The Mendesians Then
Reverence All Goats And The Males More Than The Females (And The
Goatherds Too Have Greater Honour Than Other Herdsmen), But Of The
Goats One Especially Is Reverenced, And When He Dies There Is Great
Mourning In All The Mendesian District:
And both the goat and Pan are
called in the Egyptian tongue /Mendes/.
Moreover in my lifetime there
happened in that district this marvel, that is to say a he-goat had
intercourse with a woman publicly, and this was so done that all men
might have evidence of it.
The pig is accounted by the Egyptians an abominable animal; and first,
if any of them in passing by touch a pig, he goes into the river and
dips himself forthwith in the water together with his garments; and
then too swineherds, though they may be native Egyptians, unlike all
others, do not enter any of the temples in Egypt, nor is anyone
willing to give his daughter in marriage to one of them or to take a
wife from among them; but the swineherds both give in marriage to one
another and take from one another. Now to the other gods the Egyptians
do not think it right to sacrifice swine; but to the Moon and to
Dionysos alone at the same time and on the same full-moon they
sacrifice swine, and then eat their flesh: and as to the reason why,
when they abominate swine at all their other feasts, they sacrifice
them at this, there is a story told by the Egyptians; and this story I
know, but it is not a seemly one for me to tell. Now the sacrifice of
the swine to the Moon is performed as follows: - when the priest has
slain the victim, he puts together the end of the tail and the spleen
and the caul, and covers them up with the whole of the fat of the
animal which is about the paunch, and then he offers them with fire;
and the rest of the flesh they eat on that day of full moon upon which
they have held sacrifice, but on any day after this they will not
taste of it: the poor however among them by reason of the scantiness
of their means shape pigs of dough and having baked them they offer
these as a sacrifice. Then for Dionysos on the eve of the festival
each one kills a pig by cutting its throat before his own doors, and
after that he gives the pig to the swineherd who sold it to him, to
carry away again; and the rest of the feast of Dionysos is celebrated
by the Egyptians in the same way as by the Hellenes in almost all
things except choral dances, but instead of the /phallos/ they have
invented another contrivance, namely figures of about a cubit in
height worked by strings, which women carry about the villages, with
the privy member made to move and not much less in size than the rest
of the body:
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