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Fish and fisheries in ancient times

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

The importance of fishing in the life and the industries of the Mediterranean people

Fishing has always been very important in the alimentation of all the people living on the Mediterranean coast. It formed the staple of their life and it is not admissible that anyone could renounce to use such an economical food. Also the presence of marine life in every form of decorative art prove as it was a daily presence in our ancestor existence. Already in the XIII cent B.C. long tentacled octopuses winded themselves around Mycenaean vases and in the Santorino fresco the fisherman-god came back the two big bundle of fishes that he certainly had not fished for sheer amusement.
However as strange as it seems to be, the use of them is never present in the most ancient literature of those time. Lets have a look to the life in Greece we read in the text written before the VI cent B.C. and what we find in Homerus poems. In this one we see his heroes and their meals; plentiful meals but unvarying, base only on ig bread loaves, red wine and roast beef, Not a salad leaf or a fruit and this is incredible. If they really didn’t eat anything else the Trojan war would never have lasted 10 years as everybody would soon have died of scurvy. There is however no doubt that the royal courts alimentation was based on this kind of meals and this is also confirmed by what we see in the ruins of those time kings’ palaces where in the “megaron”, the royal hall where the king’s council was daily gathered and where they also prepared their meals. At its centre there was a large and round hearth had been clearly built to create on it a gigantic barbecue and not surely to fry a sole. Evidently heavy quarts of beef and heavy muttons (just for a change) roasted on the hearth’s embers were the only food considered apt to be presented to heroes and kings.
In the V cent. B.C. fish at last appeared on the rich table of Greece banquets and very soon it became a folly: we have the description of this in those times comedies. Then in the IV century B.C. we find Archaestratus of Gela, a Sicilian who wrote in heroic hexameters a cookbook which many people considered a worthy literary opus. It is - as one can understand –something in the middle among a poem, a cookbook, and a Michelin guide book on where have a good fish meal. Here the gastronome poet told where to find the best specimens of any kind of fishes and shellfishes and how to cook them. As a contemporary poet, Dafnus of Ephesus, wrote of Archaestratus, “Archaestratus who went around all the world to satisfy his stomach”, but if we take a Mediterranean map and mark on it all the places mentioned by Archaestratus we see that the poet could have sailed on all the seas that he and Daphnus knew, but that at their time this world was yet a very restricted one. It began with the Aeolian islands, and going on toward east it arrived only to the Eusinus Pontus and to the salted sturgeon that was brought and sold on Bysance markets. A circumscribed world which make clear to us that outside this area Greeks did not fish very much. It easy to understand why: at these times the Phoenicians and their industries were very far away and the Romans, at this times a people of peasants did not have anything to do with the sea and its fishes. It was only after the growth of its military and political influence that Rome became a great power and, extending its borders entered in contact with the Greek and the Hellenistic world and, as consequence, with fish. At this point things changed and we see that at the end of the III cent B.C. or in te II cent. B.C. Aennius, the Roman poet, translated in Latin Archaestratus’ poem and this proof that also for Roman fish was now considered a choice food.
At those time fish supplies were based on fishing which, also if in a limited quantity, had been practiced along the coast, but the new requests of the Roman market accrued them: seamen fished with any kind of contraptions they could find; with lines, hoop-nets, nets and tuna-fishes “tonnare”. However the sea presents one very serious difficulty and one could not fish always. Bad weather could prevent it, and in winter time this could happen many times. Moreover fishing is not as going to the market and buying the desired kind of fish: one has to buy what he finds. The rich Romans refused to accept such limitations, and now with the increase of their riches and their tables luxury they wanted to be always sure of their menus. Then fishponds were invented and done.

Though now let have a look to the technical part of the Roman fishponds. We know them and we know how they were made. We find all those data in Columella one of the writer on agricultural history who, more than any other studied them. Columella begin by censuring the frenzy to have one, admitting that it could be done only if the seaside estate on which it had been made was barren and sterile. Then he went on describing what kind of fishpond was adapted to a certain kind of coast. The ones made on muddy bottoms, the ones on sandy ones and the rocky ones. In the first one flat fishes as soles, brillsm and many kind of bivalves as oysters, clams and cockles. In the others which stood on sandy bottoms you could also breed soles and brills, but they were the best for fishes from the depth like gilt-heads, and sea breams. Then in the rocky ones which were the best of alls and there one could have fishes that live in holes of the rocks like morays.
Then Columella goes on listing the rules necessary to maintain in good order the fish ponds. Wherever they had been built what was absolutely necessary to them was the change of its water which staying there had lost oxygen. After it, it was wise to create places where in the hot hour of the day the fishes could find a shelter from the sun (Aestivatio); then it was a good practice to infuse in the basins fresh water (Aquatio) as the mixing of the two kind of water improved the quality of the fishes.
Now let us have a look to the fish ponds with a muddy bottom. These basins usually had a depth of 60 cm at they were built on the coast but pushed inward the sea. In them water was changed when the tide covered them, but it was necessary that in this moment the fishes didn’t get out, thus all around them nets were set tied to a sequel of poles infixed on the basin’s edge. Besides to avoid that the gales could destroy them or fill them with seaweed piers were built with opening formed as meatus, in such a way that they could let water filter but block the waves.
For the other fishponds which for the kind of fishes kept in them needed more depth and which as they didn’t go in the sea couldn’t be submerged by the tides, the change of water was made through canals who put in them new water from the sea and chased the old one. Columella advised to have two canals, one the entering on one side, brought the new water, through the other the old and spent one got out. Really to have one or two canals must not have been very important as in the splendid Sperlonga’s canal there was only one.
Of course the canals for changing the fishponds water were set according to the positions of the basin with regard to the coast. When the level of the coast on which the fish pond had been built was higher than the sea (see the Sabaudia’s case) the canals arrived. directly on the bottom and this was also the best for the fishpond. Instead when the basin had been dug in the ground the canals arrived at its top.
In both the cases the mouths of the canals were protected by diaphragms made by flat bronze pieces filled with holes which let water go in but didn’t let the fishes go out. The same kind of diaphragm were set to the different basins of the fish ponds to keep the different kinds of fishes divided.
After this Columella goes on explaining how to feed the fishes because now they couldn’t go to find their own food in the sea. For the flat fishes in they low basins there was no need of large expenses, but feeding the fishes kept in the rocky ones was very expensive. Their owner must maintain a real fleet of fishing boat because the fishes they bred in them didn’t accept anything else than shrimps and small fishes, but thy had to have been just caught. Only in case of bad weather they could offer them bread, season fruits cut in little bits and a dessert of dried figs and it was highly recommended never to forget them.


Bibliography

- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI – L'importanza del pesce nella vita, nel costume e nell'industria del mondo antico in Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia Vol. LXXI, 1998-1999 pp.111-165