Already the Ancient Greek and Roman authors had a classification of fish, where eels where less snake-like, because they have pectoral fins, while the most snake-like group of fishes consisted of morrays and lampreys, both of which have neither scales nor any kind of fins, being less similar to other fish than eels.
The loss of the legs and the elongation of the body, resulting in a snake-like form has happened not only in many groups of vertebrates, including eels and morrays, caecilian amphibians, snakes and several groups of legless lizards, but also in many worms, e.g. earthworms and leeches, which evolved from ancestors with legs. Even among mammals, weasels and their relatives have evolved towards a snake-like form, though they still have short legs.