Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/410

388 poor men's children, as if they were lambs, young calves, or kids, for the said purpose. At which sacrifice the mother that bare them in her womb would stand by without any shew at all of being moved, without weeping or sighing for pity and compassion; for otherwise, if she either fetched a sigh or shed a tear, she must lose the price of her child, and yet notwithstanding suffer it to be slain and sacrificed. Moreover, before and all about the image or idol to which the sacrifice was made, the place resounded and rung again with the noise of flutes and hautboys, with the sound also of drums and timbrels, to the end that the pitiful cry of the poor infants should not be heard. Now if any Tryphones or other such-like giants, having chased and driven out the gods, should usurp the empire of the world and rule over us, what other sacrifices would they delight in, or what offerings else and service besides could they require at men's hands? Amestries, the wife of the great monarch Xerxes, buried quick in the ground twelve persons, and offered them for the prolonging of her own life unto Pluto; which god (as Plato said) was named Pluto, Dis and Hades, for that being full of humanity unto mankind, wise and rich besides, he was able to entertain the souls of men with persuasive speeches and reasonable remonstrances.

Xenophanes the naturalist, seeing the Egyptians at their solemn feasts knocking their breasts and lamenting piteously, admonished them very fitly in this wise: My good friends, if these (quoth he) be gods whom you honour thus, lament not for them; and if they be men, sacrifice not unto them. But there is nothing in the world so full of errors, no malady of the mind so passionate and mingled with more contrary and repugnant opinions, as this of superstition; in regard whereof, we ought to shun and avoid the same, but not as many who whiles they seek to eschew the assaults of thieves by the highway-side, or the invasion of wild beasts out of the forest, or the danger of fire, are so transported and carried away with fear that they look not about them, nor see what they do or whither they go, and by that means light upon byways, or rather places having no way at all, but instead thereof bottomless pits and gulfs, or else steep downfalls most perilous; even so, there be divers that seeking to avoid superstition, fall headlong upon the cragged rock of perverse and stiff-necked impiety and atheism, leaping over true religion which is seated just in the midst between both.