Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/272

 25G HISTORY OF GREECE. ogy of manners and character between the rude inhabitants of the Arcadian Kynoetha 1 and the polite AL'iens, was indeed ac- companied with wide differences : yet if we compare the two with foreign contemporaries, we shall find certain negative char- acteristics, of much importance, common to both. In no city of historical Greece did there prevail either human sacrifices, 2 or deliberate mutilation, such as cutting off the nose, ears, hands, feet, etc., or castration, or selling of children into slavery, or polygamy, or the feeling of unlimited obedience towards one man : all customs which might be pointed out as existing among the contemporary Carthaginians, Egyptians, Per- sians, Thracians, 3 etc. The habit of running, wrestling, boxing, etc., in gymnastic contests, with the body perfectly naked, was common to all Greeks, having been first adopted as a Lace- daemonian fashion in the fourteenth Olympiad : Thucydides and Herodotus remark, that it was not only not practised, but even regarded as unseemly, among non-Hellens. 4 Of such customs, indeed, at once common to all the Greeks, and peculiar to them 1 Respecting the Arcadian Kynictha, see the remarkable observations of Polybius iv. 17-23. 2 See above, vol. i. ch. vi. p. 126 of this History. 3 For examples and evidences of these practice?, see Herodot. ii. 162 ; the amputation of the nose and ears of Patarbemis, by Apries, king of Egypt (Xenophon, Anab. i. 9-13). There were a large number of men deprived of hands, feet, or eyesight, in the satrapy of Cyrus the younger, who had inflicted all these severe punishments for the prevention of crime, he did not (says Xenophon) suffer criminals to scoff at him (eta Ka.Tcr/e/.av). The KKTO/ITI was carried on at Sardis (Heroilot. iii. 49), 500 TraZJef iKTopiai formed a portion of the yearly tribute paid by the Babylonians to the court of Susa (Herod, iii. 92). Selling of children for exportation by the Thra- cians (Herod, v. 6) ; there is some trace of this at Athens, prior to the Solo- nian legislation (Plutarch, Solon, 23), arising probably out of the cruel state of the law between debtor and creditor. For the sacrifice of children to Kronus by the Carthaginians, in troubled times, (according to the lan- guage of Ennius, " Poeni soliti suos sacrificare puellos,") Didor. xx. 14; xiii. 86. Porphyr. de Abstinent, ii. 56 : the practice is abuhdantly illustrated in Mover's Die Religion der Phonizicr, pp. 298-304. Arrian blames Alexander for cutting off the nose and ears of the Satrap Bessus, saying that it was an act altogether barbaric, (i. e. non-Hellenic,) (Exp. Al. iv. 7, 6.) About the acSaa/ube i9eo~3E^f irfpl rbv 8aai/Ja in Asia, see Strabo, xi. p. 526. 4 Thncyd. i 6 : Herodot. i. 10.