Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1873-11-28
While I was in America I saw the

litical assemblage called clam-bake
where speeches and music and songs
are interspersed with profuse feast'
upon a species ofoyster called the clam
Vast crowds attend these celebrations
and no sooner are they gorged with the
insideous comestible than they become
full of excitement and furores; sweal
themselves away in fealty to the most
worthless of demagogues; sing, fight
dance, gouge one another's eyes out
and conduct themselves like madmen
in confagration. Now, it was pre-
cisely similar madness that infected
the Roman world and made so many ty-
rants, brutes, and suicides there. And
it was from a similar cause. For, from
the time of Caesar, the Roman passion
foroysters was apassion simply without
bounds. They became connoisseurs
in shell-fsh, ransacked every sea for
them, from Syrian syrtes to Britain,
planted them everywhere, and ate them
without moderation. Hence, Apicius
slew himself under Trajan. He had
the art ofpreserving oysters, but could
not preserve himself. The last fatal
delirium or Lucullus, in which he
passed away after many banquets, can
only be explained upon the ground of
moral insanity from ostreophagy.
That which made suicide made tyr
ants likewise. Tiberius went to Ca
prea for oyster as well as to indulge
his sombre hatred of man. Nero, Ca
ligula, and that great brute Vitellius
were all pre-eminent ostreophagists.
The latter, after eating a monstrous
pie of peacock's brains garnished with
oysters, would slaughter a thousand
Ramans, take vomit and turn to eat
ing again. His morbid appetites for
oysters and for blood were equally pro-
nounced and equally remarkable. But
instances are too numerous to mention
here, especially as [ have collated them
very carefully in the appendices. I
will simply refer to the case Of Phi
loxenus the Solenist, a man who was
perverted into demagogue and tyr
rant by the fact Of his having in early
life caught oysters for livlihood. It
is related by Phenias the Eresian.-
He was first an humble and content
ed fisherman this Philoxenus, but was
induced first to take oysters, then to
taste them, and so turned from his
honest pursuits to demagogery and
tyranny, and was finally fatally wound
ed. Sic senepe,' ostreOtyraa1nis!
The ancients, thought they had
many mistaken ideas in regard to oys-
ters-as, for instance, in supposing
them to promote the peristaltic and
glandular activities in a regular and
wholesome way-yet seem to have dim
ly understood that they were danger
GUS as food, and especially that they
provoked the temper and brought. out
into sharper relief the rugosities of
the natural disposition. Some sorts
of shell-fsh are styled by Epicharmus
''the banishers of men," because sup
pose, they tend to make people unso-
ciable. The sea-limpet is credited with
relaxing the mind by Alceus. The
cookie is by all the Greek poets noted
as rough and gaping, like fishwives.
"Offspring Of a rough DAM is the ep-
tibet Aristophanes applies to the oys-
ter, and Ministheus, a practical writer,
long ago attacked the bivalves on ac-
count of the unwholesome salts they
contained. This must refer to phospho-
rus. It cannot mean sea salt, since
the Greeks were so persuaded of the
of that that they invariably
diluted even their finest wines with it.
At Colchester, in the English Essex,
and at Pongateague, Choptank, Mag
gotty, Annamessex, Accomac, and 9TH
er places on the Chesapeake Bay, where
[ went to observe the processes of
planting oysters and the kind of beds
in which they thrive best, [ noticed an
exception to the circumstan-
ces above noted, which puzzled me a
great while. The people of these places
live surrounded by oysters, and make
them their principal diet, yet are the
most pacific and mild-manered folks.
Their temperament is lymphatic, and
they themselves are a cold, watery,
flabby tribe, with sallow, soft flesh,
pale blueish eyes, straight yellow dead
hair, and speaking dialect very diff
ferent from and nearly untelligible to
the people around them.
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