248 TACKLE—CURIOUS METHODS—SILURUS—EELS 
of an Eel at Athens we have to spend twelve drachme or more!” 
Anaxandrides’ ! makes a Greek say to an Egyptian : 
“You count the Eel a mighty deity, 
And we a mighty dainty!” 
Juvenal in Satire XV. (written probably after his return 
from semi-exile in Egypt) lashes with ridicule the compatriots 
of his butt Crispinus. The enumeration of their animal and 
vegetable gods is a fine specimen of dignified humour. By 
piscem in line 7, may be indicated the Oxyrhynchus, the Lepi- 
dotus, or the Phagrus, the so-called Eel—three sacred fishes 
of the Nile. 
“ Tllic zluros, hic piscem fluminis, illic 
Oppida tota canem venerantur, nemo Dianam.”’ 
(B) As a delicacy, the Eel by the Greeks was rated very 
high. But the reverse held good at Rome. Unlike its cousin 
the Murena it gets little commendation by the Latin comedians 
—Terence’s in Adelphi, 377-381, is the solitary exception I can 
recall—and by the gourmets. Apicius deemed it worthy of 
but one recipe.? 
“Vos anguilla manet longe cognata colubre’’ (Juvenal, V. 
103) is often quoted as stamping the low position of the Eel 
at Rome, but in reality, as the whole context bears out, this 
particular ‘‘ cousin of the snake ’’ was condemned not because 
of its kinship, but because it was Cloaca-bred and drain-fed.3 
1 Anaxandr., Mdaes, frag. 1,5 f.; ap. Athen., 7, 55. 
2 Contrast with the Greeks and Romans the abstention from the Murenide 
by the Egyptians, Jews, Mussulmans, and Highlanders; in the case of the 
last, however, the abstention was due to no religious injunction but to physical 
loathing. 
Fuller on the derivation of the Isle of Ely is too quaint to omit: ‘‘ When 
the priests of this part of the country would still retain their wives in spite 
of what Pope and monks could do to the contrary, their wives and children 
were miraculously turned into eels, whence it had the name of Ely. I consider 
ita lie.” That Ely is derived from the abundance of Eels taken there has the 
ancient authority of Liber Eliensis (II. 53). J.B. Johnston, The Place-Names 
of England and Wales (London, 1915), p. 250, takes Ely to mean the “ eel- 
island.” He adds, however, that Skeat regarded Elge, Bede’s spelling of the 
name, as “ eel-region,”’ the second element in the compound, ge, being a very 
rare and early Old English word for “‘ district’ (cf. German, Gau). Isaac 
Taylor, a ane and Histories (London, 1896), s.v. Ely, states that rents were there 
aid in Eels. 
¥ 3 Care must be taken to distinguish between the Eel, 2yxeAus, of the Greeks, 
Anguilla of the Romans, and the so-called Lamprey, ptpawa, or Murena. 
