Red mullet fever was common in ancient Rome, although it almost always struck the rich. Symptoms included insatiable cravings, driving some to dig out huge ponds in which to breed the two species, Mullus barbatus and Mullus surmuletus, caress them and train them to recognise that a bell meant feeding, by hand. Alan Davidson describes the ancient Roman enthusiasm for red mullet brilliantly in his Oxford Companion to Food, in particular the preoccupation with size, which led to absurd prices for really big ones. Servius Asinius Celer, a Roman senator during the reign of Caligula, is said to have paid 8,000 sesterces for a red mullet (for comparison, a loaf of bread cost half a sestertius). According to poet Pliny the Elder, the best red mullet was delicate, plentiful and tasted like oysters, while Juvenal complained that raging gluttony and raking the waters with non-stop nets was exhausting the seas.
Also via Davidson, who never held back from bringing death and savage irony to the table, we have Seneca. The philosopher describes the ancient Roman fashion for presenting live red mullet at the banquet table to watch their changing colours as they gasped. Seneca also claimed a Roman “would no longer attend the bedside of his dying father, however much he desired his father to die, if the rival attraction of a dying red mullet was on offer”.
