Deipnosophistae
Athenaeus of Naucratis
Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists or Banquet Of The Learned Of Athenaeus. Yonge, Charles Duke, translator. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854.
There is a fish, too, called the chalcis; and others which resemble it, namely, the thrissa, the trichis, and the eritimus. Icesius says, the fish called the chalcis, ad the sea-goat, and the needle-fish, and the thrissa, are like chaff destitute alike of fat and of juice. And Epicharmus, in his Hebe's Wedding, says—
But Dorion calls it the chalcidice. And Numenius says,—
- The chalcides, the sea-pig too,
- The sea-hawk, and the fat sea-dog.
- But you would thus harpoon, in the same way,
- That chalcis and the little tiny sprat.
v.2.p.518
But the χαλκεὺς is different from the χαλκὶς; and the χαλκεὺς is mentioned by Heraclides, in his Cookery Book; and by Euthydemus, in his book on Cured Fish, who says that they are bred in the country of the Cyzicenes, being a round and circular fish.But the thrissa is mentioned by Aristotle in his book on Animals and Fishes, in these words—
The following are stationary fish: the thrissa, the encrasicholus, the membras anchovy, the coracinus, the erythrinus, and the trichis.And Eupolis mentions the trichis in his Flatterers;—
And Aristophanes, in his Knights, says—
- He was a stingy man, who once in his life
- Before the war did buy some trichides;
- But in the Samian war, a ha'p'orth of meat.
But Dorion, in his treatise on Fishes, speaks also of the river Thrissa; and calls the trichis trichias. Nicochares, in his Lemnian Women, says—
- If trichides were to be a penny a hundred.
(But there was a kind of tunny which they used to call premnas. Plato, in his Europa, has these lines—
- The trichias, and the premas tunny too,
- Placed in enormous quantities for supper.
And Aristotle, in the fifth book of his Parts of Animals, calls it a trichias also, but in the book which is entitled ζωϊκὸν, he calls it trichis. And it is said that this fish is delighted with dancing and singing, and that when it hears music it leaps up out of the sea.
- He once, when fishing, saw one of such size
- A man could scarcely carry it, in a shoal
- Of premnades, and then he let it go,
- Because it was a boax.)
Dorion also mentions the eritimi, saying, that they are much the same as the chalcides, and that they are very nice in forced meat. And Epænetus, in his book upon Fishes, says—
The sea-weasel; the smaris, which some call the dog'sbed; the chalcides, which they also call sardini; the eritimi, the sea-hawk, and the sea-swallow.And Aristotle, in the fifth book of his Parts of Animals, calls them sardines. And Callimachus, in his Names used by different Nations, writes thus—
The encrasicholus, the eritimus, are names used by the Chalcedonians; the trichidia, the chalcis, the ictar, theAnd in another part, giving a list of the names of fishes, he says—v.2.p.519atherina.
The ozæna, the osmylnion, are names used by the Thurians; the iopes, the eritimi, are names used by the Athenians.And Nicander mentions the iopes in his Bœotian,—
And Aristophanes, in his Ships of Burden, says—
- But as when round a shoal of newly born
- lopes, phagri, or fierce scopes roam,
- Or the large orphus.
For they used to steep in pickle all the fish which were proper to be dressed on the coals. And they called pickle, Thasian brine; as also the same poet says in his Wasps,—
- O wretched fish, the first of trichides
- To be immersed in pickle.
- For before that it twice drank in the brine.