24
The piety of the Egyptians and their worship of the gods are especially deserving of praise and admiration. For all persons who have so bedizened themselves as to create the impression that they possess greater wisdom, or some other excellence, than they can rightly claim, certainly do harm to their dupes; but those persons who have so championed the cause of religion that divine rewards and punishments are made to appear more certain than they prove to be, such men, I say, benefit in the greatest measure the lives of men.
25
For actually those who in the beginning inspired in us our fear of the gods, brought it about that we in our relations to one another are not altogether like wild beastsIn Isoc. 3.6, Isocrates affirms that the power of speech and of reason has enables us to escape the life of wild beasts. See also Isoc. 4.48 ff. So great, moreover, is the piety and the solemnity with which the Egyptians deal with these matters that not only are the oaths taken in their sanctuaries more binding than is the case elsewhere, but each person believes that he will pay the penalty for his misdeeds immediately and that he will neither escape detection for the present nor will the punishment be deferred to his children’s time.
26
And they have good reason for this belief; for Busiris established for them numerous and varied practices of piety and ordered them by law even to worship and to revere certain animals which among us are regarded with contempt, not because he misapprehended their power, but because he thought that the crowd ought to be habituated to obedience to all the commands of those in authority,
27
and at the same time he wished to test in visible matters how they felt in regard to the invisible. For he judged that those who belittled these instructions would perhaps look with contempt upon the more important commands also, but that those who gave strict obedience equally in everything would have given proof of their steadfast piety.
