Talk:Vedius Pollio

A fact from Vedius Pollio appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 15 August 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the Roman emperor Augustus prevented Vedius Pollio from feeding a slave to his lampreys as punishment for breaking a glass?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/August.

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Lampreys[edit]

The Wikipedia article on lampreys says that he tried to feed a slave to his lampreys, not eels. Alpheus (talk) 10:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, as far as I know, murenae are difficult to digest for humans, and eels are not capable of devouring a slave. So lampreys, sucking blood and making round wounds, seem more plausible; they are a delicacy, and that may justify breeding them in ponds. Possibly, the Romans were a bit imprecise in naming animals. Riyadi (talk) 17:43, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead and changed it from moray eels to lampreys. Moray eels are by my understanding a deep sea marine species; there is one freshwater species from east Asia, apparently. I don't think the Romans had the tech to keep marine fishes in a pond for long enough for anyone to make a habit of feeding slaves to them. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 21:27, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In all books that I read (well, 2 - not much), the reference is to moray eels, not to lampreys. And:

- The moray eel is not a deep sea species, it is a litoral species, that can be founds in rocks

- Moray eel is a very aprreciate food (then a reason to have them in a pond)

- Moray eel is a predator with very strong teeths; a bite of maoray eel is very painful to a human

- I think a human attacked by lampresy could easily kill them (they are a relativley week animal, I think).--194.38.144.2 (talk) 11:59, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The text of Dio says μυραίνας, translated as `sea-eel or murry' in Liddell and Scott. The lampreys appear to come from the English translation in the Loeb edition. JCBradfield (talk) 18:05, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Story of the Eels Fact?[edit]

Isn't this story usually taken with a grain of salt? I think it should be treated as a myth and not fact. For starters, Lampreys are not known to feed on humans. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.21.92.247 (talk) 03:18, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I came to this article after watching an episode of the TV series 'The Borgias', in which the king of Naples is shown as keeping a pool of lampreys under the inspiration of the story of Seneca. Biologically, it is nonsense. Lampreys attach themselves to fish and gradually rasp away their flesh. It is a slow process; fish often have several lampreys attached to them for long periods before they die. Lampreys do not even have jaws in the usual sense, so they cannot tear off lumps of flesh (along with hagfish, they are often known as 'jawless fish'). Large eels, such as conger or Moray eels, are a better candidate for this story, if it has any foundation in fact.109.150.7.240 (talk) 23:04, 28 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It could be real. If we assume the pond was intended for fish only, it may not have had an easy means of escape for a human who found himself thrown into it. The slave would have to use both arms to cnstantly tread water ujst to stay afloat; fighting off lampreys at the same time would be difficult or impossible. Escaping one bite would provide no protection against another, and the only feasible means the man would have of fighting back would be to lift the lampreys out of the water long enough to starve them of oxygen, which would make it even more difficult to tread water. And fish are in many ways much hardier than humans: each bite would cause significant blood loss, both from the bite itself and from the continued bleeding after the lamprey is finished.

Lampreys do occasionally feed on humans. There is a report from Time magazine of a lamprey biting through a woman's swimsuit while she was swimming in Lake Ontario back in the 1950s. It makes perfect sense, since they also attack whales and dolphins, which are no more closely related to their more typical fish prey than humans are.

That said, I came here because Im skeptical too. While the story sounds perfectly plausible, that doesnmt mean it happened. There are plenty of exaggerations in Roman history, such as the story about a Roman general invading a German tribe and killing 50000 Germans (or "all of the Germans within 50 miles") without his own soldiers suffering even a single injury, let alone being killed in action. —Soap— 21:29, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong Pollio...[edit]

{{DYK talk|9 May|2023|entry= Josephus was confused in his Pollios... most scholars and common sense agree that Herod's friend and tutor of his sons was Asinius Pollio who was consul and well respected. user rich1vanwinkle Rich1vanwinkle (talk) 16:35, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]