What did Roman fishmongers use to wrap fish? (Martial's epigram III, 50)

LaurentiusH

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Bruocsella, Gallia Belgica
Salvete,

I was reading Martial's epigramma III, 50, and when I reached the last lines...

Quod si non scombris scelerata poemata donas,
Cenabis solus iam, Ligurine, domi.

... I laughed because I thought that Martial was telling Ligurinus to feed mackerels with his poems, which seemed to be a coherent joke, taking account of the rest of the text, in which Martial is invited to eat but is fed only large quantities of bad and annoying poetry.

Then, I read about that text elsewhere and all translations I saw imply that the poems should be used to wrap fish, just as, when I was a kid, fishmongers used newspapers to wrap fish (I don't think they still do that...).

However, as far as I know, Romans of that period wrote on papyrus (?). In addition, papyrus was probably imported from Egypt and hence probably expensive (?).

Did fishmongers really wrap mackerels in papyrus? Or is there something I'm missing?
 

Callaina

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I don't know about Roman fishmongers, but I know that the custom of using paper or paper-like material to wrap food in is a long-standing one; a great many of Bach's cantatas were, I have read, lost because the paper was sold for scrap after his death and used to wrap food (though it seems those tales may be apocryphal: http://johnmreese.net/bachrecon.htm).

Also, I think the implication isn't quite that Martial wants Ligurinus to give his poems to the fishmongers for use in wrapping other people's fish, but rather that he wants Ligurinus to bring the poems with him to wrap his own fish when he buys them (thus not only getting rid of the poor poetry, but also ensuring that Martial will actually be fed the next time he comes to dinner.) Maybe this is what you meant, but I thought I'd suggest it just in case.
 
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