SPECIES DESCRIPTION

They are both favored delicacies in the Mediterranean, and in antiquity were "one of the most famous and valued fish". They are very similar, and cooked in the same ways. M. surmuletus is perhaps somewhat more prized.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. Specimens were sometimes sold for their weight in silver. 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.The statesman Titus Annius Milo, exiled to Marseille in 52 B.C., joked that he would have no regrets as long as he could eat the delicious red mullet of Marseille.