LXXI. 1. But such is not mify the case; bat.

while mouming for the grain, tliejr prmy the Gods^ the authors and givers [of it], to renew it agais and make other grow up in the place of that ifinch is consumed.
2. Whence there is an excellent aaTing among the phUoeophers, that those who do not leam how to hear names rightly, use things wrongly. Just as thoee of the Greeks who have not learned or accustomed themaehes to call bronzes and pictures and marbles images in honour of the Gods, but [call them] Gods, [and] then make bold to say that L%chares stripped Athena, and Dionysius cut off Apollo's golden curls, and that Capitoline Zeus was burnt and perished in the (StQ Wars, — these without knowing it find themaelTeB drawn into adopting mischievous opinions following [directly] on the [abuse of] names.
3. And this is especially the case of Egyptians with regard to the honours they pay to animah For in this respect, at anyrate, Greeks speak rightly when they consider the dove as the sacred creature of Aphrodite, and the dragon of Athena, and the raven of Apollo, and the dog of Artemis, as Euripides [sings] :
Thou shalt be dog, pet of toreh-bearing Hecate.'
4. Whereas most of the Egyptians, by the aervioe and cult they pay to the animals themselvea as thou^ they were Gods, have not only covered their sacred rites entirely with laughter and ridicule — ^which ia the least evil of their fatuity; but a dangerous wmy of thinking grows up which perverts the weak and aimple to pure superstition, and, in the case of the shrewder and bolder, degenerates into an atheistic and brutal rationalism.
1 Nauck, p. 525.
THS MYSTERIES OF ISIS AND OSIRIS 353
5. Wherefore, also, it is not unfitting to run through the conjectures about these things.^
CONCIBNIKO THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS, AND TOTBMISM
LXXIL 1. As for the [theory] that the Oods out of fear of Tjphon changed themselves into these animals — as it were hiding themselves in the bodies of ibises and dogs and hawks — it beats any juggling or story-telling.
2. Also the [theory] that all the souls of the dead that persist, have their rebirth* into these [animals] only, is equally incredible.
3. And of those who would assign some reason connected with the art of government, some say that Osiris upon his great campaign,' divided his force into many divisions — (they call them companies and squadrons in Greek) — and gave them all ensigns of animal figures, and that each of these became sacred and venerated by the clan of those banded together under it.
4. Others [say] that the kings after [Osiris], in order
^ Dr Budge (op. cU.^ i 29) writes : texts as we have . . . seem to show that the Egyptians first worshipped animals as animals, and nothing more, and later as the habitations of divine spirits and gods ; but there is no reason for thinking that the animal worship of the Egyptians was descended from a system of totems and fetishes as Mr J. F. M*Lennan (Fortnightly Beview, 1809-1870) believed." I believe myself that the Egyptian animal-cnlt depended chiefly on the fact that life flowed differently in different animal forms, corre- sponding with the life-currents in the invisible forms or aspects of the Animal-Soul of the Cosmos.
* Se. for civilising the world.
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to strike terror into thor foes, oaed to appetr dioMed in wild beasts' heads of goM and sQ^er.
5. While others tell us that one of the clever and craftj kings, on learning that, though the Egjptiiot were fickle by nature and quick for change and innova- tion, they nevertheless possessed an invincible and unrestrainable might owing to their numbers when in agreement and co-operation, showed them and implantsd into their minds an enduring superstition, — an occasion of unceasing disagreement.
6. For in as much as the beasts — some of which he enacted some [clans] should honour and venerate and others others — are hostile and inimical to one another, and as each one of them bj nature likes different food from the others, each [clan] in protecting its own special [beasts] and growing angry at their being injured, was for ever unconsciously being drawn into the enmities of the beasts, and [so] brought into a state of warfare with the others.
7. For even unto this day the people of Wolf-town are the only Egyptians who eat sheep, because the wolf, whom they regard as god, [does so].
8. And the people of Ozyrhynchus-town, in our own day, when the folk of Dog-town ate the ozyrhyn- chus ^ fish, caught a dog and sacrificing it as a Baicnd victim, ate it ; and going to war because of this, tb^ handled one another roughly, and subsequently were roughly handled by the Somans in punishment.*