alone and imprisoned, between the stout walls that isolate it from the city’s life, and the time when it was home to boats, mills, and fishermen is long gone.
In earliest antiquity, the catch was plentiful and constituted an important element of the popular diet, though fish, freshwater and saltwater alike, was considered unworthy to serve to company. Gentlemen who liked to go fishing were regarded with suspicion. Later, however, Antony and Cleopatra, as well as the emperors Augustus and, later still, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, were passionate anglers.
Contact with the refined civilization of Greece taught the Romans to appreciate the delicate flesh of fish and the masterly preparations cooks could make from it. Demand for fresh fish, especially rare varieties, reached the point that aquaculture was introduced. Some installations were veritable masterpieces of hydraulic engineering, accommodating both fresh water fish and those requiring seawater. The fourth and fifth levels of the Markets of Trajan, in the center of Rome, contained aquariums filled with freshwater and with seawater brought from Ostia, the port of Rome. The demanding gourmet could order salmon trout from the Moselle or Danube, or fish from the Black Sea, or sturgeon imported from Greece27 to be caught live by specialized slaves. The markets of Ancona and Ravenna supplied large quantities of pesce azzurro, while from Sicily arrived the greatest delicacy of all: the moray eel, muraena in Latin, murena in Italian.
The fashion for private fish farms exploded, and the nouveaux riches outdid themselves to see who could stock the rarest fish. The largest fish farms were built in Campania, where Licinius Murena launched the fashion in about 90 B.C., to be followed by the consul Sergius Orata, the first to raise oysters (at Baiae).28 He was followed in turn by such famous jet-setters as L. Licinius Lucullus, who had a hole cut through a mountain near Baiae to bring the water from the sea to his fish farm. Against these characters stood the moralists—notably Cicero—who called them disparagingly “an aristocracy of fishermen” who cared more about their fish farms than about affairs of state.29
In addition to the moray eel, the Romans’ favorite fish included tuna (especially the belly), red mullet, gray mullet, eel, sole, and mackerel. No pike could equal those pulled from the Tiber where the sewers emptied. Large fish were much sought after and were often given as gifts to the emperor. A satire by the poet Juvenal tells of an enormous turbot given to the emperor Domitian, who supposedly consulted the Senate as to the best way to cook it.30 A true gourmet treat were the mollusks: oysters, date shells, mussels, clams, warty Venus, scallops, and razor clams. Particularly prized were the oysters of Lake Lucrinus, in Campania, and, later, those imported from northern Gaul.
The invasions of the migrating tribes, who swarmed down from the east onto the fertile Italian plains, wiped away all memory of the gourmet life. Wars, famines, and plagues left the lands abandoned for centuries, and so they ceased to produce. The road back to civilization was long and hard.
In successive waves, the so-called barbarians canceled entire inhabited and cultivated regions from the map of Italy, erasing more than merely eating habits. Medieval man had to begin again from scratch, living in houses no longer worthy of the name, nourishing himself when he could with game, wild grains, and roots. The people forgot the great Roman cuisine almost entirely.
With the economic upturn of the year 1000, the waters of the Tiber once again became a major channel for the movement of people and goods, including foodstuffs. Business was conducted in the crowded ports of Ripetta and Ripa Grande,31 where the traffic of large and small craft grew steadily until boats and ships created frequent bottlenecks, comparable to those on today’s roads and streets.
While it was still active, the port of Ostia fed the major part of commercial traffic directed toward Rome, since the Tiber was navigable as far as its tributary the Nera, in Umbria. For centuries, small and large craft32 were pulled upriver by water buffalo treading a sheep track along the left bank. This service, called alaggio, or “haulage,” was in use as early as the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages, the monopoly was given to the bishop of Ostia, who engaged a subcontractor to supply the animals for traction.
The flow of shipping in the ports and the activity of the boatmen and stevedores who loaded and unloaded all sorts of freight, including food, were regulated by papal proclamations and motu proprio, or decree.
The Tiber also participated in city life by making its rich, unpolluted waters available to fishermen. The humanist Paolo Giovio (1483–1552) maintained that ninety-six varieties33 of fish could be caught in the Tiber, and fishing on the river was always one of the marvels of travelers. There were trout, pike, barbel, carp, eel, salmon, and sturgeon. As late as the mid-nineteenth century, sturgeon, salmon, and their caviar were sold in shops in the city and in the outlying areas. Sturgeon had given rise to a curious and ancient tradition. In the Middle Ages, the heads of the largest specimens—those longer than 47 inches (1.2 meters)—were brought as gifts to the Conservatori del Campidoglio (the political hierarchy that governed the city), for whose tables they were transformed into delicious soups. Most of the brutes were caught in the short space between the Tiber Island and the Ponte Sublicio. A marble plaque spelling out the rules for sale was supposed to be displayed wherever fish were sold. An amusing example can still be seen on the Portico d’Ottavia, next to Via di Sant’Angelo in Pescheria.
Capita piscium
hoc marmoreo schemate longitudine
majorum usque ad primas pinnas
inclusive Conservatoribus
danto
The text says that the head, up to the first fins, of any fish longer than the diagram had to be given to the conservatori. The diagram in question is a picture of a sturgeon incised on another marble plaque, now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, one of the buildings of the Capitoline Museums, on the Piazza del Campidoglio.
Of the many species that the then-clean waters of the Tiber used to offer, the most famous were perhaps ciriole, small, strong-tasting eels, different in both size and flavor from those fished (then and now) in the lakes of Lazio. They were cooked in guazzetto, or else fried, according to an ancient and unvarying recipe.
The University of the Fishermen, as the guild to which all those who worked with fish was called, was one of the oldest and most important in the city’s guild hierarchy. It included the fishermen of the upper Tiber, as well as those who fished the river’s middle course and mouth. The guild was regulated by a charter: one that has come down to us dates to 1665. It is more or less from this moment that fishing, formerly a laissez-faire activity, was regulated.
The fishmongers belonged to their own guild, whose charters are documented from 1536. The guild established rules and regulations for both hygiene and retail sale of fish. They could now only be sold in specific markets or in the city streets by special license from the consuls. Fishmongers also had to use a particular kind of basket, called a celigna, both to transport the fish and to measure it: according
Fish was sold in the Portico d’Ottavia, and nearby shops, such as the one shown here, sold cured meat, cheeses, and spices (Fondazione Primola, Rome)
to law, the tail had to remain outside the container and could not be considered in the price (which was based on length, not weight). For reasons of hygiene, the sale of fish, in the street or in the market, was prohibited during the hottest part of the year, from July 8 through September.
The main fish market, from antiquity down to the beginning of the twentieth century, was in the Portico d’Ottavia,
