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

We sacrifice, Mnesippus, we sacrifice; not, however, because we think them gods, but good men.

The existence of a cult of Orestes and Pylades in Scythia is not otherwise attested, and is credible only in a limited sense, as a local development of Greek hero-worship; see below, on the Oresteum, § 6.

Is it your custom to sacrifice to good men when they are dead, as if they were gods?

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

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. Well, we should be none the worse off, perhaps, if even the dead should be gracious to us. However, we think it will be better for the living if we do not forget men of high achievement, and we honour them after death because we consider that in this way we can get many to wish to become like them.

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,

Both here and below in § 6 Lucian omits as self-understood the point that Orestes discovers the priestess to be his sister Iphigenia, previously thought to have perished at Aulis under the sacrificial knife.

nay even kidnapped Artemis herself, and then went. sailing away, after having made a mock of the Scythian commonwealth.

In the point that this version of the story makes the Greeks escape by overpowering the Scythians and killing Thoas, their king, it differs significantly both from Euripides in the Iphigenia among the Taurians and from Sophocles in the Chryses, in which Thoas was killed, to be sure, but only after they had somehow got away and he had overtaken them at “Sminthe,” whose ruler, Chryses, turning out to be the son of Agamemnon and Chryseis, and so the half-brother of Orestes and Iphigenia, aids them to kill their pursuer. Elsewhere in extant ancient literature the Lucianic version is found only in Servius and in accounts derived from him (Serv. in Aen., II, 216; cf. [Hyginus], 261, and Mythogr. Vat., II, 202). It may have been the accepted version of the cult of Diana at Aricia (Preller, Robert), but cannot be of Latin origin. It is surely the early version, effaced in the literary tradition by the influence of Euripides, but perpetuated (as early myths often were) in art through a painting by some famous Hellenistic master, later reflected not only in Graeco- Roman sarcophagus-reliefs but in the murals of some Graeco- Scythian Oresteum (§6). Lucian’s knowledge of it may safely be ascribed to an allusion to those murals in the literary source from which he derives the curious mixture of fact and fiction in § 6.

So if that is why you honour those heroes, you will very soon produce many like them! Draw the conclusion for yourselves in the light of what happened of old whether it is desirable for you that many an Orestes and Pylades should descend upon Scythia. To me it seems that very soon, under those conditions, you would become irreligious yourselves, yes, godless, after the remainder of your gods had been similarly shipped out of the country to foreign parts. And then, I suppose, in place of the whole company of gods, you will deify the men who came to obtain them for export and will sacrifice to the robbers of your temples as gods!

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.

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 all about it);

According to Apollodorus (Strabo, VII, 298-299) the Pontus was at first called Azeinos (“Inhospitable”) because of its storminess and the ferocity of the tribes that surrounded it; later, after the Ionian settlements on its coast, it was called Huxeinos (“Hospitable”). Pindar knows both names (Pyth., IV, 203; Nem. IV, 49).

that after their capture they faced the situation so courageously, and were not content simply to make their escape but punished the king for his insolence and took Artemis with them when they sailed away—why is not all this admirable and worthy of divine honour in some sort from all who praise manhood? Yet that is not what we see in Orestes and Pylades, to treat them as heroes.

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,

The Sea of Azov and the Straits of Kertsch.

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!

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 Pylades to be seen, but among us a temple has been assigned them, to both together, as was reasonable since they were comrades, and sacrifices are offered them, and all sorts of honours besides. The fact that they were not Scythians but foreigners is no hindrance to their having been accounted good men and their being cherished by the foremost Scythians; for we do not enquire what country proper men come from, nor do we bear a grudge if men who are not friendly have done noble deeds; we commend what they have accomplished and count them our own in virtue of their achievements. What especially impressed us in these men and gains our commendation is this: it seemed to us that as friends they, surely, had proved themselves the best in the world, and had established precedents for everyone else in regard to the way in which friends should share all their fortunes.