Note 135 — Chapter VII · FISHES VALUED FOR THE TABLE.

Seneca has two passages on this subject, which strongly bespeak the barbarous tastes of the Romans. He says: “A mullet even, if just caught, is thought little of, unless it is allowed to die in the hand of your guest. They are carried about enclosed in globes of glass, and their color is watched as they die—ever changing by the struggles of death into various shades and hues.” And again: “There is nothing, you say, more beautiful than the colors of the dying mullet; as it struggles and breathes forth its life, it is first purple, and then a paleness gradually comes over it; and then, placed as it is between life and death, an uncertain hue comes over it.”