But this fish was called the tunny (θύννος) from rushing (ἀπὸ τοῦ θύειν), and moving rapidly. For it s an impetuous fish, from, at a particular season, having a gadfly in its [p. 474] head; by which Aristotle says that it is driven about, writing thus—“But the tunny fish and the sword fish are driven to frenzy about the time of the rising of the dogstar; for both of them at that season have under their fins something like a small worm, which is called oestrus, resembling a scorpion, and in size something similar to a spider, and this makes them leap about in leaps as. large as those of the dolphin.” And Theodoridas says,—
The tunnies bend their furious course to Gades.But Polybius of Megalopolis, in the thirty-fourth book of his History, speaking of the Lusitanian district in Iberia, says, “That in the sea, in these parts, acorn-bearing oaks grow, on the fruit of which the tunnies feed, and grow fat; so that a person who called the tunny the pig of the sea would not err, for the tunnies, like the pigs, grow to a great size on these acorns.”
