surmuletus has a striped first dorsal fin—their common names overlap in many of the languages of the region.

[2] The ancient Romans reared them in ponds where they were attended and caressed by their owners, and taught to come to be fed at the sound of the voice or bell of the keeper.

Pliny cites a case in which a large sum was paid for a single fish, and an extraordinary expenditure of time was lavished upon these slow-learning pets.

Juvenal and other satirists descanted upon the height to which the pursuit of this luxury was carried as a type of extravagance.

Claudius Aelianus in his On the Nature of Animals, writes that the species is sacred to the Greek agricultural goddess Demeter.