Of the Remora

And yet all these forces, though acting in unison, and impelling in the same direction, a single fish, and that of a very diminutive size - the fish known as the (...)[ Remora ] - possesses the power of counteracting. Winds may blow and storms may rage, and yet the (...)[ Remora ] controls their fury, restrains their mighty force, and bids ships stand still in their career; a result which no cables, no anchors, from their ponderousness quite incapable of being weighed, could ever have produced! A fish bridles the impetuous violence of the deep, and subdues the frantic rage of the universe - and all this by no effort of its own, no act of resistance on its part, no act at all, in fact, but that of adhering to the bark !

Pliny, ~ 79 AD


From: The Natural History. Pliny the Elder.
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.
Book XXXII
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Plin.+Nat.+32.1