Note 742 — Chapter XXII · WESTERN COLONIES OF GREECE — IN EPIRUS, ITALY, SICILY, AND GAUL.

Juvenal, Sat. vi, 297. “Atque coronatum et petulans madidumque Tarentum:” compare Plato, Legg. i, p. 637; and Horat. Satir. ii, 4, 34. Aristot. Polit. iv, 4, 1. οἱ ἁλιεῖς ἐν Τάραντι καὶ Βυζαντίῳ. “Tarentina ostrea,” Varro, Fragm. p. 301, ed. Bipont.

To illustrate this remark of Aristotle on the fishermen of Tarentum, as the predominant class in the democracy, I transcribe a passage from Mr. Keppel Craven’s Tour in the Southern Provinces of Naples, ch. x, p. 182. “Swinburne gives a list of ninety-three different sorts of shell-fish which are found in the gulf of Taranto; but more especially in the Mare Piccolo. Among these, in ancient times, the murex and purpura ranked foremost in value; in our degenerate days, the mussel and oyster seem to have usurped a preëminence as acknowledged but less dignified; but there are numerous other tribes held in proportionate estimation for their exquisite flavor, and as greedily sought for during their respective seasons. The appetite for shell-fish of all sorts, which seems peculiar to the natives of these regions, is such as to appear exaggerated to a foreigner, accustomed to consider only a few of them as eatable. This taste exists at Taranto, if possible, in a stronger degree than in any other part of the kingdom, and accounts for the comparatively large revenue which government draws from this particular branch of commerce. The Mare Piccolo is divided into several portions, which are let to different societies, who thereby become the only privileged fishermen; the lower classes are almost all employed by these corporations, as every revolving season of the year affords occupation for them, so that Nature herself seems to have afforded the exclusive trade most suited to the inhabitants of Taranto. Both seas abound with varieties of testacea, but the inner gulf (the Mare Piccolo) is esteemed most favorable to their growth and flavor; the sandy bed is literally blackened by the mussels that cover it; the boats that glide over its surface are laden with them; they emboss the rocks that border the strand, and appear equally abundant on the shore, piled up in heaps.” Mr. Craven goes on to illustrate still farther the wonderful abundance of this fishery; but that which has been already transcribed, while it illustrates the above-noticed remark of Aristotle, will at the same time help to explain the prosperity and physical abundance of the ancient Tarentum.

For an elaborate account of the state of cultivation, especially of the olive, near the degenerate modern Taranto, see the Travels of M. De Salis Marschlins in the Kingdom of Naples (translated by Aufrere, London, 1795), sect. 5, pp. 82-107, 163-178.