But Diphilus the Siphnian says, “The salt pickles which are made of fish, whether caught in the sea, or in the lake, or in the river, are not very nourishing, nor very juicy; but are inflammatory, and act strongly on the bowels, and are provocative of desire. But the best of them are those Which are made of animals devoid of fat, such as cybia, and horæa, and other kinds like them. And of fat fish, the best are the different kinds of tunny, and the young of the tunny; for the old ones are larger and harsher to the taste; and above all, the Byzantine tunnies are so. But the tunny, says he, is the same as the larger pelamys, the small kind of which is the same as the cybium, to which species the horæum also belongs. But the sarda is of very nearly the same size as the colias. And the scombrus is a light fish, and one which the stomach easily gets rid of; but the colias is a glutinous fish, very like a squill, and apt to give twinges, and has an inferior juice, but nevertheless is nutritious. And the best are those which are called the Amyclæan, and the Spanish, which is also called the Saxitan; for they are lighter and sweeter.” But Strabo, in the third book of his work on Geography, says that near the Islands of Hercules,1 and off the city of Carthagena, is a city named Sexitania, from which the salt-fish above-mentioned derive their name; and there is another city called Scombroaria, so called from the scombri which are caught in its neighbourhood, and of them the best sauce is made. But there are also fish which are called melandryæ, [p. 200] which are mentioned by Epicharmus also, in his Ulysses the Deserter, in this way—
Then there was salt and pickled fish to eat,But the melandrys is the largest description of tunny, as Pamphilus explains in his treatise on Names; and that when preserved is very rich and oily.
Something not quite unlike melandryæ.
