EEL FISHING WITH SHEEP-GUTS 247 



Flats," with their " snigghng for eels with a needle," or 

 " banding " for fish with whitethorn hooks ! 



In addition to this pneumatic method of ^Elian others were 

 employed for taking eels. Stirring up the mud, in which they 

 were wont to lurk was a common device ; hence the proverb 

 iyXfXng OrjpaaOai, to fish in muddy waters. Thus Aristophanes 1 

 makes the sausage seller, whom the Whigs of Athens had hired 

 to outbawl the demagogue Cleon, shout, " Yes, it is with you 

 as with the eel-catchers ; when the lake is still, they do not 

 take anything, but if they stir up the mud, they do ; so it is 

 with you, when you disturb the State." 2 



Even at the risk of being likened to Mr, Bouncer of Oxford 

 fame, who in every answer of his Divinity paper dragged in his 

 sole and cuff-attached bit of Old Testament knowledge with 

 " and here it may not seem inappropriate to subjoin a list of 

 the Kings of Israel and Judah," I venture some comments on 

 the Eel. 



The frequent allusions in our authors to the Eel, (A) as a 

 sacred fish, (B) as the delight of the epicure, and (C) as a 

 propagator of its species in a variety of surprisingly erroneous 

 ways, must be my excuse. 



(A) It was held as a god, or at least as a sacred creature, by 

 the Eg5^tians,3 as sacred to Artemis in the spring of Arethusa,^ 

 and semi-sacred by the Boeotians. ^ 



Antiphanes « ridicules the Egyptians for the sacred honour 

 paid to the fish, wrongly termed by the Greeks the Eel. 

 Contrasting the value of the gods with the high prices paid for 

 the fish at Athens he gibes ; " they say that the Egyptians 

 are clever in that they rank the Eel equal to a god, but in reality 

 it is held in esteem and value far higher than gods, for thefu we 

 can propitiate with a prayer or two, while to get even a smell 



* Equites, 864 ff. 



2 Fishing by " stirring up the mud," is known in India. The agents 

 employed for the tramphng in the pools are elephants ranged in close order • 

 the beasts enter thoroughly into the sport. Cf. G. P. Sanderson, Thirteen 

 Years among the Wild Beasts in India. 



3 Herodotus, II, 72, who states that it was sacred to the Nile. 



* ^lian, VIII. 4 ; Plutarch, Mor.. 976A. See Chapter XVI. ante. 



* Athenaeus, VII. 50. 



^ Antiphan., Lykonfrag. i, i ff., ap. Athen, 755. 



