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THE MYTH OF THE ROMAN AQUARIUM
By Albert J. Klee, Ph.D. In Bernd Brunner’s “The Ocean at Home,” we
find the following paragraph: “These fish were kept in opaque tanks,
often made of marble, in front of the house. The first fish to enter the
interior of a house in imperial Rome was the sea barbel, a much
cherished and expensive breed. Allegedly, they were kept in small tanks
underneath the cushions of the guest beds. Around 50 AD, panes of glass
were brought to Rome, Herculanaeum, and Pompeii, to replace one wall of
the marble tanks; now it was possible to actually see the hustle and
bustle of the fish without having to guess their schematic movements
from above.” Because this statement has now been included
in Wikipedia (re-phrased as: “Introduction of glass
panes around the year 50 AD allowed Romans to replace one wall of marble
tanks, improving their view of the fish.”), it is now
widely quoted in various versions on the Internet. If true, this would
mark the Romans as the inventor of the flat-sided aquarium, not the
British centuries later. As Allan Nevins puts it in his “The Gateway
to History,” “Mankind dearly loves a good story, and
dearly loves to believe it true. Before any tale can greatly please the
hearer thereof, it must have some degree of verisimilitude; it must
conquer part of our faith.” Nevins illustrates this
with the story of H. L. Mencken who, early in his career, wrote an
article on the bathtub in which he asserted with plausible historical
detail that it had been invented in the 1840’s, that Millard Fillmore
had been the first to install one in the White House, that the medical
profession and the public long regarded it with deep suspicion, and that
laws had been passed against the perilous contraption by Virginia,
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Mencken was astonished that his witty
composition was accepted by most readers at face value. He was still
more astonished to find newspapers and magazines copying these “facts”
in ever-widening circles as they cropped up year after year in the most
dignified of periodicals. As Nevins puts it, “This
naiveté of humankind has its humorous side. But to Historians, it is not
quite so amusing.” Although Brunner copied this material from
Herrmann Mostar’s “Die Arche Mostar (“Mostar’s Ark”), the fault lies
mainly with Brunner as he did not validate Mostar’s statement and simply
assumed that what he wrote was true. It should have been clear to
Brunner that the assertion was unsubstantiated as Mostar provided no
in-text references for any of his statements re the Romans save for one
by Conrad Gesner and another by Seneca, both dealing only with the
custom of wealthy Romans observing the colors in the death throes of the
mullet. Mostar did not provide a bibliography, either. Brunner deserves
some credit, however, for replacing Mostar’s “They put a
small tank for them under the cushions of the guest bed…”
with “Allegedly, they were kept in small tanks
underneath the cushions of the guest beds.” Even
Brunner was not going to buy that myth. Mostar (1901- 1973), for those not familiar
with the name, was a German writer, poet, columnist and, at times, a
narrator, playwright and comedian. He also became Germany’s most famous
critical court reporter. This particular book deals with animals that
have lived together with man, including dogs, cats, cocks, hens, doves,
songbirds and fish, but also with the quite undesirable such as flies,
spiders, bugs, lice, fleas and rats.
Although Mostar asserts that the Romans kept
fish in marble aquaria containing glass panes, one in theory cannot
disprove it, since one cannot prove a negative, i.e., that the Romans
did not do so. In the same manner, if I make the statement that I saw
two Tyrannosaurus rex copulating in my backyard, there is no way
that anyone can disprove it. With regard to such statements we must
insist that the assertor provides some evidence that can be assessed by
those who are compos mentis and who respond with raised eyebrows
to reports like little green men traveling through outer space to annoy
earthlings with bright lights.
More seriously, such assessors must also have an understanding of how men in other eras lived and behaved. If one is writing about the first century AD, one relies upon (1) the authors of the time and (2) later authors who have done research of this time period and whose work is generally considered of the highest scholarship. For the first I have read the ten Roman authors in the bibliography and for the second the two modern-day authors listed below them. Ludwig Heinrich Friedländer (1824 - 1909), by
the way, was a philologist and historian noted for his comprehensive
survey of Roman social and cultural history. His masterpiece was the “Darstellungen
aus des Sittengeschichte Roms” (“Representations from Roman Cultural
History”), a detailed and vivid portrait of the social life, customs,
art and manners of the first two centuries of the Roman Empire. The work
remains one of the most complete surveys of Roman life and society. It
was translated into many languages, including English under the title,
“Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire.” We can also examine the archeological
evidence and here also one cannot prove a negative since we cannot state
that some future excavation might not unearth a slew of such aquaria (or
even a spaceship containing mummified bodies of a greenish hue).
Nonetheless, the recent excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, which
have provided the most detailed information to date of how the Romans of
the day lived, have not unearthed any remains of aquaria with glass
sides. “The garden pond could be enjoyed and
appreciated from different points of vantage, both public and private.
The locations of many ponds within Pompeian houses permit the general or
remote glimpse suitable for the casual acquaintance or client. Apertures
or windows in the atrium and, specifically, in the tablinum
(Note: A tablinum is the main room in a Roman house, later used as
the formal reception or living room and study or office by the head of
the household.) allowed a more public audience to see
the pond. Many of these same piscinae and others could be enjoyed from
much more intimate surroundings. The location of dining areas and
reception rooms around the garden often took into account the location
of the fishpond. Triclinia (Note: Triclinia are formal
dining rooms in a Roman building.), set within rooms or
shaded by pergolas afforded selected visitors or guests front-row seats
to the splendors of the gardens and their ponds. At Pompeii, over twenty
examples of piscinae are situated in close proximity to dining
facilities with approximately an equal number located where they can be
seen easily from reception rooms and garden exedrae
(Note: An exedrae was a semi-circular recess or plinth sometimes set
into a building's façade.). The connection between ponds
and dining areas is not solely aesthetic but has a gastronomic component
as well. Fish or eels fresh from the piscina would make an impressive
addition to private meals among friends and honored guests.” Because of erroneous statements such as
these and because he provides no references for his assertion that the
Romans had glass-sided aquaria, Mostar cannot be taken seriously and, by
extension, neither can Brunner in this instance. For an assertion having
this degree of consequence to aquarium hobby history, whoever wrote the
Wikipedia piece should have done the required research, refuted the
assertion out of hand or, better still, not mentioned it at all. Athenaeus, “The
Dipnosophists or Banquet of the Learned of Athenaeus,” translated by
C.D. Yonge, volume I, Henry G. Bohn, Convent Garden, 1854. Cicero: “Letters to
Atticus,” Evelyn S. Shuckburgh, 4 vol., George Bell and Sons,
London, 1899. Columella: “On
Agriculture,” translated by Harrison Boyd Ash and by E. S. Forster
and Edward H. Heffner (Loeb Classical Library), 1941. Horace, “Satires,”
translated by A.S. Kline, Book II: Satire II, 2005. Juvenal, “The Sixteen
Satires of Juvanal,” translated by S.H. Jeyes, IV.15ff., James
Thornton, Oxford, 1885. Petronius, “The
Satyricon,” translated by Alfred R. Allison, Chapter VI, Panurge
Press, New York, 1930. Martial, “Epigrams,”
translated by Walter C. A. Ker, 2 vol., William Heinemann, London, 1920. Pliny the Elder, “The
Natural History of Pliny,” translated by John Bostock and H. T.
Riley, Henry G. Bohn, London, IX.67, 1857. Pliny the Younger, “Letters
of Pliny,” translated by William Melmoth, revised by F. C. T.
Bosanquet, Project Gutenberg, 2001. Seneca, “Physical
Science in the Time of Nero, being a translation of the Quaestiones
Naturales of Seneca,” translated by John Clarke, Macmillan and Co.,
London, 368 pp., 1910. Petronius, “The
Satyricon,” translated by Alfred R. Allison, Chapter VI, Panurge
Press, New York, 1930. 2. Modern Day Authors: Higginbotham, James, “Piscinae
– Artificial Fishponds in Italy, 284 pp., University of
North Carolina Press, 1997. 3. Additional References: Bernd Brunner, “The Ocean
at Home,” Princeton Architectural Press, New York, New York, 143 pp,
2005. Mostar, Herrmann, “Die
Archer Mostar,” Henry Goverts Verlag, Stuttgart, 256 pp., 1959. Nevins, Allan, “The
Gateway to History,” pp. 440, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1962.
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