Note 525 — Chapter XV · FISH IN SACRIFICES—PICKLED FISH—VIVARIA OF OYSTERS, ETC.—ARCHIMEDES

À propos of the fish-trade of Olbia, Koehler (in the Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences de St. Petersburg, VIme série, tome 1, p. 347, St. Petersburg, 1832, as quoted by E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks, Cambridge, 1913, p. 440) concludes that preserved fish of every quality, from jars of precious pickle, corresponding to our caviare or anchovy, to dried lumps answering to our stock-fish were all sent to Greece, and later to Rome, from the mouths of Dnêpr and the sea of Azov. As regards some of the small copper coins of Olbia, Mr. G. F. Hill, A Handbook of Greek and Roman Coins (London, 1899), p. 3, writes: “If these are coins, they differ from the ordinary Greek coin only in the fact that, instead of putting a fish type on a flan of ordinary shape, the whole coin was made in the shape of a fish. Another explanation is suggested by the fact that a pig of metal was sometimes called δελφίς. These fish-shaped pieces may be the degenerate representatives of similar-shaped pigs of bronze.” He refers to Ardaillon, Les Mines du Laurin, p. 111, who compares the French saumon with the meaning of “a pig of metal.”