Book 10
32.16
After mid-day they turn to sacrificing. The more wealthy sacrifice oxen and deer, the poorer people geese and guinea fowl. But it is not the custom to use for the sacrifice sheep, pigs or goats. Those whose business it is to burn the victimsThis scarcely makes sense, and the emendation of Kayser is ingenious: “Those whom Isis has invited to send the victims.” and send them into the shrine...having made a beginning must wrap the victims in bandages of coarse or fine linen; the mode of preparing is the Egyptian.
32.17
All that they have devoted to sacrifice are led in procession; some send the victims into the shrine,while others burn the booths before the shrine and themselves go away in haste. They say that once a profane man, who was not one of those descending into the shrine, when the pyre began to burn, entered the shrine to satisfy his rash inquisitiveness. It is said that everywhere he saw ghosts, and on returning to Tithorea and telling what he had seen he departed this life.
32.18
I have heard a similar story from a man of Phoenicia, that the Egyptians hold the feast for Isis at a time when they say she is mourning for Osiris. At this time the Nile begins to rise, and it is a saying among many of the natives that what makes the river rise and water their fields is the tears of Isis. At that time then, so said my Phoenician, the Roman governor of Egypt bribed a man to go down into the shrine of Isis in Coptus. The man despatched into the shrine returned indeed out of it, but after relating what he had seen, he too, so I was told, died immediately. So it appears that Homer's verseHom. Il. 20.131 speaks the truth when it says that it bodes no good to man to see godhead face to face.
32.19
The olive oil of Tithorea is less abundant than Attic or Sicyonian oil, but in color and pleasantness it surpasses Iberian oil and that from the island of Istria. They distil all manner of unguents from the oil, and also send it to the Emperor.
