[146]Tavernier speaks of a remarkable pearl, that was found at Catifa, in Arabia (the fishery alluded to by Pliny), and which he bought for the sum of $500,000, of our money. It is pear-shaped, the elenchus of the ancients, regular, and without blemish. The diameter is .63 of an inch, at the largest part, and the length from two to three inches. It is now in the possession of the Shah of Persia.
[147]The Roman consuls were clothed with the toga prætexta, the color of which was Syrian purple. All children of free birth wore the prætexta, edged with purple, and the purple laticlave or broad hem of the senator’s toga distinguished him from the eques, who wore a toga with an angusticlave, or narrow hem.
[148]“Xerxen togatum,” or “the Roman Xerxes,” in allusion to Xerxes cutting a canal through the Isthmus, which connected the Peninsula of Mount Athos with Chalcidice.
[149]An absurd tradition, invented to palliate the disgrace of his defeat.
[150]If there was any foundation at all for the story, there can be little doubt that a trick was played for the purpose of imposing upon Caligula’s superstitious credulity, and that the rowers as well as the diving sailors were in the secret.
[152]Of this work, begun by Ovid during his banishment in Pontus, and probably never completed, only a fragment of one hundred and thirty-two lines has come down to us.
[153]Martial, B. iv. Ep. 30, speaks of this being the case at the fish-ponds of Baiæ, where the Emperor’s fish were in the habit of making their appearance when called by name.
[154]“Inaures.” He probably means ornaments suspended from the gills, a thing which, in the case of eels, might be done.
[155]The seat of the worship of the half-fish goddess, Addirga, Atergatis, Astarte, or Derceto.
[156]Theophrastus reckons coral among the precious stones, and Pliny would seem to be at a loss whether to consider it as an animal or a vegetable.
[157]From the Greek κεῖρειται, “cut short.”
[158]It is at the spawning season that this milky liquid is found in the oyster; a period at which the meat of the fish is considered unwholesome as food. We have a saying that the oyster should never be eaten in the months without an r; that the same, too, was the opinion in the middle ages is proved by the Leonine line: