Note 659 — Chapter XVIII · THE NINE FISH MOST HIGHLY PRIZED

The toga prætexta was worn by the higher magistrates, certain priests, and free-born children. Isidorus, in Gloss., “Anguilla est qua coercentur in scholis pueri,” and Pliny, N. H., IX., 39, “eoque verberari solitos tradit Verrius prætextatos.” Under the old law prætextati were unamerceable; non in ære, sed in cute solvebant! Our Saxon forbears adopted the whip of eels; see Fosbroke, op. cit., p. 303. Rabelais (II. 30) continues the tradition—“Whereupon his master gave him such a sound thrashing with an eel-skin, that his own would have been worth nought for bagpipes.”