[594] Equites, 864 ff.
[595] 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.
[596] Herodotus, II. 72, who states that it was sacred to the Nile.
[597] Ælian, VIII. 4; Plutarch, Mor., 976A. [See Chapter XVI]. ante.
[598] Athenæus, VII. 50.
[599] Antiphan., Lykon frag. 1, 1 ff., ap. Athen., 755.
[600] Anaxandr., Πόλεις, frag. 1, 5 f.; ap. Athen., 7, 55.
[601] Contrast with the Greeks and Romans the abstention from the Murænidæ 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 it a 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, Names and Histories (London, 1896), s.v. Ely, states that rents were there paid in Eels.
[602] Care must be taken to distinguish between the Eel, ἔγχελυς, of the Greeks, Anguilla of the Romans, and the so-called Lamprey, μύραινα, or Muræna. Although both belong to the large family of Murænidæ, the Muræna is usually a much smaller fish, seldom over 2½ feet long. In shape and general appearance it closely resembles the Eel, but can be differentiated by its teeth and certain spots over the body. It becomes very corpulent, so much so that in late life it is unable to keep its back under water: it is easier to flay, and whiter of flesh than its relative. Apart from its mating with the viper, and its tendency (teste Columella) to go mad, its chief characteristics are greed and fierceness of attack. The second book of Oppian has two really spirited pictures of its fight with, and conquest of, the Cuttle fish, and of its rush at, but eventual defeat by, the Lobster. At Athens the Eel, at Rome the Muræna, was the favourite.