15
Sacrifices are the same there as with us, except that they mourn over the victim, standing about it and beating their breasts after it has been slain. In some cases they even bury it after simply cutting its throat.
15
And if Apis, the greatest of their gods, dies, who is there who thinks so much of his hair that he does not shave it off and baldly show his mourning on his head, even if he has the purple tress of Nisus?Nisus, king of Megara, had something in common with Samson, for as long as the purple tress remained where it belonged, his city was safe. Ovid (Metam. 8, 1-151) tells how his daughter robbed him of it, and became Scylla. But Apis is a god out of the herd, chosen to succeed the former Apis on the ground that he is far more handsome and majestic than the run of cattle!
15
Actions and beliefs like these on the part of the public seem to me to require, not someone to censure them, but a Heracleitus or a Democritus, the one to laugh at their ignorance, the other to bewail their folly.
