The first person who formed artificial oyster-beds was Sergius Orata, who established them at Bai?, in the time of Lucius Crassus, the orator¹, just before the Marsic War. This was done by him, not for the gratification of gluttony, but as a commercial venture, and he contrived² to make a large income by this exercise of his ingenuity³. He was the first to invent hanging baths over heating furnaces, and after buying villas⁴ and trimming them up, he would every now and then sell them again. He, too, was the first to adjudge the pre?minence for delicacy⁶ of flavor to the oysters⁷ of Lake Lucrinus; for every kind of aquatic⁸ animal is superior in one place to what it is in another. Thus, for instance, the wolf-fish of the river Tiber is the best that is caught between the two bridges, and the turbot of Ravenna is the most esteemed⁹, the murena of Sicily, the elops of Rhodes; the same, too, as to the other kinds, not to go through all the items of the culinary catalogue. The British shores had not as yet sent their supplies, at the time when Orata thus ennobled the Lucrine oysters: at a later period, however, it was thought worth while to fetch oysters all the way from Brundisium, at the very extremity¹⁰ of Italy; and in order that there might exist no rivalry¹¹ between the two flavors, a plan has been more recently hit upon, of feeding the oysters of Brundisium in Lake Lucrinus, famished¹² as they must naturally be after so long a journey.

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