# On Sacrifices

Lucian, vol. III. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd, pages 155–171.
​In view of what the dolts do at their sacrifices and their feasts and processions in honour of the gods, what they pray for and vow, and what opinions they hold about the gods, I doubt if anyone is so gloomy and woe-begone that he will not laugh to see the idiocy of their actions. Indeed, long before he laughs, I think, he will ask himself whether he should call them devout or, on the contrary, irreligious and pestilent, inasmuch as they have taken it for granted that the gods are so low and mean as to stand in need of men and to enjoy being flattered and to get angry when they are slighted.
Anyhow, the Aetolian incidents — the hardships of the Calydonians, all the violent deaths, and the dissolution of Meleager — were all due, they say, to Artemis, who held a grudge because she had not been included in Oeneus' invitation to his sacrifice; so deeply was she impressed by the superiority of his victims! Methinks I can see her in Heaven then, left all by herself when the other gods and goddesses had gone to the house of Oeneus, fussing and scolding about being left out of such a feast!
​The Ethiopians, on the other hand, may well be called happy and thrice-blessed, if Zeus is really paying them back for the kindness that they showed him in dining him for twelve days running, and that too when he brought along the other gods!
So nothing, it seems, that they do is done without compensation. They sell men their blessings, and one can buy from them health, it may be, for a calf, wealth for four oxen, a royal throne for a hundred, a safe return from Troy to Pylos for nine bulls, and a fair voyage from Aulis to Troy for a king's daughter! Hecuba, you know, purchased temporary immunity for Troy from Athena for twelve oxen and a frock. One may imagine, too, that they have many things on sale for the price of a cock or a wreath or nothing more than incense.
Chryses knew this, I suppose, being a priest and an old man and wise in the ways of the gods; so when he came away from Agamemnon unsuccessful, it was just as if he had loaned his good works to Apollo; he took him to task, demanded his due, and all but insulted him, saying: “My good Apollo, I have often dressed your temple with wreaths when it lacked them before, and have burned in your honour all those thighs of bulls and goats upon your altars, but you neglect me when I am in such straits and take no account of your benefactor.” Consequently, he so discomfited Apollo by his talk that he ​caught up his bow and arrows, sat himself down above the ships, and shot down the Achaeans with the plague, even to their mules and dogs.
Having once alluded to Apollo, I wish to mention something else that gifted men say about him, not his misfortunes in love, such as the slaying of Hyacinthus and the superciliousness of Daphne, but that when he was found guilty of killing the Cyclopes and was banished from Heaven on account of it, he was sent to earth to try the lot of a mortal. On this occasion he actually became a serf in Thessaly under Admetus and in Phrygia under Laomedon, where, to be sure, he was not alone, but had Poseidon with him; and both of them were so poor that they had to make bricks and work upon the wall; what is more, they did not even get full pay from the Phrygian, who owed them, it is said, a balance of more than thirty Trojan drachmas!
Is it not true that the poets gravely tell these tales about the gods, and others, too, far more hallowed than these, about Hephaestus, Prometheus, Cronus, Rhea and almost the whole family of Zeus? Yet, in beginning their poems, they invite the Muses to join their song! Inspired, no doubt, by the Muses, they sing that as soon as Cronus had castrated his father Heaven, he became king there and devoured his own children, like the Argive Thyestes in later time; that Zeus, stolen away by Rhea, who put the stone in his place, and abandoned in Crete, was nursed by a nanny-goat (just as ​Telephus was nursed by a doe and the Persian, Cyrus the Elder, by a bitch) and then drove his father out, threw him into prison, and held the sovereignty himself; that, in addition to many other wives, he at last married his sister, following the laws of the Persians and the Assyrians; that, being passionate and prone to the pleasures of love, he soon filled Heaven with children, some of whom he got by his equals in station and some illegitimately of mortal, earthly stock, now turning into gold, this gallant squire, now into a bull or a swan or an eagle, and in short, showing himself more changeable than even Proteus; and that Athena was the only one to be born of his head, conceived at the very root of his brain, for as to Dionysus, they say, Zeus took him prematurely from his mother while she was still ablaze, implanted him hastily in his own thigh, and cut him out when labour came on.
Their rhapsodies about Hera are of similar tenor, that without intercourse with her husband she became the mother of a wind-child, Hephaestus, who, however, is not in great luck, but works at the blacksmith's trade over a fire, living in smoke most of the time and covered with cinders, as is natural with a forge-tender; moreover, he is not even straight-limbed, as he was lamed by his fall when Zeus threw him out of Heaven. In fact, if the Lemnians had not obligingly caught him while he was still in the air, we should have had our Hephaestus killed just like Astyanax when he fell from the battlements.
​But Hephaestus came off quite well beside Prometheus. Who does not know what happened to him because he was too philanthropic? Taking him to Scythia, Zeus pegged him out on the Caucasus and posted an eagle at his side to peck at his liver every day.
Prometheus, then, received a sentence and served it out, but what about Rhea? One must surely speak of this also. Does not she misconduct herself and behave dreadfully? Although she is an old woman, past her best years, the mother of so many gods, nevertheless she still has a love affair with a boy and is jealous, and she takes Attis about with her behind her lions, in spite of the fact that he cannot be of any use to her now. So how can one find fault with Aphrodite for being unfaithful to her husband, or with Selene for going down to visit Endymion time and again in the middle of her journey?
Come, dismissing this topic, let us go up to Heaven itself, soaring up poet-fashion by the same route as Homer and Hesiod, and let us see how they have arranged things on high. That it is bronze on the outside we learned from Homer, who anticipated us in saying so. But when one climbs over the edge, puts up one's head a little way into the world above, and really gets up on the “back”, the light is brighter, the sun is clearer, the stars are shinier, it is day everywhere, and the ground is of gold. As you go in, the Hours live in the first house, for they are the warders of the gate; then come Iris and Hermes, who are attendants and messengers of Zeus; next, there is the smithy of Hephaestus, filled with works of art of every kind, and after that, ​the houses of the gods and the palace of Zeus, all very handsomely built by Hephaestus. "The gods, assembled in the house of Zeus" — it is in order, I take it, to elevate one's diction when one is on high-look off at the earth and gaze about in every direction, leaning down to see if they can see fire being lighted anywhere, or steam drifting up to them "about the smoke entwined." If anybody sacrifices, they all have a feast, opening their mouths for the smoke and drinking the blood that is spilt at the altars, just like flies; but if they dine at home, their meal is nectar and ambrosia. In days of old, men used to dine and drink with them — Ixion and Tantalus — but as they behaved shockingly and talked too much, they are still undergoing punishment to this day, and there is now no admission for human beings to Heaven, which is strictly private.
That is the way the gods live, and as a result, the practices of men in the matter of divine worship are harmonious and consistent with all that. First they fenced off groves, dedicated mountains, consecrated birds and assigned plants to each god. Then they divided them up, and now worship them by nations and claim them as fellow-countrymen; the Delphians claim Apollo, and so do the Delians, the Athenians Athena (in fact, she proves her kinship by her name), the Argives Hera the Mygdonians Rhea, the Paphians Aphrodite. As for the Cretans, they not only say that Zeus was born and brought up among them, but even point out his tomb. We were mistaken all this while, then, in thinking that thunder ​and rain and everything else comes from Zeus; if we had but known it, he has been dead and buried in Crete this long time!
Then too they erect temples, in order that the gods may not be houseless and hearthless, of course; and they fashion images in their likeness, sending for a Praxiteles or a Polycleitus or a Phidias, who have caught sight of them somewhere and represent Zeus as a bearded man, Apollo as a perennial boy, Hermes with his first moustaclie, Poseidon with sea-blue hair and Athena with green eyes! In spite of all, those who enter the temple think that what they behold is not now ivory from India nor gold mined in Thrace, but the very son of Cronus and Rhea, transported to earth by Phidias and bidden to be overlord of deserted Pisa, thinking himself lucky if he gets a sacrifice once in four long years as an incident to the Olympic games.
When they have established altars and formulae and lustral rites, they present their sacrifices, the farmer an ox from the plough, the shepherd a lamb, the goatherd a goat, someone else incense or a cake; the poor man, however, propitiates the god by just kissing his own hand. But those who offer victims (to come back to them) deck the animal with garlands, after finding out far in advance whether it is perfect or not, in order that they may not kill something that is of no use to them; then they bring it to the altar and slaughter it under the god's eyes, while it bellows plaintively — making, we must suppose, auspicious sounds, and fluting low music to accompany the sacrifice ! Who would not suppose that ​the gods like to see all this? And although the notice says that no one is to be allowed within the holy-water who has not clean hands, the priest himself stands there all bloody, just like the Cyclops of old, cutting up the victim, removing the entrails, plucking out the heart, pouring the blood about the altar, and doing everything possible in the way of piety. To crown it all, he lights a fire and puts upon it the goat, skin and all, and the sheep, wool and all; and the smoke, divine and holy, mounts upward and gradually dissipates into Heaven itself.
The Scythians, indeed, reject all the sacrificial animals and think them too mean; they actually offer men to Artemis and by so doing gratify the goddess!
These practices are all very well, no doubt, and also those of the Assyrians and those of the Phrygians and Lydians; but if you go to Egypt, then, ah! then you will see much that is venerable and truly in keeping with Heaven — Zeus with the head of a ram, good Hermes with the head of a dog, Pan completely metamorphosed into a goat, some other god into an ibis, another into a crocodile, another into a monkey!
Wouldst thou enquire the cause of these doings in order to know it,”
you will hear plenty of men of letters and scribes and shaven prophets say — but first of all, as the saying goes, “Uninitiate, shut up your doors!” — that ​on the eve of the war, the revolt of the giants, the gods were panic-stricken and came to Egypt, thinking that surely there they could hide from their enemies; and then one of them in his terror entered into a goat, another into a ram, and others into other beasts or birds; so of course the gods still keep the forms they took then. All this, naturally, is on record in the temples, having been committed to writing more than ten thousand years ago!
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.
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? 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!
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.
* ↑ Iliad 1, 33 ff.
* ↑ Of Troy.
* ↑ The notion that the Lemnians caught Hephaestus as he fell is Lucian's own contribution. He expects his audience to be aware that he is giving them a sly misinterpretation of Homer's ἄφαρ κομίσαντο πεσόντα (Iliad, 1, 594).
* ↑ Plato, Phaedrus 247 b. Cf. p. 147.
* ↑ Iliad 4, 1.
* ↑ Iliad 1, 317.
* ↑ Cf. Saltat. 17.
* ↑ Iliad 6, 150.
* ↑ An oft-quoted tag from a lost Orphic poem. Those who have not been initiated in the mysteries are required to go into their houses and close the doors, because the emblems of Dionysus are going to pass through the streets.
* ↑ 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.