From This City Many Go Abroad In
Various Directions, Some To One City And Others To Another, And When
They Have Dug Up The Bones Of The Oxen They Carry Them Off, And Coming
Together They Bury Them In One Single Place.
In the same manner as
they bury the oxen they bury also their other cattle when they die;
for about them also they have the same law laid down, and these also
they abstain from killing.
Now all who have a temple set up to the Theban Zeus or who are of the
district of Thebes, these, I say, all sacrifice goats and abstain from
sheep: for not all the Egyptians equally reverence the same gods,
except only Isis and Osiris (who they say is Dionysos), these they all
reverence alike: but they who have a temple of Mendes or belong to the
Mendesian district, these abstain from goats and sacrifice sheep. Now
the men of Thebes and those who after their example abstain from
sheep, say that this custom was established among them for the cause
which follows: - Heracles (they say) had an earnest desire to see Zeus,
and Zeus did not desire to be seen of him; and at last when Heracles
was urgent in entreaty Zeus contrived this device, that is to say, he
flayed a ram and held in front of him the head of the ram which he had
cut off, and he put on over him the fleece and then showed himself to
him.
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