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The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Note 2557 — BOOK IX. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF FISHES.

John Bostock translation

“Locusta;” literally, the “locust” of the sea. By this name is meant, Cuvier says, the “langouste” of the French (our cray-fish), which has no large forcipes, and has a thorax covered with spines; the Palinurus quadricornis of the naturalists. This is clearly the κάραβος of Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 23; for we generally find it thus translated by Pliny, when he borrows anything from that philosopher. We know that the body of this animal was spiny, from the fact that Tiberius, as we learn from Suetonius, cruelly caused the face of a fisherman who had offended him, to be rubbed with a locusta.

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