almost from time immemorial, occupied a high place in the estimation of
every civilized country; yet the Greeks, in their earlier ages, made
very little use of fish as an article of diet. In the eyes of the heroes
of Homer it had little favour; for Menelaus complained that "hunger
pressed their digestive organs," and they had been obliged to live upon
fish. Subsequently, however, fish became one of the principal articles
of diet amongst the Hellenes; and both Aristophanes and Athenaeus allude
to it, and even satirize their countrymen for their excessive partiality
to the turbot and mullet.
So infatuated were many of the Greek gastronomes with the love
of fish, that some of them would have preferred death from
indigestion to the relinquishment of the precious dainties with
which a few of the species supplied them. Philoxenes of Cythera
was one of these. On being informed by his physician that he was
going to die of indigestion, on account of the quantity he was
consuming of a delicious fish, "Be it so," he calmly observed;
"but before I die, let me finish the remainder."