IJCS | Volume 31, Nº6, November / December 2018

663 Figure 1 - Echocardiogram, parasternal axial view. Blood stasis (remora) appears as spontaneous echocardiographic contrast in a patient with tight mitral stenosis and atrial fibrillation. Also, note the “hockey stick deformity” of the anterior leaflet (upper part), and left atrial enlargement. Image posted by Jayachandran Thejus, MD, in http://www.heartpearls.com/category/interesting- echocardiographic-images/page/2 Charles André Remoras and spontaneous echocardiographic contrast Int J Cardiovasc Sci. 2018;31(6)662-666 Viewpoint respectively). Octavian’s power was then consolidated, and this opened the avenue to Rome’s transition from Republic to Empire. The myth Antony’s heavy and less maneuverable galleys behind the Egyptian fleet proved slow in the battle, and their defeat by Octavian substantiated the Remora myth. After describing the Actium battle and a similar episode involving the emperor Caligula, the naturalist and historian Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) stated that all species of remora had the same property, adding an ancient Greek episode (Nat. Hist. 2, XXXII, 1). 3 The false belief persisted for many centuries. In 1580 Michel deMontaigne (1533-1592) translated two episodes described by Pliny (author’s translation from Essais , II, xii - pp.200-2): “Many believe that in that final and great battle inwhichAntonywas defeated byAugust, Antony’s galley was slowed by this tiny fish that the Romans call Remora , because of its property of slowing down every kind of ship to which it attaches. The Emperor Caligula, sailingwith a large fleet by the Roman coast, was the only to have one of his ships slowed down by this same fish; once he detached the fish from the hull, the emperor got disappointed as he realized that such a tiny little animal could defy the sea, the winds and the strength of the oars by fixing its body to the ship only by its “beak” (in fact, it is a crustacean). He was also astonished, not without reason, by the fact that, inside the boat, the animal did not exhibit the same strength as it did outside the boat”. 4 The 1828 first edition of theWebster dictionary (http:// webstersdictionary1828.com/) still defines remora as a fish “said to attach itself to the bottom or side of a ship and retard its motion”. At the end of the 19th century, however, the mythic nature of their effect of slowing down ships was already well recognized. In 1893, for instance, the definition in the Larousse Dictionary was: ” poisson auquel on attribuait le pouvoir d’arreter les navires “. Remora fish Suckerfishes constitute a family ( Echeneidae ) of ray- finned fishes that measure up to 75 cm long. Their first