Maena

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Maena (also mena , Greek  μαίνη maine , plus the diminutive μαινίς mainis , also μαινομένη mainomene and μαινομένια mainomenia ) was a small sea fish in antiquity that was salted in. It was considered a simple food that the poor could also afford. But it also served as a sacrifice for the (subterranean) gods and plays a central role in Roman legend.

It is the story in which Numa Pompilius , the legendary king of early Roman times, with the help of Picus and Faunus , two rural gods of Aventine , conjures up (actually "pulls") the Jupiter . With this evocation, Jupiter promises Numa to hand over symbols of future Roman world domination to him another day. This also happens, it is the famous Ancile , which was to be kept in the Regia together with eleven identical copies .

Before that, Numa had wanted to know how the harmful lightning could be averted. Ovid provides an almost joking dialogue on this in Book III of his Fasti . Jupiter replies that in order to avert lightning you have to

Jupiter: "... cut off a head".
Numa: "We will decapitate an onion."
Jupiter: "A man ..."
Numa: "... hair will be sacrificed to you."
Jupiter: "A living one ..."
Numa: "... We are happy to give fish."

With which the chief of the gods is satisfied. Ovid only speaks generally of a fish at this point, but the parallel passage in Plutarch names Maena as the type of fish to be sacrificed. Even with Valerius Antias a living will as a means of lightning arrestor onion tuber Maena and human hair named. Burning these three objects at the same time was sure to drive away some other things, if not lightning.

That there is a special reason for this type of fish can also be seen elsewhere in Ovids Fasti, where a maena is part of a veritable witch recipe, a ritual performed by the Tacita at the Feralia , the Roman festival of the dead: the head a maena is smeared with pitch , pierced with a bronze needle, and the mouth is sewn shut. The head prepared in this way is then roasted and extinguished with sacrificial wine, from which the participants in the ritual drink copiously.

Spicara maena, the sea shit

As is so often the case with ancient names for animals, it is difficult to determine the specific species or species. A collection of modern Greek fish names identified Maena as Spicara maena , a way that the centracanthidae heard or Laxierfischen. The name laxative fish indicates a digestive effect. In fact, the concise dictionary of German superstition knows the fish under the name "Meerscheißer" and, in addition to its use to avert bad gossip in antiquity, reports that:

The salt from the meerscheißer has been in use by several nations against the red damage, hufftwe, to clean old damage with it. Item the salts with bull galls lubricated on the navel brings the stool. The brüyen ... drunk and the meat poured, purged, makes the stomach flow and shit, from which one has given iren names.

In addition, the "Milchling", the male, is said to have given off a specifically disgusting smell.

It seems astonishing that a fish with such properties should have been part of simple cooking in Rome. Maena was therefore often translated as “sprat” or more generally as “salt fish”. Even if the determination of the maena as a laxative fish should not apply: An indication is that the fish could (or had to) be firstly placed in salt and secondly skinned. The second is known, since in Plautus the expression "deglupta maena" ("skinned maena") has been handed down as a swear word.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horace Addison Hoffman, David Starr Jordan: A Catalog of the Fishes of Greece, with Notes on the Names Now in Use and Those Employed by Classical Authors . In: Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia Vol. 44, (1892), p. 267
  2. ↑ Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli u. a. (Ed.): Concise dictionary of German superstition. de Gruyter, Berlin, 1987, vol. 6, p. 75
  3. ^ Red dysentery is dysentery with bloody diarrhea .
  4. ↑ Old damage denoted chronic wounds and skin ulcers. See Hans-Joachim Peters (ed.): The 'book of old damage', Part I: Text. Medical dissertation Bonn 1973, commissioned by Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg; and Ingrid Rohland: The 'Book of Old Damage', Part II: Commentary and Dictionary. (Medical dissertation Würzburg) Pattensen / Hanover, now with Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1982 (= Würzburg medical historical research , 23).
  5. ↑ Has a laxative effect .
  6. ↑ Gesner Fischbuch 1565, p. 33