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More tench? Another dormouse? an IFAQ

With some such words as these, Caesar's niece Atia (in the new TV serial Rome) tries to persuade her soldierly guests to stay at dinner a little longer. Sadly, like nearly everyone else in this new vision of Rome in the 50s BC, they are more interested in brothels.

I can see why dormice: they come straight out of Petronius's Satyricon. And Romans really did farm dormice (the edible species Glis glis). But why tench? When I was gathering information on fish for Food in the Ancient World from A to Z (Routledge, 2003) I didn't find any earlier reference to tench than Ausonius's list of Moselle river fish, around AD 400: and Ausonius calls them 'solace of the common people', which certainly would not have included Atia. I know what he means, too: I have found tench on sale at market near here (at Lezay in France), and they are OK, but bony, and not gourmet food.

If I thought Rome was a subtle programme, I might say she is offering her unwanted guests bony tench and cold dormice (after all, these would both have been hors d'oeuvres, not desserts) to drive them away. I don't really believe that's the answer, though. What made the script-writer choose tench?

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