Note 409 — Chapter II · THE HELLENIC PEOPLE GENERALLY, IN THE EARLY HISTORICAL TIMES.

For examples and evidences of these practices, see Herodot. ii. 162; the amputation of the nose and cars of Patarbêmis, 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 (εἴα καταγελᾷν). The ἐκτομὴ was carried on at Sardis (Herodot. iii. 49),—500 παῖδες ἐκτόμιαι 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 Thracians (Herod. v. 6); there is some trace of this at Athens, prior to the Solonian legislation (Plutarch, Solôn, 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 language of Ennius, “Pœni soliti suos sacrificare puellos,”) Diodor. xx. 14; xiii. 86. Porphyr. de Abstinent. ii. 56: the practice is abundantly illustrated in Möver’s Die Religion der Phönizier, pp. 298-304.

Arrian blames Alexander for cutting off the nose and ears of the Satrap Bêssus, saying that it was an act altogether barbaric, (i. e. non-Hellenic,) (Exp. Al. iv. 7, 6.) About the σεβασμὸς θεοπρεπὴς περὶ τὸν βασιλέα in Asia, see Strabo, xi. p. 526.