250 TACKLE—CURIOUS METHODS—SILURUS—EELS 
appealed strongly, to judge by the eulogy that their bodies 
when being cooked exhaled an odour fragrant enough to restore 
the sense of smell in the nose of a dead man! while, if boiled 
in fine brine, they ‘‘ changed the human nature into the 
divine!” 1 
The luxurious and lazy Sybarites, who felt they had broken 
their bones if they but saw another digging, and suffered not a 
cock in the whole country, lest he should mar their slumber, 
were so passionately addicted to Eels that all persons catching 
or selling them were exempt from taxes and tribute.? 
(C) The propagation of Eels: This has given birth to more 
theories—all of them till some twenty years ago quite erroneous 
—than any other ichthyic question. From Aristotle downwards 
nearly every zoologist, nearly every writer on fish, has advanced 
his view as to how and whence eels are bred. 
Only a few of them, and they all divergent, can find space 
here. Aristotle held that Eels had never been found with 
milt or roe, that when opened they did not seem to possess 
generative organs, and that apparently they came from the 
so-called entrails of the earth, seemingly referring to certain 
worms formed spontaneously in mud and the like. 
Oppian (I. 513 ff.)— 
“‘ Strange the formation of the eely race 
That know no sex, yet love the close embrace. 
Their folded lengths they round each other twine, 
Twist amorous knots, and slimy bodies joyn ; 
Till the close strife brings off a frothy juice, 
The seed that must the wiggling kind produce. 
1 Badham, op. cit., 392. 
2 Atheneus, XII.15 and 20. If the fish found favour helluously, medically 
condemnation attended it. Hippocrates warns against its use; Seneca, Nat. 
Qu., III. 19, 3, terms it “ gravis cibus.” If to the gastronomic virtues of the 
Muvrenide both Greeks and Latins were more than kind, to other characteristics 
they were far indeed from blind—e.g. their slipperiness, etc., was proverbial. 
See Lucian, Anach., 1, and Plautus, Pseud., II. 4,57. Further, did the fish but 
hap in a dream, then good-bye to all hopes and desires, which slipped away, 
as surely as Alice’s “‘slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.” See 
Artemidorus, Oneivocritica, II. 14. The phallic character of the fish prevalent 
in ancient times continues in modern Italy, eg. the proverbs (1) about 
holding an Eel by his tail, and (2) that when it has taken the hook, it must go 
where it is drawn. De Gubernatis, op. cit., II. 341. 
3 For the many classical theories on Eel procreation see Schneider, of. cit., 
. 36 ff. 
Pe 4 Aristotle, H. A., IV. 11. 
