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BOOK I, CHAPTER XXX 267
under such conditions that they are genuine afflictions, and are attended by poignant suffering; (4) not as happened with one Gallio, who having been banished to the island of Lesbos, it became known at Rome that he was enjoying himself there, and that what had been allotted to him as a punishment had become a source of pleasure; wherefore they determined to recall him to his wife and his own house, and ordered him to remain there, so as to adapt his punish- ment to his state of mind. (¢) For to him whose health and spirits were improved by fasting, or to whom fish was more appetising than meat, these would be no salutary prescrip- tions; no more than, in the other kind of medicine, drugs which have no effect on him who takes them with liking and pleasure. Bitterness and distaste are conditions that facili- tate their operation. The constitution which welcomed rhu- barb as familiar would vitiate its use; we must take some- thing that offends our stomach, to cure it; and here the common rule fails, that things are cured by their opposites: for one ill cures another.? (4) This belief is in some sort re- lated to that other so ancient one, the thought that heaven and nature were gratified by our massacring and murdering, which was universally included in all religions. (c) Even in our fathers’ days Amurat,? at the taking of Isthmia, sacri- ficed six hundred Greek youths to his father’s soul, that their blood might serve as propitiation, in expiation of the sins of the departed. (4) And in the new regions discovered in our time, still pure and undefiled in comparison with our own, this custom is received everywhere to some extent: all their idols are sprinkled with human blood, not without divers in- stances of horrible cruelty. The victims are burned alive, and when half roasted, are taken from the bed of coals, in order to have their heart and entrails torn out. Others, even women, are flayed alive, and with their bloody skins others are clothed and disguised. And not less are there examples of endurance and resolution: for the poor creatures who are to be sacrificed, old men, women, and children, go about for
1 See Tacitus, Annals, VI, 3.
1 The chapter ended here in the editions before 1588.
- Amurath II. See Chalcondylas, History of the Fall of the Grecian
Empire, VII, 4.