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; Nothing could be more natural than for some Graeco- Scythian city in South Russia (Crimea?) to have had an Oresteum like this, with a set of murals commemorating the exploits of Orestes and Pylades. Indeed, the existence of the paintings is practically guaranteed by two considerations: they represent a version of the story of Orestes among the Taurians that is not known to us prior to Lucian except in art; and that version, involving as it does his killing of the king, is not likely to have been preferred to the Euripidean by Lucian for his present purpose, if the paintings were imaginary. Here there seems to be a core of fact which Lucian can have derived only from some previous writer; and we may perhaps also safely believe that the deified heroes obtained sufficient prestige among the native part of the population of the city and its environs to gain them a Scythian name (Korakoi: §7 end). Compare the Herodotean tale (IV, 103) of the worship of Iphigenia among the Taurians. This kernel of fact, however, has been enveloped in a hull of fiction by transporting the sanctuary to a mythical Scythian capital without a name and making it the focus of a great national cult of friendship—a happy conceit in view of the custom of swearing “blood-brotherhood” (§ 37), but sheer fiction none the less. It is perhaps possible that Lucian drew the fact from some Hellenistic AListorian and supplied the fiction himself; but it is more likely that he found both already combined in his source, and connected with one or more of the tales of Scythian friendship that he puts into the mouth of Toxaris (cf. especially p. 173, n. 2). 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! Alluded to also in Funerals, 21 (IV, p. 126). Cf. Herodotus, IV, 26 (of the Issedones), and I, 216 (of the Massagetae). 
 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.