There is also the tench. “The tench is very juicy,” as Icesius says, “exceedingly attractive to the palate, very easily secreted, not very nutritious, nor is the juice which they give very wholesome. But, in delicacy of flavour, the white kind is superior to the black. But the flesh of the green tench is more dry, and devoid of fat; and they give a much smaller quantity of juice, and what they do give is thinner. Still they are more nutritious, on account of their size.” Diodes says that those which are found in rocky situations are very tender. But Numenius, in his treatise on Fishing, calls them, not κώβιοι, but κῶθοι.
A char or tench (κῶθος) of mighty size and bold.And Sophron, in his Countryman, speaks of “The cothons, who bathe in mud;” and perhaps it was from the name of this fish that he called the son of his Tunny-catcher, in the play, Cothonias. But it is the Sicilians who call the tench κώθων, as Nicander the Colophonian tells us, in his book on [p. 486] Dialects; and Apollodorus confirms the statement, in his treatise on the Modest and Temperate Man. But Epicharmus, in his Hebe's Marriage, names the tench, calling it κώβιος:—
The turtle with their sting behind, and then the tender tench.And Antiphanes, in his Timon, praising the tench, tells us in what places they are to be found in the greatest perfection, in these lines:—
I come, but I have been to great expenseMenander, in his Ephesians, says—
In buying viands for this marriage feast.
I've bought a pennyworth of frankincense
To offer to the gods and all the goddesses,
And to the heroes I will offer cakes.
But when I bid that rascally house-breaking
Seller of fish to add a dainty dish,
“I'll throw you in,” says he, "the borough itself,
For they are all Phalericans." The rest
I do believe were selling our Otrynicans.1
A. There was a fishmonger not long ago,And Dorion mentions river tench also, in his book on Fishes.
Who asked four whole drachmas for his tench.
B. A mighty price indeed.
