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Flumen et piscis
Est domus in terris, clara quae voce resultat.
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River and Fish
Peck:
A house there is which rings throughout the land with song,
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Ohl:
There is a home in the earth which echoes with purling clear. The home itself resounds, but the silent guest makes no sound.a Yet both run on together, guest and home. |
a Well, maybe some fish . . . but it took modern science to discover that herring, at least, communicate by breaking wind: aren't you glad you now know that? Anywhere, the discovery was reported in 2003: read all about it, courtesy of the National Geographic.
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b Varro says — see the passage — nothing about special troupes of slaves.
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Page updated: 17 Oct 07
Flumen et piscis: Perhaps nowhere in all literature is there a more loving description of a beautiful stream and its darting inhabitants than in the Mosella of Ausonius, even though he does, rather pedantically, think it necessary to catalog and describe each kind in turn (l. 85 ff.). Fish constituted a large part of the diet of those people bordering the Mediterranean anciently, as it does today, and a river to which the terms piscosus or pisculentus could (p45)be justly applied was highly esteemed. So great was the appetite for fine fish among the Romans that wealthy epicures like Lucullus did not hesitate to funnel mountains that the seawater might be admitted into the piscinae where their salt-water fish were kept alive and well-fed by a troupe of slaves especially detailed for this purpose (Varro R. R. III.17.9).b On the fancy prices paid for certain fish see Plin. N. H. IX.67‑68; the introductory lines of the fourth satire of Juvenal attack the folly of the rich Crispinus, who paid (p46)such an enormous price for a single fish (cf. l. 15). The satire concludes with the famous account of the council of state called by Domitian to decide the weighty question of how a prize turbot should be cooked! (ll. 37‑149).
1 voce resultat: cf. Plin. Pan. 73: resultia vocibus tecta. Verbs even more frequently used than resultare (in this sense) were resonare (as in l. 2) and obstrepere; cf. Hor. Epod. II.27:
fontesque lymphis obstrepunt manantibus,
somnos quod invitet leves.
2 tacitus . . . hospes: cf. Hor. Carm. IV.3.19:
O mutis quoque piscibus
donatura cycni, si libeat, sonum.
Yet Plin. H. N. IX.70 speaks of the piscis vocalis of the river Clitorius in Arcadia, though he is personally unwilling to vouch for the truth of the account. Paus. VIII.21.2 tells the same story, adding that although he often went there to listen, he never succeeded in hearing the fish perform! — Here, as so often in Latin, the word hospes may be rendered equally as well by "host". We cannot state with certainty whether Symphosius is picturing the river as a home in which the fish are guests, or as a home for which they act as hosts.