LIBER IX · CAPUT 18
THAT THE SAME KINDS ARE NOT EVERYWHERE EQUALLY ESTEEMED
Latine · Mayhoff 1906
mullum LXXX librarum in mari Rubro captum Licinius Mucianus prodidit, quanti mercatura eum luxuria suburbanis litoribus inventum?
Est et haec natura, ut alii alibi pisces principatum optineant, coracinus in Aegypto, zaeus, idem faber appellatus, Gadibus, circa Ebusum salpa, obscenus alibi et qui nusquam percoqui possit nisi ferula verberatus; in Aquitania salmo fluviatilis marinis omnibus praefertur.
Piscium alii branchias multiplices habent, alii simplices, alii duplices. his aquam emittunt acceptam ore. senectutis indicium squamarum duritia, quae non sunt omnibus similes. duo lacus Italiae in radicibus Alpium Larius et Verbannus appellantur, in quibus pisces omnibus annis vergiliarum ortu existunt squamis conspicui crebris atque praeacutis, clavorum caligarium effigie, nec amplius quam circa eum mensem visuntur.
English · Bostock & Riley 1855–57
Licinius Mucianus relates, that in the Red Sea there was caught a mullet eighty pounds in weight. What a price would have been paid for it by our epicures, if it had only been found off the shores in the vicinity of our city!
There is this also in the nature of fish, that some are more highly esteemed in one place, and some in another; such, for instance, as the coracinus in Egypt, the zeus, also called the faber, at Gades, the salpa, in the vicinity of Ebusus, which is considered elsewhere an unclean fish, and can nowhere be thoroughly cooked, wherever found, without being first beaten with a stick: in Aquitania, again, the river salmon is preferred to all the fish that swim in the sea.
Some fishes have numerous gills, others again single ones, others double; it is by means of these that they discharge the water that has entered the mouth. A sign of old age is the hardness of the scales, which are not alike in all. There are two lakes of Italy at the foot of the Alps, called Larius and Verbanus, in which there are to be seen every year, at the rising of the Vergiliæ, fish remarkable for the number of their scales, and the exceeding sharpness of them, strongly resembling hob-nails in appearance; these fish, however, are only to be seen during that month, and no longer.