Note 1659 — BOOK IV.

Sumen was "the sow's udder, killed the day after farrowing." Cf. ad Juv., xi., 138, 81. Pers., i., 53.

Altilis is put for any thing fattened up—oxen, hares, geese, ducks, hens, or even fish. Cf. Hor., i., Ep. vii., 35, "Satur altilium." Juv., v., 168, "Minor altilis." Athen., ix., c. 32. Woodcocks, snipes, thrushes, and even dormice, are mentioned among their fatlings.

Catillo (either from catullus or catillus, diminutive of catinus, "a dish") is applied to "a dog that runs about licking the dishes." It is then used as a term of contempt for "those who came late to the sacrifices of Hercules, and had nothing left them but the dishes to lick." It is here used for "the pike that battens on the rich products of the Roman cloacæ." (Macrob., Sat. ii., 12.) The Roman epicures distinguished between three different kinds of the Tiber pike (lupus Tiberinus). The worst were those caught quite out at sea; the second best, those caught at Ostia at the river's mouth; the finest of all were those taken in the neighborhood of the embouchures of the sewers, either between the Pons Senatorius and Pons Sublicius, where the cloaca maxima empties itself, or between the Pons Sublicius and Fabricius. Hor., ii., Sat. ii, 31, "Lupus hic Tiberinus an alto captus hiet, pontesne inter jactatus an amnis Ostia sub Tusci." Juv., v., 104, "Tiberinus, et ipse vernula riparum pinguis torrente cloacâ."