I never could myself your comrade be, For neither do our manners nor our laws Agree with yours, but they are wholly different. You do adore an ox; I sacrifice him To the great Gods of heaven. You do think An eel the mightiest of deities; But we do eat him as the best of fish. You eat no pork; I like it above all things. You do adore a dog; but I do beat him If e'er I catch him stealing any meat. Then our laws enjoin the priests to be Most perfect men; but yours are mutilated. If you do see a cat in any grief You weep; but I first kill him and then skin him. You have a great opinion of the shrew-mouse; But I have none at all. And Timocles, in his Egyptians, says— How can an ibis or a dog be able To save a man? For where with impious hearts Men sin against the all-acknowledged Gods, And yet escape unpunish'd, who can think The altar of a cat will be more holy, Or prompter to avenge itself, than they? 56. But that men used to wrap eels up in beet, and then eat them, is a fact constantly alluded to in the poets of the old comedy; and Eubulus says in his Echo— The nymph who never knew the joys of marriage, Clothed with rosy beet will now appear, The 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— [Sidenote: EELS.] 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— The best of ellopes which you can eat Come from the bay of famous Syracuse. Those eat whene'er you can. For that's the place Whence this great fish originally came. But those which are around the islands caught, Or any other land, or nigh to Crete, Too long have battled with the eddying currents, And so are thin and harder to the taste.