Note 380 — Chapter X

Nonnius, always the alert defender of his favourite fish, ingeniously suggests that the scarus of Pythagoras was not our famous scarus, because as this fish, even during the Augustan period, was extremely rare in Italian waters, there seems little necessity for its being banned by the “Hyperborean Apollo of the Crotoniates” in b.c. 540-510. Numa, apparently influenced by Pythagorean precepts, forbade (according to Cassius Hemina, Pliny, XXXII. 10) all scaleless fish being offered to the gods. Festus, p. 253, a. 20, however, states that in such offerings it was allowable to present all fish with scales, except the Scarus, which was sacrificiable, and most acceptable to the god of the peasants, Hercules, whose “swinish gluttony | Crams and blasphemes his feeder.” For squaram, Müller suggests scarum, while Lindsay prints squatum, the skate.