papias says, were pieces of standing salt water, in the vicinity of the sea-shore, in which tunnies and other large fish were kept, and adjoining to which were the salting-houses. In the middle ages these preserves were called "tunnariæ," or "tunneries."
7 As in the Euxine. Tunnies were caught on the Spanish coasts, as we learn from Athenveus, who, as quoted above, mentions the fisheries off Gades, for the orcynus, or large tunny. See N. 37, p. 385.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.
- Cross-references to this page
(4):
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), AROA´NIUS
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), CLEITOR
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), CYRENA´ICA
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), RAVENNA
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (7):