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 Egyptians,[596] as sacred to Artemis in the spring of Arethusa,[597] and semi-sacred by the Bœotians.[598]
Antiphanes[599] 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 of an Eel at Athens we have to spend twelve drachmæ or more!” Anaxandrides’[600] 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 Lepidotus, or the Phagrus, the so-called Eel—three sacred fishes of the Nile.
“Illic æluros, 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 Muræna 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.[601]
“Vos anguillæ manet longæ cognata colubræ” (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.[602]
The passage in Menander’s,[603] Drunkenness which makes one of the characters declaim that, were he a god, he would never allow a loin of beef to load his altars, unless an Eel were also sacrificed, testifies to the preference for the Eel to meat. Numerous are the pæans of praise rendered by Greek writers to the superlative excellence of the fish.
The Eel is dight “the King of fish”[604]; he, or rather she, was “the white-skinned Nymph”[605]; was “chief of the fifty Virgins of Lake Copaïs”[606]; was a very “Goddess,”