er they
neither make water nor spit, neither do they wash their hands in it,
nor allow any other to do these things, but they reverence rivers very
greatly.

139. This moreover also has chanced to them, which the Persians have
themselves failed to notice but I have not failed to do so:--their
names, which are formed to correspond with their bodily shapes or their
magnificence of station, end all with the same letter, that letter which
the Dorians call san and the Ionians sigma; with this you will find, if
you examine the matter, that all the Persian names end, not some with
this and others with other letters, but all alike.

140. So much I am able to say for certain from my own knowledge about
them: but what follows is reported about their dead as a secret mystery
and not with clearness, namely that the body of a Persian man is not
buried until it has been torn by a bird or a dog. (The Magians I know
for a certainty have this practice, for they do it openly.) However that
may be, the Persians cover the body with wax and then bury it in the
earth. Now the Magians are distinguished in many ways from other men,
as also from the priests in Egypt: for these last esteem it a matter
of purity to kill no living creature except the animals which they
sacrifice; but the Magians kill with their own hands all creatures
except dogs and men, and they even make this a great end to aim at,
killing both ants and serpents and all other creeping and flying things.
About this custom then be it as it was from the first established; and I
now to the former narrative. 145

141. The Ionians and Aiolians, as soon as the Lydians had been subdued
by the Persians, sent messengers to Cyrus at Sardis, desiring to be his
subjects on the same terms as they had been subjects of Croesus. And
when he heard that which they proposed to him, he spoke to them a fable,
saying that a certain player on the pipe saw fishes in the sea and
played on his pipe, supposing that they would come out to land; but
being deceived in his expectation, he took a casting-net and enclosed
a great multitude of the fishes and drew them forth from the water: and
when he saw them leaping about, he said to the fishes: "Stop dancing I
pray you now, seeing that ye would not come out and dance before when
I piped." Cyrus spoke this fable to the Ionians and Aiolians for this
reason, because the Ionians had refused to comply before, when Cyrus
himself by a messenger requested them to