Toxaris vel amicitia

Lucian of Samosata

Selections from Lucian. Smith, Emily James, translators. New York; Harper Brothers, 1892.

Mnesippos What do you say, Toxaris? Do you Scythians sacrifice to Orestes and Pylades, and believe in them as gods?

Toxaris We sacrifice to them, certainly; still we do not hold them to be gods, but good men.

Mnesippos But is it customary with you to sacrifice to good men, too, when they die, just as you do to the gods?

Toxaris Not only that, but we keep feast-days and holidays in their honor.

Mnesippos 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.

Toxaris 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.

Mnesippos You are right about that. But what was it you found so admirable in Orestes and

p.190

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.