Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/470

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STRABO.

CASAUB. 297.

who induce the men by their example to a more attentive worship of the gods, and to the observance of feast-days and supplications; for scarcely is there found a man living by himself who pays any regard to such matters. And again attend to the words of the same poet when he speaks in one of his characters, bringing in a man disgusted with the expenses^[1] of the sacrifices of the women.
“The gods weary us indeed, but especially our married men, who are always obliged to celebrate some feast.”

And his Misogynes, complaining of the same things, exclaims,
“We sacrificed five times a day, while seven female slaves ranged in a circle played on the cymbals, and others raised their suppliant cries.”

It would therefore seem absurd to suppose that only those among the Getæ who remained without wives were considered pious, but that the care of worshipping the Supreme Being is great among this nation is not to be doubted, after what Posidonius has related, “and they even abstain from animal food from religious motives,” as likewise on account of the testimony of other historians.

5. For it is said that one of the nation of the Getæ, named Zamolxis,^[2] had served Pythagoras, and had acquired with this philosopher some astronomical knowledge, in addition to what he had learned from the Egyptians, amongst whom he had travelled. He returned to his own country, and was highly esteemed both by the chief rulers and the people, on account of his predictions of astronomical phenomena, and eventually persuaded the king to unite him in the government, as an organ of the will of the gods. At first he was chosen a priest of the divinity most revered by the Getæ, but afterwards was esteemed as a god, and having retired into a district of caverns, inaccessible and unfrequented by other

↑ Kramer reads δαπάναις, which we have rendered by “expenses,” but all manuscripts have ἀπάταις. The French translation gives a note with Koray’s conjecture of δαπάναις, which is supported by a very similar passage respecting Alcibiades, where Isocrates (P. I. page 354, ed. Coray) says, “He was so lavish in the sacrifices and other expenses for the feast.” Both the French and German translations adopt the emendation.
↑ Ζάλμοξις is the reading of the Paris manuscript, No. 1393, and we should have preferred it for the text, as more likely to be a Getæan name, but for the circumstance of his being generally written Zamolxis.

[1] Kramer reads δαπάναις, which we have rendered by “expenses,” but all manuscripts have ἀπάταις. The French translation gives a note with Koray’s conjecture of δαπάναις, which is supported by a very similar passage respecting Alcibiades, where Isocrates (P. I. page 354, ed. Coray) says, “He was so lavish in the sacrifices and other expenses for the feast.” Both the French and German translations adopt the emendation.

[2] Ζάλμοξις is the reading of the Paris manuscript, No. 1393, and we should have preferred it for the text, as more likely to be a Getæan name, but for the circumstance of his being generally written Zamolxis.

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