26
And they have good reason for this belief; for Busiris established for them numerous and varied practices of piety and ordered them by law even to worship and to revere certain animals which among us are regarded with contempt, not because he misapprehended their power, but because he thought that the crowd ought to be habituated to obedience to all the commands of those in authority,
27
and at the same time he wished to test in visible matters how they felt in regard to the invisible. For he judged that those who belittled these instructions would perhaps look with contempt upon the more important commands also, but that those who gave strict obedience equally in everything would have given proof of their steadfast piety.
28
If one were not determined to make haste, one might cite many admirable instances of the piety of the Egyptians, that piety which I am neither the first nor the only one to have observed; on the contrary, many contemporaries and predecessors have remarked it, of whom Pythagoras of Samos is oneThe celebrated philosopher; cf. Hdt. 4.95. On a visit to Egypt he became a student of the religion of the people, and was first to bring to the Greeks all philosophy, and more conspicuously than others he seriously interested himself in sacrifices and in ceremonial purity, since he believed that even if he should gain thereby no greater reward from the gods, among men, at any rate, his reputation would be greatly enhanced.
