From the Reverends forthcoming book, “Human Aquarium”

The Thing About Aquariums

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That’s the thing about Aquariums; They’re not Real.

They are Manufactured Constructs, and though the inhabitants may seem comfortable enough as they drift through the illuminated, artificial grottoes, as though this were their Natural Habitat, in truth these vast edifices of concrete & glass are only made habitable by the strictest control of the environmental parameters, (air, light, temperature, water, food, waste disposal, et al) and constant maintenance. All of this involves considerable cost and effort on the part of the Aquariums’ Owner/s. Someone somewhere has to be really committed to a project like the construction and maintenance of an Aquarium. In this context, the Motivating factor is generally Money.

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Indeed, taking a step back for a wider perspective and considering the Aquarium as a Concept., be it a couple of Goldfish in the living room or the vast Human Aquarium of a Shopping Mall, for an Aquarium to actually exist it requires an entire System of interlocking industries to construct and support them. Industries with people making the glass and steel, transporting the Aquariums specimens, electricity for the filter pumps and heaters and the Aquarium lights illuminating the sunken pirate ship, food for the inhabitants, a way of getting clean water so they don’t turn belly up with giardia, salmonella or some ghastly fish disease, fin rot and so forth. You get the idea.

Such an extensive & complex supporting superstructure can only be the product of a wealthy, sophisticated Civilization, without which no Aquarium could exist.

Indeed throughout History the Wealthy Classes of many an ancient Civilization have cultivated Pleasure Gardens with extensive and exotically stocked ponds or tanks as a way to display their Wealth and Taste.

The Vikings, on the other hand, had no Aquariums at all.

But the Romans in  particular took to Aquaculture in a big way.

Yes, back in Ancient Rome it was Height of  Fashion! All the Smart Set amongst the Upper Classes- decadent Aristocrats, political Schemers, retired Generals, ambitious Plutocrats, Upper Class Whores & so forth- had a taste for collecting & keeping exotic sea-creatures in enclosures to impress their Friends.

They even took to building special “Water Gardens” attached to their Luxury Summer Villas down at the Bay of Capri, where they went when the weather grew hot. There they’d create nautical themed grottoes for entertaining, surrounded by statues of sea gods & nymphs and at the guest’s feet, ponds & tanks made out of good, waterproof Roman Concrete, that were stocked with rare and costly creatures from the Depths.

 It was one of their ways of ostentatiously displaying wealth & demonstrating power, because, as noted previously, maintaining an Aquarium requires considerable cost and effort from the Owner. For the Romans, owning a fancy water feature meant bearing the costs of getting the Tradies in to pour the concrete & lay the pipes, teams of slaves to change the water & clean the enclosures, paying off dodgy Wild Life Suppliers, the endless cost of  fish-food . Specialist Jewellers to adorn the Lampreys with diamonds and the eels with gold.. Suffice to say it all adds up.

So if you could show that you could afford such a Display

you were showing High Society that you were a Player too.

They could be quite competitive about it too, those old Romans, as the following historical anecdote illustrates.

  The famous Roman General Pompey the Great himself had built an expensively extensive Water Garden for “Entertaining” and so of course his great political & military rival, the conquering hero General Lucullus had to have bigger one.

   Lucullus had come back fabulously wealthy after campaigning in the Eastern Provinces and had immediately built the most enormous Mansion that Rome had ever seen (up to that point anyway) and adorned it with an even  larger Water Garden than Pompey’s! Later at auction the mansion was valued at 5 Million Drachma, a hefty sum, even in those days.. That was bad enough for Pompey’s ego but Lucullus had an even greater humiliation planned for the Great One!

  Ancient Gossip Columnists tell us that Lucullus stocked one of the ponds with with enormous eels, that were ostentatiously adorned with gold rings through their gills. Furthermore he apparently named the biggest, fattest eel in the pond “Pompey” and used to enjoy feeding it with his own hands.

The eel became so tame in time that he could call it’s name and it would come swimming up to be fed and let him tickle it’s chin, a show Lucullus loved to put on for his guests, knowing full well that the human Pompey would get to hear of it the next day and grind his teeth in impotant anger..

Of course Romans being Romans they often went too far.

The archetypal story in this regard is that of the cruel Aquarium Owner, the wealthy aristocrat Ventidius.

 One night at one of his fabulous Feasts, Ventidius ordered that a slave who had displeased him should be fed to his prized, pet Lampreys both as Punishment and as an Entertainment for the Guests between courses.  Now Lampreys are these horrible, primitive, brainless brutes with mouths like suction caps lined with teeth. The Slaves crime was breaking an expensive cup.

But it happened that amongst the guests Ventidius was no doubt hoping to impress that night, was the Emperor Augustus.

Delighted by this chance to demonstrate his enlightened Humanism, August ordered all the cups gathered and broken, the slave released and freed and Ventidius himself was exiled to a desert island- condemned to a sort of Reverse Aquarium, I guess you could say.

Of course Augustus liked a good Gladiatorial Show himself, the old Hypocrite, and used to complain heartily if the fighters showed any reluctance to get stuck in and get themselves killed. He also had no problems during his rise to power, of ordering the executions of hundreds (if not thousands) when it suited his purpose and had no qualms about condemning troublesome family members to a lingering exile on lonesome islands.

The ‘Enlightened Humanism’ of the Emperors, like the Aquariums, was for display purposes only

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Be that as it may, to be taken seriously these days every James-Bond-Action-Movie style Villain must have a big glass feature wall in their Lair to pose menacingly in front of,  whilst behind the glass a big tank full of sharks prowl restlessly, awaiting their next screaming victim.

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The Reverend Hellfire..

He’s still got it, baby.

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Tags: aquariums, fantasy, fish story, humour, lampreys, roman emperors, satire