Toxaris, or Friendship (6-10)

All that the went through in each other’s company or for eac other’s sake our ancestors inscribed on a tablet of bronze which they set up in the Oresteum;[*] and they made it the law that the first study and lesson for

their children should be this tablet and the memorising of all that had been written upon it. In point of fact, every one of them would sooner forget the name of his own father than fail to know the achievements of Orestes and Pylades. But in the temple close, too, the very same matters that are set forth on the tablet are to be seen represented in paintings by the ancients; Orestes voyaging with his friend, and then, after his ship had been destroyed on the rocks, his arrest and preparation for the sacrifice; Iphigenia is already consecrating them. Opposite this, on the other wall, he is depicted as just out of his fetters, slaying Thoas and many more of the Scythians. Finally, they are sailing off, with Iphigenia and the goddess; the Scythians meanwhile are vainly laying hold of the ship, which is already under way, hanging to the rudders and trying to get aboard; then, unable to accomplish anything, they swim back to land, some of them because they are wounded, others for fear of that. It is just there that one may see how much good-will they displayed in each other’s interest; I mean, in the engagement with the Scythians. For the artist has portrayed each of them paying no heed to the foemen opposite himself, but encountering those who are assailing the other, trying to meet their missiles in his stead, and counting it nothing to die if he saves his friend and intercepts with his own body the stroke that is being directed at the other.

That great good-will of theirs, that common front amid those perils, that faithfulness and comradely

love, that genuineness and solidity of their affection for one another were not, we thought, of this world, but marked a spirit too noble for these men about us of the common sort, who, as long as the course of their friends is with the wind, take it ill if they do not give them an equal share in all their delights, but if even a slight breath sets against them, they bear away, entirely abandoning them to their perils. For I would have you know this also—Scythians think that there is nothing greater than friendship, and there is not anything upon which a Scythian will pride himself more than on aiding a friend and sharing his dangers, just as there is no greater disgrace among us than to bear the name of having played false to friendship. That is why we honour Orestes and Pylades, because they practised best what Scythians hold good, and excelled in friendship, an achievement which we admire before all things else; in token whereof we have given them the name of Korakoi to go by, which in our language is as much as to say “guiding spirits of friendship.”

MNESIPPUS Toxaris, it has turned out that Scythians are not only good archers and better than all others in warfare, but the most convincing of all peoples at making speeches. Anyhow, I, who formerly had a different opinion, now myself think you do right in thus deifying Orestes and Pylades. And I had failed, my accomplished friend, to grasp the fact that you are also a good painter. Very animated indeed was the sketch

that you drew for us of the pictures in the Oresteum, of the fighting of your heroes, and the wounds that each bore for the other. However, I should not have expected friendship to be so highly cherished among the Scythians, for as they are inhospitable and uncivilised I thought that they always were well acquainted with hatred, anger, and bad humour but did not enter into friendship even with their closest kin, judging by all that we hear about them, and especially the report that they eat their dead fathers![*]

TOXARIS Whether we are in general not only more just than the Greeks towards our parents but more reverential is a question which I would rather not debate with you at present. But that Scythian friends are far more faithful than Greek friends and that friendship matters more with us than with you is easily demonstrated; and in the name of your Gods of Greece, do not listen to me with displeasure if I mention one of the observations which I have made after having lived with your people for a long time now. It seems to me that you Greeks can indeed say all that is to be said about friendship better than others, but not only fail to practise its works in a manner that befits your words,—no, you are content to have praised it and shown what a very good thing it is, but in its times of need you play traitor to your words about it and beat a hasty retreat, somehow or other, out of the press of deeds. And whenever your tragedians put friendships of this kind on

the stage and exhibit them to you, you bestow praise and applause, yes, even tears upon them, most of you, when they face danger for each other’s sake; yet you yourselves dare not come out with any praiseworthy deed for the sake of your friends. On the contrary, if a friend happens to stand in need of anything, those many tragic histories take wing and vanish from your path on the instant, like dreams, and leave you looking like those empty, silent masks which, for all their open mouths, widely agape, do not utter even the slightest sound. We are your opposites; for we have as much the better of you in practising friendship as we fall short of you in talking about it.

If you like, then, let us do this; let us leave the friends of former times to rest in peace, whomsoever, I mean, of the ancients either we or you are able to enumerate; for there, to be sure, you would outdo us by citing many trustworthy witnesses, your poets, who have rehearsed in the most beautiful of epic lines and lyric verses the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus and the comradeship of Theseus, Peirithous, and all the rest. Instead, let us take up just a few of our own contemporaries and recount their deeds, I for the Scythian side, you for the Greek; then whichever of us wins in this by bringing out better of friendship shall not only be adjudged victor himself but shall be allowed to name his country in the proclamation, inasmuch as he will have taken part in a right glorious and noble contest. For my own part, I think I would

much rather be defeated in single combat and have my right hand cut off, which is the penalty for defeat in Scythia, than to be pronounced inferior to anyone else in the matter of friendship, and above all to a Greek, when I am myself a Scythian.