The nymph who never knew the joys of marriage,
Clothed with rosy beet will now appear,
Tho white-flesh'd eel. Hail, brilliant luminary,
Great in my taste, and in your own good qualities.

And in his Ionian he says—

And after this were served up the rich
Entrails of roasted tunnies; then there came
Those natives of the lake, the holy eels,
Bœotian goddesses; all clothed in beet.

And in his Medea he says—

[[471]] The sweet Bœotian Copaic virgin;
For I do fear to name the Goddess.

And that the eels of the river Strymon were also celebrated, Antiphanes tells us in his Thamyras, saying—

And then your namesake river, far renown'd
In all the mouths of men, the mighty Strymon,
Who waters the rich warlike plains of Thrace,
Breeds mighty eels.

And Demetrius the Scepsian, in the sixteenth book of his Trojan Array, says that there were eels of surpassing excellence produced in the neighbourhood of the river Euleus (and this river is mentioned by Antimachus in his work entitled The Tablets, where he says—

Arriving at the springs
Where Euleus with his rapid eddies rises).

57. With respect to the ellops, some mention has already been made of him. But Archestratus also speaks in this way of him—