What do you say, Toxaris? Do you Scythians sacrifice to
Orestes and Pylades, and believe in
them as gods?
We sacrifice to them,
certainly; still we do not hold them to be gods,
but good men.
But is it customary with you to sacrifice to good men, too, when they die, just as you
do to the gods?
Not only that, but we keep feast-days
and holidays in their honor.
What do you hope to get from them?
Surely you don't offer sacrifice for the sake of
getting the good-will of dead men.
It is no harm to have even the dead
on your side. But we also consider that we act
for the advantage of the living by keeping the
great and good in mind, and for this reason we
honor the dead. For it is our belief that by these
means many of our people will conceive a desire
to be such men as these were.
You are right about that. But what
was it you found so admirable in Orestes and
Pylades that you raised them to equality with the
gods, though they were strangers in your land
and your bitter foes? For when the Scythians
of that day had seized them after their shipwreck
and driven them off to be sacrificed to Artemis,
they set upon the jailers, overpowered the guard,
slew the king, carried off the priestess, and actually stole the statue of Artemis herself and set
sail, laughing at the commonwealth of Scythia.
Now, if this is the sort of thing you honor the
men for, you cannot be too quick to produce many
like them. But consider yourselves what the result will be, to judge from the past—whether it is
to your advantage to have many cases of Orestes
and Pylades sailing into Scythian ports. To my
mind this would be the quickest way to become
irreverent and godless yourselves, and to banish
the surviving gods from your country. Then, I
suppose, you will transfer your devotions from
the whole body of gods to the men who come to
steal them, and sacrifice to your temple-robbers
as if they were divine.