Lamprey - in Literature

In Literature

Vedius Pollio was punished by Augustus for attempting to feed a clumsy slave to the lampreys in his fish pond. This incident was incorporated into the plot of the novel 'Pompeii' by Robert Harris 2003 Random House in the incident of Ampliatus feeding a slave to his lampreys.

...one of his slaves had broken a crystal cup. Vedius ordered him to be seized and then put to death, but in an unusual way. He ordered him to be thrown to the huge lampreys which he had in his fish pond. Who would not think he did this for display? Yet it was out of cruelty. The boy slipped from the captor’s hands and fled to Augustus' feet asking nothing else other than a different way to die – he did not want to be eaten. Augustus was moved by the novelty of the cruelty and ordered him to be released, all the crystal cups to be broken before his eyes, and the fish pond to be filled in... – Seneca, On Anger, III, 40

Lucius Licinius Crassus was mocked by Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus for weeping over the death of his pet lamprey:

So, when Domitius said to Crassus the orator, Did not you weep for the death of the lamprey you kept in your fish pond? – Did not you, said Crassus to him again, bury three wives without ever shedding a tear? – Plutarch, On the Intelligence of Animals, 976a

This story is also found in Aelian (Various Histories VII, 4) and Macrobius (Saturnalia III.15.3). It is included by Hugo von Hofmannsthal in the Chandos Letter:

And in my mind I compare myself from time to time with the orator Crassus, of whom it is reported that he grew so excessively enamoured of a tame lamprey – a dumb, apathetic, red-eyed fish in his ornamental pond – that it became the talk of the town; and when one day in the Senate Domitius reproached him for having shed tears over the death of this fish, attempting thereby to make him appear a fool, Crassus answered, "Thus have I done over the death of my fish as you have over the death of neither your first nor your second wife."

"I know not how oft this Crassus with his lamprey enters my mind as a mirrored image of my Self, reflected across the abyss of centuries."

Philip, Lord Chandos, younger son of the Earl of Bath, in a letter to Francis Bacon

"Lampreys have been seen before attacking a human in the great lakes. The lamprey let go a few seconds later after realizing its mistake. The man (who chose to be not named) was taken to the hospital with various injuries." – From Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.