EEL FISHING WITH SHEEP-GUTS 247 
Flats,” with their “ sniggling for eels with a needle,” or 
“ banding ” for fish with whitethorn hooks ! 
In addition to this pneumatic method of AZlian others were 
employed for taking eels. Stirring up the mud, in which they 
were wont to lurk was a common device ; hence the proverb 
tyxéXrte Onpac Bax, to fish in muddy waters. Thus Aristophanes ! 
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) asa 
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) Jt was held as a god, or at least as a sacred creature, by 
the Egyptians,? as sacred to Artemis in the spring of Arethusa,# 
and semi-sacred by the Beeotians.5 
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 them we . 
can propitiate with a prayer or two, while to get even a smell 
1 Equites, 864 ff. 
? Fishing by “stirring up the mud,” is known in India. The agents 
employed for the trampling 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. 
4 #lian, VIII. 4; Plutarch, Mor.,976a. See Chapter XVI. ante. 
5 Athenzus, VII. 50. 
6 Antiphan., Lykon frag. 1,1 ff., ap. Athen, 755. 
