Toxaris, or Friendship (1-5)

MNESIPPUS What about it, Toxaris? Do you Scythians sacrifice to Orestes and Pylades, and have you come to believe that they are gods?

TOXARIS We sacrifice, Mnesippus, we sacrifice; not, however, because we think them gods, but good men.[*] MNESIPPUS Is it your custom to sacrifice to good men when they are dead, as if they were gods?

TOXARIS Not only that, but we honour them with festivals and pilgrimages.

MNESIPPUS What do you crave from them? For surely it is not to gain their grace that you sacrifice to them, in view of the fact that they are dead.

MNESIPPUS In that matter, to be sure, your judgement is sound. But as regards Orestes and Pylades, on just what ground did you so admire them, that you have put them on a parity with the gods, and that too when they were trespassers upon your soil and— what is most significant—enemies? Why, when the Scythians of that day seized them after their shipwreck and dragged them off intending to sacrifice them to Artemis, they set upon the keepers of their prison, overpowered the watch, and not only slew the king but carried off the priestess,[*] nay even kidnapped Artemis herself, and then went. sailing away, after having made a mock of the Scythian commonwealth.[*] So if that is why you honour those

If that is not why you honour Orestes and Pylades, do tell me, Toxaris, what other benefit have they done you to bring it about that although formerly you deemed them anything but gods, now, on the contrary, you have made them pass for gods by sacrificing to them, and you now bring victims to men who at that time very nearly became victims ? This conduct, you know, might be thought ridiculous and inconsistent with that of former times.

TOXARIS As a matter of fact, Mnesippus, even these actions that you have described evince nobility in those men. That two should dare so bold a deed; that they should sail so far from their own country as to cruise out into the Pontus (still unexplored by any of the Greeks except the force that fared upon the Argo to Colchis) undismayed either by the fables regarding it or by its name through any terror inspired by the fact that it was called ‘ Inhospitable” (I suppose because savage peoples dwelt

MNESIPPUS Please go on and say what else they did that is imposing and godlike ; since as far as concerns their voyage and their foreign travel I could point you many who are more godlike than they—the merchant traders, and particularly the Phoenicians among them, who not only sail into the Pontus or as far as Lake Maeotis and the Cimmerian Bosporus,[*] but cruise everywhere in Greek and foreign waters; for these fellows comb every single shore and every strand, you may say, each year before returning late in the autumn to their own country. On the same principle, you should account them gods, even though most of them are pedlars and, it may be, fishmongers !

TOXARIS Listen then, you amazing fellow, and learn how much more generously than you Greeks we barbarians judge good men. In Argos and Mycenae there is not even a respectable tomb of Orestes or